StarlingX, the open source distributed cloud platform for IoT, 5G, O-RAN and edge computing, is available in its 10.0 release today. StarlingX combines the Linux kernel, 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 automated and 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 10.0 at https://opendev.org/starlingx***

"With StarlingX running in production around the globe, the community has been able to learn about and incorporate user feedback into the platform, to ensure that it remains a perfect fit for modern-day workloads at scale and to deliver functionality that allows users to combine legacy technologies with new innovations," said Ildikó Váncsa, director, Community, for the OpenInfra Foundation. "The StarlingX 10.0 release puts an emphasis on catering to users' needs through adding new functionality to networking, increasing scalability, and making the platform even easier to deploy, configure and operate."

Highlights of the New Features and Upgrades in StarlingX 10.0

• Networking: StarlingX 10.0 adds IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack support. While IPv6 was originally introduced in the industry with the intention to replace the IPv4 address pool, that transition still hasn't been completed. With the existence of both protocols in production use, platforms like StarlingX face the requirement to support both simultaneously. The 10.0 version of the platform now enables the association of both IPv4 and IPv6 pools with networks defined in the platform with one of them serving as the primary.

• Security: StarlingX 10.0 adds support for using Harbor as a container registry by deploying it as a StarlingX system application. Once configured, users can utilize this service to securely manage artifacts in the cloud-native landscape, such as container images, Helm charts and more. Harbor is an OCI-compliant service, which allows vulnerability scanning of artifacts and provides role-based access control and the ability to sign container images and artifacts, among other features.

• User experience: Making it simple to deploy and manage the platform has always been a focal point for the StarlingX community. The 10.0 release delivers an important enhancement in this regard with the new Unified Software Management Framework. Although the abilities to patch the platform and carry out upgrades were already available in previous versions, different subsystems performed these operations and users needed to access them separately. The new framework provides a single procedure, accessible through a REST API/CLI interface, to carry out updates and upgrades for both a single cloud installation as well as a distributed cloud deployment.

• Kernel upgrade: StarlingX 10.0 includes an upgrade to the latest LTS release made available by the Yocto project, replacing the v5.10 kernel with v6.6. With the new kernel, the StarlingX platform has access to a wider range of supported hardware platforms and in-tree device drivers. This kernel version also offers improved performance and contains bug fixes which were not backported to the previously integrated version.

• Scalability: Earlier versions of the StarlingX were already able to manage up to 1,000 remote sites per system controller. The 10.0 release of the platform can now manage up to 5,000 sites, which simplifies the deployment and operation of large deployments.

• And more: StarlingX integrates a wide range of open source projects beyond the Linux kernel, and contributors have been integrating newer versions of these components in the 10.0 release cycle. For example, the StarlingX 10.0 release now offers access to Kubernetes versions up to v1.29.
  

Learn more about these and other features of StarlingX 10.0 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 cloud infrastructures for HCP and other demanding use cases, along with using the platform for industrial automation, are further use cases that players in the StarlingX ecosystem have been investigating.

OpenInfra Community Drives StarlingX Progress

The StarlingX project launched in 2018, with initial code for the project contributed by Wind River and Intel. Active contributors to the project include Wind River, Encora, Intel and 99Cloud. Well-known users of the software in production include T-Systems, Verizon and Vodafone. Although StarlingX is not exclusively a telecom platform, the StarlingX community is actively collaborating with the O-RAN Software Community (SC) to ensure compatibility with relevant requirements and workloads.