OpenStack Leadership Stresses User Feedback as Platform Powers Over 40 Million Cores Globally

OpenStack, the open-source cloud computing platform, is actively seeking enhanced user engagement to drive its continuous improvement and evolution. Mark Collier, a prominent figure within the OpenStack community, recently underscored the critical role of user input, stating, > "OpenStack runs a hell of lot of the world’s infrastructure, but we can only keep making it better if we hear from the users." This call highlights the project's reliance on its extensive user base to refine and advance its capabilities.

The platform is a cornerstone for global infrastructure, managing over 40 million CPU cores worldwide across diverse industries. Major enterprises like Walmart, which utilizes OpenStack for its e-commerce operations with over 170,000 cores, and China Mobile, building a massive NFV network with more than 50,000 servers, depend on OpenStack for their critical operations. This widespread adoption necessitates a robust feedback loop to address evolving user needs and challenges.

To gather this vital information, the Open Infrastructure Foundation, which governs OpenStack, conducts an annual user survey. This survey collects detailed insights into deployment scales, methods, services utilized, and identifies functional gaps or pain points experienced by operators. The data from these surveys directly informs the development roadmap, ensuring that new features and improvements align with the practical requirements of its global users.

Recent releases, such as the "Dalmatian" version, illustrate how user-driven insights translate into tangible enhancements. This release introduced Skyline, a new dashboard designed for improved user experience, and added the ability to reserve GPU-powered instances in the Nova module, a feature crucial for AI, ML, and HPC workloads. These advancements underscore the direct impact of community feedback on the platform's development.

The OpenStack community emphasizes that user surveys are a critical tool for closing the feedback loop between operators and upstream contributors. By sharing technical implementations and software challenges, users directly influence the project's direction and ensure its continued relevance and stability. This collaborative approach is fundamental to OpenStack's ability to remain a leading open-source solution for private and public cloud environments.