Apache’s own CloudStack 4.0 unveiled in incubating release

The seven months since Citrix pushed their cloud infrastructure orchestrator CloudStack across to the Apache Software Foundation has flown by, yet we were getting a bit restless.

With OpenStack picking up all the attention, we just wondered whether the team behind the Apache effort would be unable to make as big a splash with a properly open source CloudStack. Especially with the tentative release date from September pushed back too.

Thankfully, some code with the Apache name embossed on it has finally arrived, coincidentally in the week of ApacheCon. The Apache CloudStack 4.0.0 ‘incubating release’ has really boosted third-party support. Extensive AWS support comes in the shape of CloudBridge being included in the release (unlike previous releases where it was a separate component).

This allows users to turn on the EC2 API should they wish, which could prove to be a clincher for customers wanting Amazon APIs present in their infrastructure. It’s also a fairly contentious area too, and the team have decided to disable it as default to avoid irking others. You can’t really argue against Amazon holding the key in this open infrastructure battle. Some avoid it entirely and strike it out alone (OpenStack), other embrace Amazon APIs (Eucalyptus). CloudStack appears to be somewhere in between and that could be a big plus point.

There’s plenty of hooks to other technologies included too such as Nicira, CAStor and CLVM. For further information on what’s new, check out the release notes. Details over future releases continue to be discussed on the developer mailing list, with the committers looking for a four month cycle.

Now that CloudStack is emerged with a incubating release, it will be intriguing to see where it goes from here, and more importantly where it fits in. Could Citrix’s decision to leave OpenStack and push their own project to Apache reap the ultimate dividends in the end?