Apache helps Cloudstack get rid of Citrix "shackles"

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has approved cloudstack as a top-level project (TLP) to further help cloudstack out of Citrix, and Citrix acquired the project's code base when it purchased Cloud.com in 2011.

Chip Childers, head of the Cloudstack project, said that "being independent from a single supplier is the only way for Cloudstack to become a full-fledged Apache project." ”

According to the Apache Software Foundation, as a top-level project, Cloudstack has demonstrated that it has a viable and diverse contributor community, as well as an effective management structure.

The volunteer-led project Management Committee will oversee the release of Cloudstack products and community development. ASF will provide legal, trademark, infrastructure, conference planning and media support.

Cloudstack is designed to run infrastructure as a service (IaaS)-that is, processing, networking, and other features are available on demand. The managed vendor uses the software to provide IAAS services to its customers, and the enterprise deploys the software to run the internal private cloud.

Cloudstack can support more than 30,000 nodes, distributed in different locations.

In the emerging IaaS software stack area, although OpenStack has gained widespread attention, Cloudstack is gradually accumulating customer base. Host hosting provider DataPipe, disaster recovery service provider SunGard, domain name registrar godaddy, and managed service provider SoftLayer are all using the software.

Vmops (later renamed Cloud.com) first launched the Cloudstack software in 2009, and published a lot of code as an Open-source resource the following year. Citrix acquired Cloud.com in 2011 and released the rest of the code. In April 2012, Citrix submitted Cloudstack to Apache as a hatching project.

Although donating a project to an open-source organization (such as ASF) sometimes means that the business owner no longer has a strategic interest in the project, Citrix is not the case with Cloudstack. Citrix offers a commercial version of the Cloudstack, and the software is the cornerstone of the company's cloud strategy.

Childer says the main challenge to proving that Cloudstack is a valuable top project is to introduce more external contributors. Apache requires a diverse community of contributors for potential top-level projects. In addition, many open source users are cautious about software projects controlled by individual enterprise entities.

When Citrix submits Cloudstack, most of the code base contributors are the company's own engineers. Since then, the project has been getting more help, mainly from users of the software.

So far, 164 contributors have contributed 16,795 times to the code base, equivalent to 1161748 lines of code. The project now has 30 submitter (people who can change the code base directly), including non-Citrix engineers from service providers and software vendors.

"A lot of contributors are users of the software who want to add new features or improve some areas," Childer said. "Hosting providers in Europe and Asia also contribute a lot of code." ”

Currently, the team is developing a new version of software-version 4.1, which will provide the ability to separate cloud deployments across different regions. The Cloudstack 4.1 version will also provide a new event framework that will help administrators manage operations more easily. The software has inherited Nicera Software Definition Network (SDN) software, which allows cloudstack users to control 3-tier network routing (except for 2-tier network routes). It will also combine Amazon's S3 () Simple storage service and S3-compliant storage service, which will provide users with secondary storage to hold data volumes, snapshots, and all other preparation materials that need to run virtual workloads.

ASF is responsible for more than 100 different open source projects, including widely used Apach Hadoop, OpenOffice Office suite, Cassandra NoSQL data storage and HTTP server.

Get the Apache License v2.0 version license to use Cloudstack.

(Responsible editor: Fumingli)