Libcloud is an open-source Python library designed to offer a unified interface for managing multiple cloud services across public and private providers, with over 200,000 monthly downloads. It supports various cloud functionalities including IaaS, DNS, storage, and load balancing, and is evolving to include container management APIs. The document highlights the need for a container API and provides examples of utilizing Libcloud to interact with container services such as Docker, Amazon ECS, and Google Kubernetes.

1. Container as a Service
support for Apache libcloud
Anthony Shaw, Apache LibCloud PMC

2. Overview of the LibCloud project
 Python library, supports 2.5+, 3.0+
 Formed in 2009
 Graduated to Apache TLP in May 2011
 200k+ downloads a month on PyPi
 154 contributors
LibCloud is an open-source library providing a single interface to
communicate with multiple clouds, public or private. Supports IaaS,
LBaaS, DNS and Storage.

3. About me
@anthonypjshaw
@tonybaloney
anthonyshaw@apache.org
Based in Sydney, Australia
Head of Innovation for
Dimension Data

4. Why should you use LibCloud?
My workloads run in private and
public clouds, I’ve got scripts for
both
LibCloud supports all major
public clouds and private
hypervisor APIs. Consolidate
your scripts into 1 tool

5. Supported Clouds (IaaS)

6. Current drivers
libcloud.computeCompute (v0.1.0)
• Support for nodes, node images, locations, states
• 52 providers including every major cloud provider in the market. Plus local services like Vmware, OpenStack, libvirt
libcloud.dnsDNS (v0.6.0)
• Support for zones, records, recordtypes
• 19 providers including CloudFlare, DigitalOcean, DNSimple, GoDaddy, Google DNS, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon R53, Zerigo
libcloud.storageObject Storage (v0.5.0)
• Support for containers and objects
• 11 providers including Amazon S3, Azure Blobs, Google storage, CloudFiles, OpenStack Swift
libcloud.loadbalancerLoad Balancer (v0.5.0)
• Support for nodes, balancers, listeners and algorithms
• 11 providers including CloudStack, Dimension Data, Amazon ELB, Google GCE LB, SoftLayer LB
libcloud.backupBackup (v0.20.0)
• Support for backup targets, recovery points and jobs
• 3 providers, Dimension Data, Amazon EBS snaps, Google snaps

7. Why would we need a container API?
 The API is for Container-as-a-Service providers, these new
types of cloud services offer container management and hosting
as a service.
 The new services are already providing proprietary APIs, giving
the need for a tool like Libcloud if you want to provision to any
cloud provider

8. Isn’t Docker a standard?
Well, yes and no.
Docker has been the main technology adopted by these
providers as the host system for the containers and also
as the specification of the containers themselves.
But, Docker is not a provisioning system, it is a
virtualization host. Also there are alternatives, like
CoreOS Rkt.

9. Container Drivers
List container images, or
load from external
systems
Create clusters for load-
balanced containers
(where supported)
List, destroy, start and
stop persistent containersContainer Driver
Basic functionality
Containers
Container
Images
Cluster
functionality
(optional)
Clusters
Extended
functions

10. Example Code
from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver
from libcloud.container.types import Provider
Cls = get_driver(Provider.DOCKER)
driver = Cls('user', 'api key')
image = driver.install_image('tomcat:8.0')
container = driver.deploy_container('tomcat', image)
container.restart()

11. Docker Registry
 The Docker Registry API is used by services like Amazon ECR, the
Docker Hub website and by anyone hosting their own Docker
registry.
 It doesn’t belong to a particular driver, so is a utility class
 Some providers, like Amazon ECR have a factory method to provide
a registry client
 Images from docker registry can be sent to the deploy_container
method for any driver.
from libcloud.container.utils.docker import HubClient
hub = HubClient()
image = hub.get_image('ubuntu', 'latest')
# Get a Registry API client for an existing repository
client = conn.ex_get_registry_client('my-image')
image = client.get_image('ubuntu', 'latest')

12. Driver : Docker
from libcloud.container.types import Provider
from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver
cls = get_driver(Provider.DOCKER)
conn = cls(host='https://198.61.239.128', port=4243,
key_file='key.pem', cert_file='cert.pem')
conn.list_containers()
Extra functionality:
• Get logs for container
• Delete an image
• List processes running inside a container
• Rename a container
• Search for images on docker.io
Base functionality
• Install an image from docker hub, or a private
repository
• Deploy a container from image
• Start, Stop, Restart, Delete a container

13. Driver : Joyent Triton
from libcloud.container.types import Provider
from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver
cls = get_driver(Provider.JOYENT)
conn = cls(host='us-east-1.docker.joyent.com', port=2376,
key_file='key.pem', cert_file='~/.sdc/docker/admin/ca.pem')
conn.list_containers()
Extra functionality:
• Get logs for container
• Delete an image
• List processes running inside a container
• Rename a container
• Search for images on docker.io
Base functionality
• Install an image from docker hub, or a private
repository
• Deploy a container from image
• Start, Stop, Restart, Delete a container
Joyent provide hosted and managed Docker hosts as a service

14. Driver : Amazon ECS
from libcloud.container.types import Provider
from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver
cls = get_driver(Provider.ECS)
conn = cls(access_id='SDHFISJDIFJSIDFJ',
secret='THIS_IS)+_MY_SECRET_KEY+I6TVkv68o4H',
region='ap-southeast-2')
conn.list_containers()
Extra functionality:
• Create a service (a collection of containers in a
cluster).
• Describe existing services
• Get ECR registry client
Base functionality
• Install an image from docker hub, or a private
repository, or from Amazon ECR (registry)
• Set CPU and memory reservations for
containers
• Deploy a container from image
• Start, Stop, Restart, Delete a container
Elastic Container Service is a container-as-a-service feature of AWS
Cluster functionality
• Create a cluster
• Deploy a container into a cluster
• Destroy an existing cluster

15. Driver : Google Kubernetes
from libcloud.container.types import Provider
from libcloud.container.providers import get_driver
cls = get_driver(Provider.KUBERNETES)
conn = cls(key='my_username',
secret='THIS_IS)+_MY_SECRET_KEY+I6TVkv68o4H',
host='126.32.21.4')
conn.list_containers()
Extra functionality:
• Create namespaces
• Deploy pods into namespaces
• Destroy pods
Base functionality
• Install an image from docker hub, or a private
repository
• Deploy a container from image
• Discover containers within all pods
Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto
nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users
declared intentions. It groups the containers which make up an application into logical units for easy
management and discovery.
Cluster functionality
• Create a cluster (a namespace)
• Deploy a container into a cluster
• Destroy an existing cluster

16. What now?
 Support for Google Cloud’s Container Engine (based on
Kubernetes so most of the way there)
https://cloud.google.com/container-engine/
 Extend Kubernetes support to allow multiple containers to be
provisioned to a single pod
 Create a CoreOS/Rkt driver
 Support other providers as they join the market

17. The Libcloud ecosystem

18. Mix and match
Compute Storage DNS
Application workload
To take full advantage of the LibCloud ecosystem, deploy your application across multiple providers,
choose the best platform(s) for the job.
Compute DNS Storage
Load
Balancer

19. Other ways of consuming LibCloud
Orchestration Tools Management UIs
Development Tooling

20. Salt Stack Cloud
Leverage the flexibility and
breadth of the LibCloud
driver support from Salt
Stack

21. Contributing to LibCloud
Fork +
code
Raise Pull
Request
Merge!Test +
flake
github.com/apache/libcloud