What’s New in the OpenStack Gazpacho Release? Parallel Migrations, OVN BGP, and Smarter Bare Metal
The wait is over for cloud operators and developers. The OpenStack Gazpacho release (2026.1) is now available, and it brings a refreshing wave of improvements to compute, networking, and bare metal management.
Named after the cold Spanish soup, this 33rd release of the world’s most popular open-source cloud infrastructure platform focuses on what matters most to you: faster workload mobility, smarter defaults, and better handling of modern hardware. As a SLURP (Skip Level Upgrade Release Process) release, operators running the previous SLURP release, 2025.1 Epoxy, can upgrade directly to Gazpacho without the need to upgrade to 2025.2 first, reducing operational overhead especially for large cloud deployment.
For businesses looking to maintain a competitive edge, staying ahead of these updates is crucial, especially when leveraging a turnkey solution like is our case with c12n Private Cloud.
A Leap Forward in Workload Mobility
The headline feature of the OpenStack Gazpacho release comes from the Nova compute project: parallel live migrations. Previously, live migration used a single memory transfer connection, copying the full memory state and then incremental deltas. Gazpacho changes this by allowing multiple memory transfer connections to run simultaneously, fragmenting the network transfer across parallel threads. This brings OpenStack’s live migration behavior much closer to what operators migrating from VMware vMotion have come to expect.
In addition, Nova now supports live migration of instances with virtual TPM (vTPM) devices when using host secret security mode. The TPM secret is persisted in Barbican (OpenStack’s key management service) and transferred to the destination host during migration, enabling secure movement of sensitive workloads.
| Feature | Before 2026.1 Gazpacho | From OpenStack 2026.1 Gazpacho Release |
|---|---|---|
|
Live Migration |
Single-threaded memory transfer |
Parallel multi-threaded transfer ([libvirt] live_migration_parallel_connections in nova.conf) |
|
vTPM Migration |
Not supported; blocked secure workloads |
vTPM Migration via Barbican secret storage; enables secure workload mobility. |
|
Volume Attach API |
Synchronous (blocking) |
Asynchronous (HTTP 202) starting from microversion 2.101 |
Other notable Nova enhancements include:
- One IOThread per QEMU instance enabled by default, offloading disk I/O from vCPUs.
- Delegation of UEFI firmware selection to libvirt, supporting Secure Boot and AMD SEV.
- Full OpenAPI schema coverage across all API endpoints.
- Experimental native threading mode (alternative to eventlet) and graceful shutdown support.
Ironic: Autodetect, Trait-Based Scheduling, and Standalone Networking
The bare metal service of OpenStack gets a boost. The Ironic service now includes an autodetect deploy interface that eliminates manual specification by selecting the most suitable deployment method based on image metadata and node configuration. A new noop deploy interface also allows marking nodes as active without OS deployment, perfect for adopting pre-existing infrastructure with already provisioned servers.
Trait-based port scheduling enables more flexible network configuration, allowing ports to be scheduled based on physical network attributes (e.g., “dual-redundant 25Gbit connectivity”). Additionally, a new standalone networking service allows Ironic to manage physical network switch configurations without requiring Neutron – ideal for pure bare-metal environments.
Finally, Redfish inspection has reached parity with in-band agent inspection, now able to inspect PCI bus, disk controllers, LLDP, and more system details.
Neutron: OVN BGP and North-South Routing for High-Performance Ports
Networking receives incremental but powerful updates centered on the OVN (Open Virtual Network) driver. The OpenStack Gazpacho release introduces BGP support within the Neutron OVN driver, allowing you to manipulate BGP routes at scale – a critical requirement for large deployments.
Furthermore, ML2/OVN now supports north-south routing for external (SR-IOV and baremetal) ports, meaning traffic to and from those high-performance ports no longer needs CPU involvement for processing. This is a major win for latency-sensitive and high-throughput workloads.
Cyborg, Designate, and Other Project Highlights
- Cyborg (accelerator management) has migrated to native Python threading and gained a new driver configuration guide covering FPGA, GPU, NIC, QAT, SSD, and PCI passthrough.
- Designate (DNS-as-a-Service) completed its migration from eventlet to native Python threading.
- Freezer (backup and disaster recovery) now defaults to SQLAlchemy storage; Elasticsearch DB storage is deprecated. The UI has moved to the “Backup and Recovery” section in Horizon.
- Horizon now supports Nova live migration (microversion 2.30), a rewritten Key Pairs page in Python/Django, and Font Awesome 6.2.
- Watcher (cluster load optimization) now supports active-active configurations for Decision Engine and Applier, plus a new automatic action-skipping mechanism.
- Manila (shared file systems) has removed the V1 API and the shell utility, added a back-end driver for HPE Alletra MP B10000m, and introduced QoS types.
Manila: QoS Types – A Direct Contribution from Cloudification 💙
One of the new enhancements for storage administrators in the OpenStack Gazpacho release comes from the Manila (shared file systems) project, and we at Cloudification are especially proud of this one. The introduction of QoS types and QoS type specs was contributed directly to OpenStack by Cloudification.
Before this change, operators could only define performance limits (such as throughput or IOPS throttling) via share type extra-specs, which was not always intuitive or consistent across back ends. With the new QoS types feature, administrators can now:
- Create standalone QoS entities that define performance policies (e.g., max-throughput=300MB/s, iops-limit=1000).
- Associate QoS types with share types or directly with shares, decoupling performance policy from share metadata.
- Support multiple back ends (like NetApp ONTAP and others) that can interpret QoS policies natively.
Cinder (block storage) has had the QoS feature implementation since more than 10 releases and now finally QoS comes to Manila. This makes Manila’s behavior more predictable, reusable, and scalable – especially in large and enterprise multi-tenant environments where workloads demand guaranteed performance levels backed by SLAs.
Deprecations and Removals to Plan For
When upgrading to the OpenStack Gazpacho release, keep these changes in mind:
- Freezer: Elasticsearch DB storage is deprecated and will be removed in the next release.
- Manila: V1 API and shell utility have been removed entirely.
- Eventlet removal: Many services (Cyborg, Designate, Watcher, Manila in preview) have moved to native threading. The old eventlet-based mode is being phased out for good.
Why Cloudification’s c12n Private Cloud Is Your Best OpenStack Solution
Keeping up with a new OpenStack release every six to twelve months can be challenging. That’s where Cloudification comes in. We ensure that the advanced features of the OpenStack Gazpacho release – from parallel live migrations to OVN BGP – are integrated seamlessly into your production environment with prior and intensive testing in our labs.
Ready to Upgrade to Gazpacho?
Don’t let the complexity of manual upgrades hold you back. Whether you’re migrating from VMware, expanding your bare-metal footprint, or simply want smarter cloud infrastructure, Cloudification is here to help.
👉 Kontaktieren Sie uns today and let our team handle the heavy lifting. Get a smooth, powerful, and sovereign OpenStack experience – with zero license fees.
