OpenStack Flamingo: NetApp Cinder & Manila Drivers Take a Giant Leap Forward
Introduction
The OpenStack Flamingo (2025.2) release is here! It was launched in October, marking OpenStack’s 15th birthday. More importantly, it’s packed with powerful enhancements for NetApp’s Cinder (block storage) and Manila (file share) drivers. These updates deliver better performance, stronger security, and advanced data protection, making OpenStack an even more compelling choice for modern enterprise private clouds.
Happy birthday, OpenStack!
Hard to believe it’s been 15 years already. Our little cloud project is all grown up now. In fact, Manila was built on foundational
work started by NetApp, celebrating its 10-year birthday since the first official GA version in the Liberty release. Let's throw OpenStack a big birthday party and celebrate what’s new in this release!
Expanded Certifications
I’m going to start off by cheating; this isn’t really Flamingo-related, but it’s worth mentioning on OpenStack’s birthday. NetApp has achieved Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) 18 certifications for both Cinder and Manila, reaffirming NetApp’s commitment to interoperability across diverse environments.
- Since RHOSO 18 is based on Antelope (2023.1), not everything here directly applies. Keep in mind that some improvements from later OpenStack releases (up to Epoxy 2025.1) have been backported to RHOSO 18, so you aren’t limited to strictly what was originally included in the Antelope release, per se. Refer to Red Hat’s documentation for more details.
- For Manila, certifications have been achieved for NFS and CIFS (DHSS=true and DHSS=false).
Certifications are now listed in the NetApp OpenStack Interoperability Matrix Tool (login required): https://imt.netapp.com/imt/imt.jsp?components=182924;&solution=2037&isHWU&src=IMT
What’s New in the NetApp Unified Driver for Cinder?
NetApp’s Cinder driver continues to evolve, bringing ONTAP’s enterprise-grade storage and data management capabilities into OpenStack environments. This is just a partial list; refer to the 2025.2 Series Release Notes — Cinder Release Notes documentation for more information. You can also refer to the NetApp unified driver — cinder 27.0.1.dev4 documentation and OpenStack Docs: Block Storage Service (Cinder).
Key Highlights:
- NVMe/TCP enhancements
NVMe/TCP, originally introduced in Antelope (2023.1), now supports VM live migration, in-use expansion, multi-attach (required for live migration), multiple hosts per subsystem, QoS improvements, and consistency group (CG) snapshots, ensuring flexibility for complex workloads. CG snapshots are particularly important for ensuring application consistency in snapshots of multi-volume applications. Two things to be aware of:- Note that your NOVA compute nodes will require the NVMe initiator tools for their distributions.
- Multi-attach and VM live migration are only supported on Cinder volumes attached by Flamingo and later releases. To migrate to the new architecture, old volumes will need to be backed up and restored with the new architecture. You can contact your local OpenStack field expert for help with creating a complete upgrade plan.
- Support for new ASA systems
A new driver class has been created that uses ONTAP REST APIs. This enables OpenStack Flamingo to support the most common operations—driver initialization, capability discovery, create, delete, attach, detach, and extend—on new ASA platforms (A20, A30, A50, A70, A90, A1K, C30, and later). This allows you to take full advantage of SAN-only optimized systems, which offer symmetric active-active LUN access, guaranteed availability (in writing), and new Storage Availability Zone (SAZ) technology – eliminating the need to manage traditional NetApp volumes and aggregates – streamlining operations for modern block workloads.- For ASA systems with Storage Availability Zones, use the new configuration option, netapp_disaggregated_platform (Boolean, default: False), in your cinder.conf file, which is found in /etc/cinder by default.
- REQUIRED: With the new generation of ASA systems, you must set netapp_use_legacy_client = False because the new ASA systems only support REST - they don’t support the legacy API interface.
- REST offers complete backward compatibility with current ONTAP configurations. Traditional unified and legacy ASA ONTAP systems have supported REST for quite some time and no longer depend on the legacy APIs.
- Here is an excerpt from an example cinder.conf:
volume_driver = cinder.volume.drivers.netapp.common.NetAppDriver netapp_storage_family = ontap_cluster netapp_storage_protocol = iscsi netapp_use_legacy_client = False netapp_disaggregated_platform = True
- Total volume capacity tracking
Pool-level volume limit management is enabled by creating a custom filter in the cinder.conf with the total_volumes capability. This can help prevent Cinder volume provisioning failures when running into platform volume limits. One great thing about this is that it helps balance the load better across different storage pools. Plus, it allows you to keep some FlexVol volumes in reserve for other tasks, e.g., backups, which helps avoid any hiccups in those processes.- For example, to create a 10-volume limit: filter_function = capabilities.total_volumes < 10
- Note that the OpenStack administrator must configure the scheduler_default_filters to include DriverFilter in the [DEFAULT] stanza
- For platform-specific volume limits, refer to NetApp Hardware Universe (login required)
- Better reliability and future proofing
- Using the modern REST APIs mentioned above, instead of NetApp’s legacy ZAPI calls, future-proofs your environment while ensuring backward compatibility.
- Large-scale provisioning and cloning operations that previously failed now incorporate retry logic. The Flamingo release improves the reliability of provisioning and cloning, while also reducing the operational overhead of troubleshooting failed attempts.
- Comprehensive FlexGroup snapshot support
Extending snapshot support from the previous Epoxy release, Cinder FlexGroup enhancements include REST client support, ONTAP file clone API functions for systems running ONTAP 9.14 or later, and improved backup and recovery workflows for FlexGroup pools - Pool capability population
Cinder now populates pool capabilities for volume count, improving scheduling and resource awareness.
What’s New in the NetApp Unified Driver for ONTAP with Share Server management Manila Driver?
Manila enhancements focus on security, replication, and interoperability. You can find more information about configuring the manila.conf file, at NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP driver — manila 21.0.1.dev3 documentation and OpenStack Docs: Shared Filesystems Service (Manila).
Key Highlights:
- Barbican integration for share encryption
This is the first implementation of Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) using Barbican. With end-to-end encryption at rest through Barbican, your shared file systems will be protected from malicious actors. Just remember, you need to have Barbican set up in your OpenStack environment to make use of this update. Also, keep in mind that this only works with ONTAP 9.17.1 and later, and you need to set DHSS = True. - Logical space reporting
Improve capacity planning by enabling logical space reporting on provisioned shares. You can read about logical space reporting in the official ONTAP documentation here: Logical space reporting and enforcement for volumes overview
It is disabled by default, but can be enabled through the new configuration option: netapp_enable_logical_space_reporting
Why This Matters
These enhancements enable OpenStack users to leverage ONTAP’s advanced capabilities like QoS policies, snapshot operations, and replication—within their private cloud environments. Whether scaling out file services or running mission-critical workloads, the Flamingo release ensures performance, security, and flexibility.
Looking Ahead
While OpenStack Flamingo delivers substantial improvements for both Cinder and Manila, you can expect even more in the upcoming NetApp is dedicated to ongoing investment within the OpenStack ecosystem, and we’ve got exciting developments on the horizon! Stay tuned – there’s much more to come!
Call to Action
Ready to explore these new capabilities? Contact your NetApp partner, or reach out to us directly, to learn more.
👉 Check out the full details in the official OpenStack Flamingo Release Notes 2025.2 Series Release Notes — Cinder Release Notes documentation and 2025.2 Series Release Notes — manila documentation
