CloudStack is
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud computing
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...
software for creating, managing, and deploying
infrastructure cloud services. It uses existing
hypervisor
A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...
platforms for virtualization, such as
KVM,
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform.
It includes vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move more than o ...
, including
ESXi
VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware, a subsidiary of Broadcom, for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on ...
and
vCenter
vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is the centralized management utility for VMware, and is used to manage virtual machine
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machi ...
,
XenServer/XCP and XCP-ng. In addition to its own API, CloudStack also supports the
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...
(AWS) API
and the
Open Cloud Computing Interface
The Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) is a set of specifications delivered through the Open Grid Forum, for cloud computing service providers. OCCI has a set of implementations that act as proofs of concept. It builds upon World Wide Web fund ...
from the
Open Grid Forum
The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a community of users, developers, and vendors for standardization of grid computing. It was formed in 2006 in a merger of the Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance.
The OGF models its process on the In ...
.
History
CloudStack was originally developed by Cloud.com, formerly known as VMOps.
VMOps was founded by
Sheng Liang
CloudStack is open-source Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services. It uses existing hypervisor platforms for virtualization, such as KVM, VMware vSphere, includin ...
, Shannon Williams,
Alex Huang, Will Chan, and Chiradeep Vittal in 2008.
The company raised a total of $17.6M in venture funding from
Redpoint Ventures
Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies.
History
The firm was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angel ...
, Nexus Ventures and
Index Ventures
Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with headquarters in both San Francisco and London. It invests primarily in tech companies.
History
Index Ventures has its origins in a Switzerland, Swiss bond (finance), bond-trading firm cal ...
(Redpoint and Nexus led the initial Series A funding round). The company changed its name from VMOps to Cloud.com on May 4, 2010, when it emerged from
stealth mode
In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, either in total stealth mode when everything about the company is kept secret, or in-company stealth mode which is usually undertaken to avoid alerting competitors to a pen ...
by announcing its product.
[ Cloud.com was based in ]Cupertino
Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 60,38 ...
, California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
.
In May 2010, Cloud.com released most of CloudStack as free software
Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...
under the GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
, version 3 (GPLv3). They kept about 5% proprietary. Cloud.com and Citrix both supported OpenStack
OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...
, another Apache-licensed cloud computing program, at its announcement in July 2010.
In October 2010, Cloud.com announced a partnership with Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
to develop the code to provide integration and support of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to the OpenStack project.
Citrix Systems
Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. ...
purchased Cloud.com on July 12, 2011, for approximately $200 million. In August 2011, Citrix released the remaining code under the Apache Software License
The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software u ...
with further development governed by the Apache Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the A ...
.[ In February 2012, Citrix released CloudStack 3.0. Among other features, this added support for ]Swift
Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to:
* SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks
** SWIFT code
* Swift (programming language)
* Swift (bird), a family of birds
It may also refer to:
Organizations
* SWIF ...
, OpenStack's S3-like object storage solution.
In April 2012, Citrix donated CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...
(ASF), where it was accepted into the Apache Incubator; Citrix changed the license to the Apache License
The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...
version 2. As part of this change, Citrix also ceased their involvement in OpenStack
OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...
. On November 6, 2012, CloudStack 4.0.0-incubating was announced, the first stable release after joining ASF. On March 20, 2013, CloudStack graduated from Apache Incubator and became a Top-Level Project (TLP) of ASF. The first stable (maintenance) release after graduation is CloudStack 4.0.2.
Key features
*Rich user-interface
*noVNC-based VM console
*Built-in high-availability for hosts and VMs
*Hypervisor-agnostic
*Multiple storage options including block and shared storage support
*Snapshot management
*Usage metering
*Network management (VLAN, security groups)
*Virtual routers, firewalls, load balancers
*Multi-role support
*LDAP, SAML, 2FA
*End-to-end encryption including secured console, volume and database encryption
*AWS API compatibility
Supported Hypervisors
BareMetal hosts
* RHEL or CentOS, v7.x
* Ubuntu 16.04
Deployment architecture
The minimum production installation consists of one machine running the CloudStack Management Server and another machine to act as the cloud infrastructure (in this case, a very simple infrastructure consisting of one host running hypervisor software). In its smallest deployment, a single machine can act as both the Management Server and the hypervisor host (using the KVM hypervisor).
Multiple management servers can be configured for redundancy and load balancing, all pointing to a common MySQL
MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...
database.
Users
In July 2012 it was reported that Datapipe
Datapipe was a provider of managed hosting services and data centers for information technology services and cloud computing with data centers in Somerset, New Jersey, San Jose, California, the United Kingdom, and China. The company was founded in ...
launched the largest international public cloud to be built on CloudStack, which included 6 data centers in the US, Britain, and Asia.
References
External links
*
{{Apache Software Foundation
Cloud Management Portal built on Apache Cloudstack
CloudStack
Cloud platforms
Cloud infrastructure
Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
Virtualization software for Linux
Free software for cloud computing