The document discusses Apache CloudStack, a scalable open-source cloud orchestration platform for infrastructure-as-a-service, highlighting its history, features, and community involvement. Despite its widespread production use and proven stability, many are unaware of it, in part due to its vendor-less nature. The document encourages engagement with the CloudStack community through downloads, contributions, and local user groups.

1. The Cloud Specialists
CloudStack – Apache’s
Best Kept Secret
Giles Sirett
giles.sirett@shapeblue.com
giles@apache.org
@gilessirett

2. The Cloud Specialists
# W h o A m I ?
• PMC member & Committer -
Apache CloudStack
• Chairman – European CloudStack
user group
• CEO ShapeBlue
• Declaration: I’m a business guy
(Software Engineer in recovery)
• Also: Physicist, husband, runner,
Dad, rugby coach

3. The Cloud Specialists
“ShapeBlue are expert builders of public
& private clouds. They are the leading
independent global CloudStack services
company”
A b o u t S h a p e B l u e

4. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
S h a p e B l u e c u s t o m e r s
W h o w e w o r k w i t h

5. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
S h a p e B l u e c u s t o m e r s
W h o w e w o r k w i t h

6. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
S h a p e B l u e c u s t o m e r s
W h o w e w o r k w i t h

7. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
“CloudStack –
Never heard of
it!”
Architect at unnamed
company that now runs a
large Cloudstack
production environment

8. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
Apache CloudStack is a
scalable,
multi-tenant,
open source,
purpose-built,
cloud orchestration platform
for delivering turnkey
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
clouds

9. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k h i s t o r y
• 2008 – Vmops launches (rebrands Cloud.com)
• April 2010 – Cloud.com Releases CloudStack under GPLv3
• July 2011 - Citrix acquires CloudStack
• April 2012 - CloudStack donated to Apache Software Foundation
• November 2012 – First Apache CloudStack Release (4.0)
• March 2013 - CloudStack graduates from ASF Incubator
• 2014 – Majority of committers are not from Citrix
• 2016 – Citrix leave CloudStack

10. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
• 1000’s of clouds in production (We only officially *know* of about
300)
• Production use for 6+ years
• Running major public clouds
• Running many enterprise private clouds
• Adoption increasing
Zynga’s CloudStack powered “Z
Cloud” has over 40,000 physical
hosts

11. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k u s e r s

12. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k u s e r s 2 . 0
12

13. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k u s e r s 3 . 0

14. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
So, why is it such
a secret then ?
Proven software in widespread production use

15. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
W e h a v e a v e r y f o c u s s e d s c o p e
Commodity
compute
StorageNetworking
Hypervisor
CMP - Orchestration layer
orchestration API
eCommerce Platform
Choice of Hypervisor (KVM, VMWare,
Xen, hyper-V)
Apache CloudStack
Ecommerce platform
CloudStack API
Billing
Config
Management
Networking compute Storage
PaaS /
containers
Developer
tooling
Multi-cloud
management

16. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
F e a t u r e H i g h l i g h t s
• Broad Hypervisor support
• XenServer, KVM, VMware,
OracleVM
• Scalable architecture
• Support thousands of hosts and
virtual machine guests
• AWS API fidelity
• Virtual Networking
• Choice of interfaces
• Web UI, command line, REST-
based API

17. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
A r c h i t e c t u r e
Availability and Security
Servers Network Storage
Virtualization Layer
Service Management (Billing, Metering, Accounts, etc.)
Resource Management
Servers Storage Network
Dynamic Workload Management
Backup LB HA Monitoring
User Interface Developer API
Amazon Custom
Image Libraries
Application Catalog
Custom Templates
Operating System ISOs
IntegrationAPI
OperationalIntegration
(OSS/BSS,Monitoring,IdentityManagement,Etc)
Administrator End User Console

18. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
S c a l a b l e c o n s t r u c t s
Cloudstack construct Definition
Region A collection of one or more geographically proximate
zones managed by one or more management servers.
Zone Typically, a zone is equivalent to a single datacentre. A
zone consists of one or more pods and secondary storage.
Pod A pod is usually a rack, or row of racks that includes a
layer-2 switch and one or more clusters.
Cluster A cluster consists of one or more homogenous hosts and
primary storage
Host Sinlge compute node within a cluster; often a hypervisor.
Primary Storage A storage resource typically provided to a single cluster for
the actual running of instance disk images.
Secondary Storage A zone-wide resource which stores disk templates, ISO
images, and snapshots.

19. @ShapeBlue
Deployment Model

20. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
So, why is it such
a secret then ?
So, pretty powerful software.

21. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k u s e - c a s e ’s
• Service Provider / public cloud
• Managed Public cloud
• Underpinning automated
environments
• Test/dev
• CI/CD
• Other platforms
• Public cloud “insourcing”
• Traditional enterprise workloads

22. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k W h y d o t h e y u s e i t ?
• Profit centric operators
• Turnkey installation
• Tightly integrated and simple
to use
• Stable and easy to manage
• Upgradeable
• Direction is easy to
understand
• Governance…..

23. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
G o v e r n a n c e
• Apache CloudStack is a “true”
opensource project
• Easy to take & contribute
• Apache governance model is
proven
• #Vendorless

24. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
So, why is it such
a secret then ?
Yes,yes I get that lots of people use it and its a
well-governed opensource project.

25. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
“The mission of the
Apache Software
Foundation (ASF) is to
provide software for the
public good.”

26. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
O u r c o m m u n i t y i s g r e a t
Our Community is great

27. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
• CloudStack European User Group
• Geneva CloudStack User Group
• CloudStack - Romania
• Australian CloudStack User Group
• CloudStack Brazil User Group
• Vancouver CloudStack Meetup
• Japan CloudStack User Group
• CloudStack India Bangalore Chapter
• CloudStack India Hyderabad Chapter
• CloudStack Pune Meetup
• CloudStack SF Bay Area Users Group
• CloudStack NYC User Group
• CloudStack Boston User Group
• CloudStack DC and NoVA User Group
• Cloudstack user Group Germany

28. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
• Since we became *Apache*
Cloudstack
• 25k + commits
• Peaked at 2.5 Million lines of
code
• 24k package downloads per year

29. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
• Currently
• C.200 active code contributors
• 104 project committers
• 35 PMC members (20
organisations)
• 3 commercial distributions
• C. 2500 mailing list msgs per
month

30. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
So, why is it such
a secret then ?
ARRRRGGGGGHH - A VERY successful open-
source project, with a great community

31. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
W r o n g p l a c e ,
w r o n g t i m e
Lugar
equivocado,
tiempo
equivocado

32. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
T h e a n a l y s t s l o v e a t w o h o r s e r a c e

33. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
!=
No se pueden comparar manzanas con peras

34. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
CloudStack is a defined, integrated, IaaS
product.

35. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
So, why is it such
a secret then ?
OK, so it’s a different thing to OpenStack, but..

36. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
O u r c o m m u n i t y i s d r i v e n b y u s e r s
#Vendorless

37. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
B e i n g v e n d o r l e s s
Vendors= marketing

38. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists

39. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists

40. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists

41. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
C l o u d s t a c k – A p a c h e ’s b e s t k e p t s e c r e t
•Proven product
•Reliable/easy
•Strong Apache governance
model
•Widespread and growing
usage
•User driven community
•Focused scope

42. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
# C l o u d S t a c k Wo r k s

43. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
G e t i n v o l v e d
• Download & try the software
• Other projects: need something to
take care of the messy stuff ?
• Join our community
• Participate in local user group
• Attend Collaboration
Conferences
• Join the mailing lists (free
support)
• Contribute
• File bugs
• Write code
• Write documentation

44. C l i c k t o e d i t
The Cloud Specialists
Giles.Sirett@ShapeBlue.com
Giles@apache.org
@GilesSirett @Shapeblue
www.ShapeBlue.com
www.cloudstack.org