Hey, In the time since the Essex release, we have been busy selectively back-porting bugfixes to the stable/essex branch according to our "safe source of high-impact fixes" criteria documented here: http://wiki.openstack.org/StableBranch Well, those fixes are now available as 2011.3.1 releases! These releases are bugfix updates to Essex and are intended to be relatively risk free with no intentional regressions or API changes. The list of bugs fixed can be seen here: https://launchpad.net/nova/+milestone/2012.1.1 https://launchpad.net/glance/+milestone/2012.1.1 https://launchpad.net/keystone/+milestone/2012.1.1 https://launchpad.net/horizon/+milestone/2012.1.1 Please read (and add to!) the release notes at: http://wiki.openstack.org/ReleaseNotes/2012.1.1 Enjoy! Mark.