Despite the silence we have been pretty busy with cooking the OpenNode Management Server and its web based management interface - FuncMan. But before we are going to release OpenNode Management Server preview its time for OpenNode 1.0 second beta release - which we hope will become later as OpenNode 1.0 stable release.

OpenNode 1.0 beta2 is going to have a newest OpenVZ kernel with updated KVM stack and out-of-box support for virt-manager (for remote KVM VM management). Registering OpenNode host as a FUNC (Fedora Unified Network Controller) client via opennode cli utility will be also supported.

Thou OpenNode 1.0 beta2 ISO release is probably going to be happen during next week - it is already possible to switch existing OpenNode 1.0 beta1 installations to opennode-test repository (in /etc/yum.repos.d/opennode.repo file just disable opennode repo and enable opennode-test repo) and then just do ‘yum update’ in order to upgrade into 1.0 beta2. Everything else should be fairly stable but there can be some KVM windows VM troubles left to figure out - so be warned!

After we released OpenNode 1.0 beta1 in March (which has proven itself as quite stable release - also in KVM stack sense) our efforts have been concentrated on developing OpenNode 1.1 and OpenNode Management Server code - in order to provide remote management options for OpenNode hosts. I’m pleased to say that most of the coding is done and currently OpenNode 1.1 is under testing/finalizing phase together with Management Server RPC API.

OpenNode 1.1 release will contain some remarkable new features - such as unified template format based on OVF (Open Virtualization Format) standard for both OpenVZ and KVM templates. OpenNode 1.1 can create these templates from existing VMs (both KVM and OpenVZ), can download and update prepackaged templates from official OpenNode template library site and most importantly - can deploy both KVM and OpenVZ templates into VMs together with creating VM configurations and changing VM resource limits on-the-fly. OpenNode VM templates will contain info about target VM minimal resource requirements - like min CPU cores, min memory, etc. - during VM creation process user can specify resource values overriding (and exceeding) minimal requirements mandated by template.

If Im not mistaken OpenNode 1.1 will be the first virtualization solution to date to provide full KVM VM templating (VM config + VM filesystem on LVM or file based block device) and deploying OpenVZ templates together with VM configuration generation on-the-fly (just input how much ram, cpu and disk you want for VM - let the opennode do the rest).

OpenNode 1.1 release will be accompanied with OpenNode Management Server first public release - so OpenNode servers will get basic remote (and central) management option. OpenNode Management Server provides CLI interface through simple func commands and for full functionality there is a RPC API server - which acts as a upcoming FuncMan web based management interface backend - or one can develop or integrate OpenNode Management Server RPC API into its own custom set of management tools or management environments. We will publish Management Server RPC API together with Management Server release.

And if all goes well we’ll post some first FuncMan WUI screenshots soon…