Bexar (OpenStack)

Bexar (OpenStack)
Name	Bexar
Developer	OpenStack Foundation
Released	2011
Programming language	Python (programming language)
Operating system	Linux
License	Apache License

Bexar (OpenStack)

Bexar was the second milestone release of the OpenStack cloud computing platform, announced in 2011. It consolidated early efforts from projects such as Nova (software), Glance (software), Keystone (software), and Swift (software) while engaging contributors from organizations including Rackspace, NASA, Red Hat, Canonical (company), and the OpenStack Foundation. Bexar advanced interoperability with infrastructure providers and integration with orchestration and virtualization ecosystems represented by KVM, Xen (software), Linux Containers, and VMware ESXi.

Overview

Bexar built on the maiden Austin (OpenStack) release to improve compute, image, identity, and object storage capabilities across multi-tenant deployments. The release packaged enhancements to OpenStack Compute, OpenStack Image, OpenStack Identity, and OpenStack Object Storage while aligning with standards and projects such as OCCI, OVF, and Amazon Web Services APIs. Contributors included cloud engineering teams from HP, IBM, Cisco Systems, and Intel Corporation, integrating with orchestration tools like Jenkins and configuration management systems such as Puppet (software) and Chef (software).

History and Development

Bexar was developed during a period of rapid expansion in open source infrastructure projects following collaborations between Rackspace Hosting and NASA Ames Research Center. Development cycles leveraged continuous integration servers including Gerrit and Launchpad for code review, with discussions in venues like GitHub and Mailing lists. The release addressed issues surfaced at events like the OS Summit and OpenStack Summit, and drew influence from standards work at OASIS and the World Wide Web Consortium. Commercial vendors such as Dell Technologies and Oracle Corporation contributed patches and interoperability testing.

Features and Components

Bexar introduced feature improvements across core projects: compute enhancements to Nova (software) included scheduler tweaks and virtualization driver updates for XenServer and KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Glance (software) improved image discovery and format support including QCOW2 and VMDK. Keystone (software) matured identity APIs and token handling for integration with LDAP directories and SAML 2.0 providers such as Shibboleth. Swift (software) saw durability and ring management refinements. Integration points with Hadoop, Ceph, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and RabbitMQ were expanded for storage and messaging backends.

Architecture and Design

The architectural approach emphasized modular services communicating over RESTful APIs, influenced by Representational State Transfer principles and interoperability with Amazon S3 semantics. Bexar continued the separation of control and data planes, enabling independent scaling of components such as compute nodes running Libvirt and storage proxies running Swift Proxy Server. Authentication and authorization flows relied on token exchange patterns and pluggable backends supporting PAM and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). The design favored commodity hardware compatible with x86_64 platforms and networking provided by Open vSwitch and standard Ethernet fabrics.

Deployment and Integration

Operators deployed Bexar using scripts and orchestration influenced by CloudInit and early Heat prototypes, while continuous delivery pipelines integrated with Jenkins and Travis CI. Integrations targeted hypervisors like VMware ESXi through vendor drivers and storage systems including NetApp filers and EMC Corporation arrays. Bexar deployments were validated in labs at institutions such as NASA, European Organization for Nuclear Research, and enterprise data centers run by Fujitsu and Hitachi. Community tooling provided hooks for Nagios and Zabbix monitoring and for logging aggregation via Fluentd and Logstash.

Performance and Scalability

Performance tuning in Bexar focused on scheduler improvements, image caching strategies, and Swift ring partitioning to reduce latency and improve throughput. Benchmarking used suites and methodologies from SPEC and trace workloads from research projects at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. Scaling studies evaluated horizontal scaling patterns across hundreds to thousands of compute nodes, stress-testing message buses like RabbitMQ and databases like MySQL Cluster and Galera Cluster for high-availability scenarios.

Security and Compliance

Security work in Bexar enhanced token lifecycle management, transport security over TLS/SSL, and pluggable authentication modules enabling integration with Kerberos realms and Active Directory. The release incorporated mitigations for common vulnerabilities disclosed via organizations such as MITRE and compliance considerations for environments following PCI DSS and HIPAA guidelines in healthcare and finance deployments. Hardening guides were drafted with input from CERT Coordination Center and large enterprise adopters like Goldman Sachs.

Legacy and Succession

Bexar set foundations for subsequent OpenStack releases by stabilizing core APIs and encouraging vendor interoperability, influencing the roadmap of projects such as Cinder (software), Neutron (software), and Heat (software). Lessons from Bexar informed commercial distributions from Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Canonical’s Charmed OpenStack and guided contributions from cloud providers including Amazon Web Services competitors and telecommunications companies like Verizon Communications. The release remains cited in historical retrospectives alongside later milestones like Cactus (OpenStack), Diablo (OpenStack), and Essex (OpenStack) for its role in early cloud open source maturation.

Category:OpenStack