OpenNebula 2.0 includes a significant amount of changes and new features across many areas. The following is a selection of notable new functionality:

• Image Repository. The Image Repository allows users to easily specify disk images from a catalog without worrying about low-level disk configuration attributes or block device mapping. Also, image access control is applied to the images registered in the repository, hence simplifying multi-user environments and image sharing. The traditional method of specifying VM disks is also fully supported. More info…

• MySQL support. OpenNebula can now work with either a MySQL or SQLite database backend. The new MySQL support brings important performance and scalability improvements compared to the SQLite implementation. MySQL is the recommended option for large-scale clouds. More info…

• Improved VMWare support. VMware drivers has been re-written to make use of all the features offered by OpenNebula, making the functionality of the drivers on par with the KVM and Xen ones. The new drivers uses the libvirt driver. More info…

• Scalability Improvements. Several components of OpenNebula have been tuned to work with tens of thousands of VMs, including the redesign of the scheduler and adjustments to the monitoring modules.

• Separate VM and Information actions. The specific operations performed when monitoring a host or performing an specific operation on a VM has been decoupled from the driver code base. Now it is even easier to tune your cloud. The number of connections to the node have also been reduced.

• Cluster support. Physical hosts can now be grouped in logical clusters, so after a cluster is defined it can be used to set the placement of a VM. More info…

• Accounting. New tools are provided to generate accounting reports for cloud users or physical hosts. More info…

• Authorization & Authentication Drivers. The authorization and authentication processes in OpenNebula have been totally redesigned. Now they can be handled natively by the OpenNebula core, offering the same functionality as OpenNebula 1.4. Alternatively, the A&A processes can be handled by an external component that can be integrated with any A&A system or user maps (e.g. LDAP, Kerberos…). As an example OpenNebula 2.0 features a quota based authorization module and user authentication based on RSA keys. More info…

• Quota Management. Allowing cloud administrators to set limits on cloud resources for users

• LDAP Integration. Levering the new authorization & authentication framework, datacenters using LDAP for user management can integrate OpenNebula with it, without the need of re-creating the user data. More info…

• Virtual Networking Improvements. OpenNebula 2.0 lets you define generic attributes associated to a Virtual Network (e.g. gateway, dns servers…) that can then be included in the context of a VM. This will let you easily configure VMs with multiple NICs. Additionally Virtual Networks can now be defined as public, and thus shared among multiple users.

• Improved EC2 support. The EC2 Query server can now be used with the EC2 ecosystem. Supported third party applications include ElasticFox or EucaTools. More info…

• Java Bindings for the OpenNebula Cloud API (OCA) OpenNebula 2.0 includes JAVA bindings that wraps the XML–RPC interface methods exposed by the core. More info…

• Improved OCCI support. The OCCI implementation now follows a more coherent schema. The OCCI server also makes a more robust handling of incoming requests. More info…

For a complete list of changes, see this detailed changelog

• About the Project
• About the Technology
• Key Features
• OpenNebula Add-ons
• Ecosystem

For a detailed list of bugs addressed by OpenNebula 2.0 check the development portal.

OpenNebula 2.0 is targeted at production environments and 1.4 installations are recommended to update. However, take into account that, starting with OpenNebula 2.0 Beta, a new DB schema was introduced. Thus, this new release will break compatibility with OpenNebula 1.4 (at the DB and API levels). Host, Networks or Virtual Machines defined in OpenNebula 1.4 installs will not longer work with this release, and must be recreated in the new system (we are working to make this process more seamless in future releases). OpenNebula 2.0 also includes new API calls and methods. However there have been no changes in those API calls already supported in OpenNebula 1.4. Applications using OCA (Ruby and Java bindings) are expected to work with OpenNebula 2.0.

Finally, we would like to thank all the people and organizations that have contributed to make OpenNebula the most flexible, scalable and feature rich Cloud Toolkit!

The OpenNebula Team