Apache Deltacloud hits 1.0 – complete with Amazon EC2 integration

The Apache Software Foundation have announced that their cloud REST API project Apache Deltacloud has reached its first generally available release.

The Top Level Project entered the Apache Incubator back in February, automatically becoming the centrepiece of open source foundation’s cloud moves this year. Devised and developed at Red Hat before donation to the ASF, Deltacloud bundles several cloud interacting Web Service APIs under one roof.

In addition to this, the project provides a number of implementations for the most popular clouds, such as Amazon, Eucalyptus, GoGrid, IBM, Microsoft, OpenStack and Rackspace. Multilingual client libraries are thrown into the package as well.

There’s three different API frontends in Deltacloud: the Classic API which formed the basis of the project itself, the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface, and arguably the most important move yet – a frontend used by Amazon EC2.

Familiarity could be the key to Deltacloud’s success and obtaining a frontend used by the dominant AWS effectively gives the project a gold standard. Its flexible approach to cloud services is also incredibly appealing – you can mix and match cloud infrastructures with these APIs, for example merging VMware’s vSphere with the EC2 API. Having no vendor lock-in might just break the cloud walls down.

David Lutterkort, Vice President of Apache Deltacloud, was proud of what had been achieved in a short time for Deltacloud at the ASF, saying:

The release of version 1.0 is a logical step in the evolution of the project. The native Deltacloud API has reached a level of maturity that makes calling this release 1.0 very appropriate.

The EC2 frontend really just started as a ‘let’s see how hard this can be’ prototype – we found that it was actually quite easy to add that additional API to Deltacloud. The Deltacloud codebase is very well suited to translating between cloud API’s, making it possible for clients using one API to talk to clouds offering a completely different one.

Now it’s out in the open, it’ll be interesting to see where Deltacloud heads next with their cloudy REST API. It’s a great day for the Deltacloud team, and should see developers in their droves flock to the project, in hope of abstracting cloud differences. If you’re intrigued, check out the Deltacloud website for more information, (and be sure to check out the driver compatibility page too).