cloudstack: Open Source Orchestration & Scheduling

What is cloudstack?

Apache CloudStack is an open source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform, written primarily in Java and released under the Apache-2.0 licence, that deploys and manages large networks of virtual machines for service providers, enterprises, and operators who need a cloud they control.

What it is

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines as a highly available, highly scalable IaaS platform. It is a turnkey solution covering the full stack that most organizations expect from an IaaS cloud: compute orchestration, Network-as-a-Service, user and account management, a full and open native API, resource accounting, and a first-class user interface. The project sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling category of this registry and is hosted by the Apache Software Foundation. Supported hypervisors include VMware vSphere, KVM, XenServer, XenProject, Hyper-V, OVM, and LXC containers, and operators reach the cloud through a web interface, command line tools, or the query-based API.

The concrete problem it solves is the assembly work that otherwise sits between a hypervisor fleet and a usable cloud service. Without a platform of this kind, an operator has to join virtualization management, network configuration, tenant and account handling, quota and resource accounting, and an API and UI layer from separate tools bound together with custom code. CloudStack replaces that bespoke glue with one control plane that spans heterogeneous hypervisors, so the same account model, network model, and API apply whether the underlying host runs KVM or vSphere. Service providers use it to offer public cloud services, companies use it for on-premises private clouds, and it can serve as part of a hybrid cloud solution.

Key capabilities

Compute orchestration over VMware vSphere, KVM, XenServer, XenProject, Hyper-V, OVM, and LXC containers from a single management layer.
Network-as-a-Service built into the platform rather than bolted on through separate tooling.
A full and open native API that is query based, alongside command line tools and a first-class web UI.
User and account management for multi-tenant cloud operations.
Resource accounting for tracking consumption across accounts.
Repository topics that include cloud, cloudstack, iaas, infrastructure, java, kubernetes, kvm, libvirt, orchestration, python, virtual-machine, and virtualization.
A Docker-based CloudStack Simulator exercised in CI through the docker-cloudstack-simulator.yml workflow, giving a way to try the platform without dedicated hardware.

Who uses it and how

More than 150 known organizations use Apache CloudStack or a commercial distribution of it.
Major service providers run CloudStack to offer public cloud services at provider scale.
Product vendors incorporate or integrate CloudStack into their own products.
Organizations build on-premises private clouds on it, or use it as part of a hybrid cloud solution.
Operators manage the environment from the web UI, command line tools, or the API, so a team can split interactive administration from automation.

Getting started

The README points to the Getting Started section, the project website at cloudstack.apache.org, and documentation builds published through the cloudstack-documentation Read the Docs project, with the source repository as the entry point for building and running the platform. A Docker CloudStack Simulator image is available for a hardware-free trial.

How it compares

No list of paid products it replaces is provided in the facts, and no directly comparable orchestration platform is named alongside it in this registry. It stands alone here as the IaaS control plane option, and any comparison against alternatives would have to come from outside this entry rather than from the facts on record.

When to use it — and when not to

CloudStack suits operators prepared to run a full cloud control plane over a hypervisor fleet, and it is a poor fit for anyone who wants a single virtual machine host or a narrowly scoped tool. A prospective self-hoster should weigh the size of the operational surface, which spans management services, hypervisor hosts, and networking, before committing. The repository also carries 1,048 open issues against 3,068 stars and 1,385 forks, and the README defers installation, build, and deployment detail to the website and documentation rather than spelling it out inline, so teams needing a short self-contained setup guide should budget time for the external docs.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Apache CloudStack

Who Uses CloudStack?
Demo
Getting Started
Getting Source Repository
Documentation
News and Events
Getting Involved and Contributing
Reporting Security Vulnerabilities
License
Notice of Cryptographic Software
Star History
Contributors

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform. CloudStack is used by a number of service providers to offer public cloud services, and by many companies to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, or as part of a hybrid cloud solution.

CloudStack is a turnkey solution that includes the entire "stack" of features most organizations want with an IaaS cloud: compute orchestration, Network-as-a-Service, user and account management, a full and open native API, resource accounting, and a first-class User Interface (UI).

CloudStack currently supports the most popular hypervisors: VMware vSphere, KVM, XenServer, XenProject and Hyper-V as well as OVM and LXC containers.

Users can manage their cloud with an easy to use Web interface, command line tools, and/or a full-featured query based API.

For more information on Apache CloudStack, please visit the website

Who Uses CloudStack?

There are more than 150 known organizations using Apache CloudStack (or a commercial distribution of CloudStack). Our users include many major service providers running CloudStack to offer public cloud services, product vendors who incorporate or integrate with CloudStack in their own products, organizations who have used CloudStack to build their own private clouds, and systems integrators that offer CloudStack related services.
See our case studies highlighting successful deployments of Apache CloudStack.
See the up-to-date list of current users.
If you are using CloudStack in your organization and your company is not listed above, please complete our brief adoption survey. We're happy to keep your company name anonymous if you require.

Demo

Screenshot

See the project user-interface QA website that runs CloudStack against simulator hypervisor: https://qa.cloudstack.cloud/simulator/ (admin:password)

Getting Started

Download a released version
Build from source with the instructions in the INSTALL.md file.

Getting Source Repository

Apache CloudStack project uses Git. The official Git repository is at:

https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/cloudstack.git

And a mirror is hosted on GitHub:

https://github.com/apache/cloudstack

The GitHub mirror is strictly read only and provides convenience to users and developers to explore the code and for the community to accept contributions via GitHub pull requests.

Documentation

News and Events

Getting Involved and Contributing

Interested in helping out with Apache CloudStack? Great! We welcome participation from anybody willing to work The Apache Way and make a contribution. Note that you do not have to be a developer in order to contribute to Apache CloudStack. We need folks to help with documentation, translation, promotion etc. See our contribution page.

If you are a frequent contributors, you can request to be added as collaborators (see https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INFRA/Git+-+.asf.yaml+features#Git.asf.yamlfeatures-AssigningexternalcollaboratorswiththetriageroleonGitHub) to our GitHub repos. This allows you to use project GitHub with ability to report issue with tags, and be assigned to issues and PRs. This is done via the .asf.yaml file in this repo. You may do so by sharing your GitHub users ID or raise a GitHub issue.

If you're interested in learning more or participating in the Apache CloudStack project, the mailing lists are the best way to do that. While the project has several communications channels, the mailing lists are the most active and the official channels for making decisions about the project itself.

Mailing lists:

Report and/or check bugs on GitHub and check our developer page for contributing code.

Reporting Security Vulnerabilities

If you've found an issue that you believe is a security vulnerability in a released version of CloudStack, please report it to security@apache.org with details about the vulnerability, how it might be exploited, and any additional information that might be useful.

For more details, please visit our security page.

License

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Please see the LICENSE file included in the root directory of the source tree for extended license details.

Notice of Cryptographic Software

This distribution includes cryptographic software. The country in which you currently reside may have restrictions on the import, possession, use, and/or re-export to another country, of encryption software. BEFORE using any encryption software, please check your country's laws, regulations and policies concerning the import, possession, or use, and re-export of encryption software, to see if this is permitted. See The Wassenaar Arrangement for more information.

The U.S. Government Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), has classified this software as Export Commodity Control Number (ECCN) 5D002.C.1, which includes information security software using or performing cryptographic functions with asymmetric algorithms. The form and manner of this Apache Software Foundation distribution makes it eligible for export under the License Exception ENC Technology Software Unrestricted (TSU) exception (see the BIS Export Administration Regulations, Section 740.13) for both object code and source code.

The following provides more details on the included cryptographic software:

CloudStack makes use of JaSypt cryptographic libraries.
CloudStack requires a MySQL-compatible database (MariaDB or MySQL), and uses native database encryption functionality.
CloudStack makes use of the Bouncy Castle general-purpose encryption library.
CloudStack can optionally interact with and control OpenSwan-based VPNs.
CloudStack has a dependency on and makes use of JSch - a java SSH2 implementation.

Star History

Contributors

Frequently asked questions

Is cloudstack free to use?

cloudstack is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does cloudstack do?

Apache CloudStack is an opensource Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform

What is cloudstack written in?

cloudstack is primarily written in Java. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/apache/cloudstack, and it has 3,124 GitHub stars.