The OpenStack Summit in Vancouver is proving to be a hot spot for the open source industry, with a host of announcements coming out of the event. We’ve rounded up here a handful of those that there simply was not time to cover in full at the event.

Red Hat introduces Cloud Suite for Applications

Enterprise Linux specialist Red Hat has combined several of its product lines to deliver what it calls the industry’s first fully open source integrated infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution.

Red Hat Cloud Suite for Applications integrates Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack with the firm’s OpenShift application platform and CloudForms for cloud management and orchestration.

With seamless oversight of both OpenShift and OpenStack with CloudForms, the new bundle enables organisations to manage both PaaS and IaaS from a single console, and enables a hybrid cloud deployment by providing consistent visibility across virtual infrastructure and public cloud platforms, the firm said.

Currently, Red Hat Cloud Suite for Applications is available via an early access programme, with general availability to be announced at a later date.

Canonical claims that LXD runs rings around KVM for running workloads

The recently released Ubuntu 15.04 not only integrates the new OpenStack Kilo version but also debuted a new feature called Linux Container Daemon (LXD) technology, described by Canonical as a “hypervisor for containers”.

At the OpenStack Summit, Canonical published benchmarks claiming that LXD runs workloads 14.5 times more densely and with 57 percent less latency than the KVM hypervisor typically used to operate virtual machines in Linux environments.

Using LXD also enables deployment of new workloads 94 percent faster than under KVM, while the technology also exhibits 57 percent lower latency, according to Canonical.

“LXD crushes traditional virtualisation for common enterprise environments, where density and raw performance are the primary concerns. Canonical is taking containers to the level of a full hypervisor, with guarantees of CPU, RAM, I/O and latency backed by silicon and the latest Ubuntu kernels,” said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Mirantis unveils Mirantis Unlocked partner programme

Mirantis, which styles itself as the “pure play” OpenStack firm, has launched a partner programme whereby developers of other products can get go-to-market support and pre-validation and certification with the Mirantis OpenStack platform.

The introduction of Mirantis Unlocked follows recent high profile integrations between Mirantis and other key software platforms such as Oracle Database 12c and Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

Mirantis Unlocked is intended to kick start an ecosystem of best-of-breed products that are rigorously certified to interoperate with Mirantis OpenStack, unlocking a host of fully-supported solutions customers can implement quickly, the firm said.