OpenInfra community launches StarlingX 9.0

StarlingX—the open source distributed cloud platform for IoT, 5G, O-RAN and edge computing—is available in its 9.0 release today. StarlingX combines Ceph, OpenStack, Kubernetes and more to create a full-featured cloud software stack that provides everything telecom carriers and enterprises need to deploy an edge cloud on a few servers or hundreds of them. Container-based and highly scalable, StarlingX is used by the most demanding applications in industrial IoT, telecom, video delivery and other ultra-low latency, high-performance use cases. 

Download StarlingX 9.0 at https://opendev.org/starlingx

"StarlingX adoption continues to grow as more organizations learn of the platform’s unique advantages in supporting modern-day workloads at scale; in fact, one current user has documented its deployment of 20,000 nodes and counting,” said Ildikó Váncsa, director, Community, for the Open Infrastructure Foundation. “Accordingly, this StarlingX 9.0 release prioritizes enhancements for scaling, updating and upgrading the end-to-end environment.

“Also during this release cycle, StarlingX collaborated closely with Arm and AMD for a coordinated effort towards increasing the diversity of hardware supported.” continued Váncsa. “This collaboration also includes building out lab infrastructure to continuously test the project on a diverse set of hardware platforms.”

“Across cloud, 5G, and edge computing, power efficiency and lower TCO is critical for developers in bringing new innovations to market,” said Eddie Ramirez, vice president of go-to-market, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “StarlingX plays a vital role in this mission and we’re pleased to be working with the community so that developers and users can leverage the power efficiency advantages of the Arm architecture going forward.”

Additional New Features and Upgrades in StarlingX 9.0

• Transition to the Antelope version of OpenStack.
• Redundant / HA PTP timing clock sources. Redundancy is an important requirement in many systems, including telecommunications. This feature is crucial to be able to set up multiple timing sources to synchronize from any of the available and valid hardware clocks and to have an HA configuration down to system clocks.
• AppArmor Support. This security feature makes a Kubernetes deployment (and thus the StarlingX stack) more secure by restricting what containers and pods are allowed to do. 
• Configurable Power Management. Sustainability and optimal power consumption is becoming critical in modern digital infrastructures. This feature adds to the StarlingX platform the Kubernetes Power Manager, which allows power control mechanisms to be applied to processors.
• Intel Ethernet Operator Integration. This feature allows for firmware updates and more granular interface adapter configuration on Intel E810 Series NICs.

Learn more about these and other features of StarlingX 9.0 in the community’s release notes.

StarlingX – A Simple Approach to Scaling Distributed Clouds

StarlingX is widely used in production among large telecom operators around the globe, such as T-Systems, Verizon, Vodafone, KDDI and more. Operators are utilizing the container-based platform for their 5G and O-RAN backbone infrastructures along with relying on the project's features to easily manage the lifecycle of the infrastructure components and services. 

Hardened by major telecom users, StarlingX is ideal for enterprises seeking a highly performant distributed cloud architecture. Organizations are evaluating the platform for use cases such as backbone network infrastructure for railway systems and high-performance edge datacenter solutions. Managing forest fires is another new use case that has emerged and is being researched by a new StarlingX user and contributor.