Greetings,

We are pleased to announce the availability of the next stable version -- v1.6.2 -- of Eucalyptus.

With the 1.6.2 release, we have completed the implementation of the AWS specification 2008-05-05 for EC2/S3 tool chains that that are compatible with AWS through 2009-11-30. Having reached this level of
functionality with Eucalyptus v1.6.2 our intention is to change the release cycle for Eucalyptus to one in which major "feature" releases will be available every six months.

Prior to 1.6.2, all releases were potentially feature releases and as such, the code base for the Eucalyptus core was rapidly evolving. With the completion of this version of the AWS specification and a
less-frenetic development schedule, we are no longer limiting contributions to Eucalyptus to bug-fixes only. To contribute, please see http://open.eucalyptus.com/wiki/ContributeCode for specific details
on how to submit patches and code.

Also, as part of the new release schedule we will be publishing nightly builds for Eucalyptus so that the most current code base is available. Like with all open-source projects, these "nightlies" should be considered reference material and not stable, supported software, particularly since it will not be possible to conduct long-term stress tests on each nightly build. Feature releases and any bug-fix releases will be generated from the code base published as nightlies, however, so it is possible to track the evolution of the main development branch in this way.

To get the latest version of Eucalyptus, visit our downloads page, where you can get the Eucalyptus 1.6.2 and Euca2ools 1.2 source code and distribution-specific binary packages:

http://open.eucalyptus.com/downloads

=== Eucalyptus Version 1.6.2 ===

Eucalyptus 1.6.2 is a point release in the Eucalyptus 1.6 series that primarily contains a number of performance, management, and stability improvements over previous versions.

* Back-end (CC/NC) scale improvements.

* Fixes to Walrus for specific use cases, bugs and stability, as well as beta support for the S3 server logging API.

* Storage controller scalability improvements.

* Updated packages for current versions of supported distributions.

Lastly, we wish to thank all those who have contributed to the project so far. We believe Eucalyptus to be a far better software platform because of the insights and effort many of you have contributed. We hope that this new release discipline will make it possible to build upon the work that has
gone into the platform so far.

Best regards,
The Eucalyptus Team