Skip to main content

CloudStack


Apache CloudStack is an open source infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform that allows IT service providers to offer public cloud services and individual companies to provide their own private cloud and hybrid-cloud services on-premises.

CloudStack includes a compute function that allocates virtual machines to individual servers, a network function that manages switches to create and manage virtual networks, object and block storage systems, an image management function and a cloud computing management interface that supports all of the software stack's components.

CloudStack allows administrators to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines running the following hypervisors:
  • VMware
  • KVM
  • Citrix XenServer
  • Xen Cloud Platform (XCP)
  • Oracle VM server
  • Microsoft Hyper-V

Users can manage their cloud deployments through a command line tool, a RESTful API or Web interface. CloudStack also provides an API that's compatible with AWS EC2 and S3 to facilitate hybrid cloud deployments.

CloudStack, which was initially developed by Cloud.com, was acquired by Citrix in 2011 and turned over to the Apache Software Foundation in 2012. Development is now governed by the Apache Foundation with code available under the Apache 2.0 license. As of this writing, Apache CloudStack's most recent release is 4.12.0.0.

CloudStack features

CloudStack includes features for:
  • Compute orchestration
  • Resource management
  • User and account management
  • LDAP Integration
  • MPLS Support
  • Storage tiering
  • Single Sign-On (SSO)


CloudStack vs. OpenStack

Technology and design-wise, CloudStack and OpenStack are very similar, even though they were each created to meet different goals. OpenStack began as an open source project in 2010 by Rackspace Hosting Inc. and NASA. At the time, Rackspace was developing a storage component for use in its public cloud, and NASA was developing a compute component for its private cloud.

In contrast, the goal of CloudStack has always been to enable service providers and enterprises to create and operate public or private clouds with capabilities equivalent to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

CloudStack vs. CloudMonkey

CloudMonkey v6.0.0 is a rewrite of the original CloudStack tool in Go programming language. CloudMonkey can be used as both an interactive shell and a command line interface (CLI) for simplifying CloudStack configuration and management in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X environments.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Black swan

A  black swan event  is an incident that occurs randomly and unexpectedly and has wide-spread ramifications. The event is usually followed with reflection and a flawed rationalization that it was inevitable. The phrase illustrates the frailty of inductive reasoning and the danger of making sweeping generalizations from limited observations. The term came from the idea that if a man saw a thousand swans and they were all white, he might logically conclude that all swans are white. The flaw in his logic is that even when the premises are true, the conclusion can still be false. In other words, just because the man has never seen a black swan, it does not mean they do not exist. As Dutch explorers discovered in 1697, black swans are simply outliers -- rare birds, unknown to Europeans until Willem de Vlamingh and his crew visited Australia. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the phrase black swan as a metaphor for how humans deal with unpredictable events in his 2007...

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. A GPU may be found integrated with a central processing unit (CPU) on the same circuit, on a graphics card or in the motherboard of a personal computer or server. In the early days of computing, the CPU performed these calculations. As more graphics-intensive applications such as AutoCAD were developed; however, their demands put strain on the CPU and degraded performance. GPUs came about as a way to offload those tasks from CPUs, freeing up their processing power. NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM are some of the major players in the GPU market. GPU vs. CPU A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a central processing unit because of its parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at the same time. A single CPU does not have this capability, although multi...

6G (sixth-generation wireless)

6G (sixth-generation wireless) is the successor to 5G cellular technology. 6G networks will be able to use higher frequencies than 5G networks and provide substantially higher capacity and much lower latency. One of the goals of the 6G Internet will be to support one micro-second latency communications, representing 1,000 times faster -- or 1/1000th the latency -- than one millisecond throughput. The 6G technology market is expected to facilitate large improvements in the areas of imaging, presence technology and location awareness. Working in conjunction with AI, the computational infrastructure of 6G will be able to autonomously determine the best location for computing to occur; this includes decisions about data storage, processing and sharing.  Advantages of 6G over 5G 6G is expected to support 1 terabyte per second (Tbps) speeds. This level of capacity and latency will be unprecedented and wi...