As it appeared during the bustle of SC11, this press release slipped under the radar for many, but its implications are huge.
OpenSFS has already been active in funding future Lustre development but this latest contract acknowledges the amount of work it takes to integrate features developed in parallel, keep current with the latest Linux kernel updates (and versions of OFED), and still to maintain the same high standards of quality that Lustre users have become accustomed to over the years.
In addition to providing some much-welcome relief towards some of Whamcloud’s costs of producing releases, the OpenSFS releases contract makes it clear that the Whamcloud Lustre releases have become the de-facto standard for the Lustre community.
It is expected that ongoing Lustre development will baseline on the Whamcloud Lustre tree.
This puts quite a responsibility on Whamcloud’s shoulders to co-ordinate with other organizations involved in Lustre development and to ensure that the processes for contributing code are followed so that the quality of the central Lustre releases remains high.
Just this week I put out a call for features for inclusion in Q3’s Lustre 2.3 release. When we’re sure that something will be in a given release then we update the Lustre roadmap to reflect this, but in the meantime you can get a flavor of what is being worked on (and by whom) on the community development wiki page.
There’s no doubt that it’s going to be a busy year!
Peter is the Support Manager at Whamcloud - a role that he has formerly served for the Lustre teams at CFS, Sun and Oracle. He was the release manager for the Lustre 2.1 release and for numerous 1.6.x and 1.8.x Lustre releases over the years. He lives in BC, Canada.