OpenStack is becoming the most popular open source platform for building private and public clouds. The number of code commits and the engineering velocity of this project is matched by no other technology adoption in history. While OpenStack is merely two years old, there have been six production releases of it. Those who opted to deploy an OpenStack-based cloud a year ago are now likely running production workloads on a version of OpenStack that is three releases behind what they initially deployed.
Just as the evolution of software development methodologies and high-level programming languages has empowered organizations to adopt continuous deployment practices at the application level, increased engineering velocity and innovation in the infrastructure space are now forcing companies to consider the same at the lower levels of the stack. In the modern age of distributed and ever-evolving infrastructure, traditional rip and replace methods of upgrading are no longer optimal. The problem becomes particularly acute when dealing with open source products such as OpenStack that do not offer a clear vendor-dictated upgrade path, tooling, and supporting services.

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