Apache CloudStack is an open-source, Java-based software project for deploying and managing large networks of virtual machines (VMs). It makes VMs highly available, scalable Infrastructure as a Service cloud computing platforms. It is currently hosted by the Apache Software Foundation as a top-level project, and used to offer public cloud services, provide an on-premises private cloud offering, or in a hybrid cloud solution.
According to the project website, top features include:
- Ability to work with hosts running XenServer/XCP, KVM, Hyper-V, and/or VMware ESXi with vSphere
- A web-based UI for managing the cloud
- A native API
- A Amazon S3/EC2 compatible API
- Ability to manage storage for instances running on the hypervisors (primary storage) as well as templates, snapshots, and ISO images (secondary storage)
- Network service orchestration from the data link layer to app layer services
- Accounting of network, compute, and storage resources
- Multi-tenancy/account separation
- User management
- Support for popular hypervisors
The project’s latest release, version 4.14, included updates to its Kubernetes service, VM ingestion, a new backup and recovery framework, a technical preview of its new user interface and KVM rolling maintenance.
“v4.14 is an exciting release for Apache Cloudstack and is the result of many months of collaboration by our community,” said Sven Vogel, vice president of Apache CloudStack. “We are introducing a number of major new features that have been driven by demand by users and operators of CloudStack based IaaS environments. At the same time, we have kept to the project’s ethos of having a tightly defined scope and being the platform of choice on which to layer other services.”
