Cloudstack, OpenStack and other four cloud platform evaluation

Software PRODUCT development company Altoros BAE's IT Infrastructure architect Vadim Truksha published an article in the US "online world" detailing Cloudstack, Eucalyptus, Vcloud Director and OpenStack four cloud platforms. The article reads as follows:

Cloud computing remains one of the hottest topics in the IT world, given the enormous potential for cloud computing, significant cost savings, scalable infrastructure and high performance and secure data storage.

However, it is difficult to choose the right cloud platform. These cloud platforms have support and objections. So, Truksha says, when a customer asked me and my colleague what was the best cloud platform for his project, we decided to delve into some of the most famous cloud platforms available, compare their capabilities and summarize the results of the study in an array of product tables. We tested four platforms such as Cloudstack, Eucalyptus, Vcloud director and OpenStack.

Below you will find information on the capabilities of the free and commercial cloud platforms, product prices, documentation integrity, and community maturity. In addition, errors found during deployment have been repaired with detailed instructions for repairing flaws.

The goal of this unbiased comparison is to help people make their business needs conform to the capabilities of a particular cloud system and ultimately choose the most appropriate product.

Cloudstack 3.0.0

Cloudstack is a console that manages data center computing resources. Many well-known information-driven companies, such as Zynga, Nokia Research Center and Cloud Central, have deployed the cloud using Cloudstack. In addition to having its own API (application programming Interface), the platform supports Cloudbridge Amazon EC2, which transforms an Amazon API into Cloudstackapi. You can view a detailed list of supported instructions here. URL: Http://docs.cloudstack.org/CloudBridge_Documentation/Supported_Amazon_EC2_Commands_in_CloudBridge

Main Features:

-not dependent on any management programs (KVM, XEN, ESXi, OVM, and BareMetal)

-Tasks (assigning and Managing permissions)

-Virtual network (support virtual LAN)

-Resource pool (allows administrators to limit virtual resources, such as the number of virtual machines created by an account and the number of public IP addresses assigned to an account, and so on)

-Snapshots and volumes

-Virtual routers, firewalls, and load balancers

-Dynamic migration using host maintenance

If your datacenter is based on vsphere, Cloudstack will use a vcenter API. This means that you will be able to manage the data processing center using the vsphere 4.1 dynamic deployment.

Price: Cloudstack will be released free of charge under the GNU Public License V3 (third edition of the GNU Common License). To get paid technical support, you should contact the developer via email.

Community: There is an online community that provides timely technical support free of charge. You can find many solutions to cloudstack problems in the forum. There is also an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel, and everyone is welcome to ask questions.

Description file: If you have a basic technical background, it is easy to install the Cloudstack platform using the default settings. If you need more complex installations, you will encounter some challenges because the documentation does not contain all the complex issues. This manual provides step-by-step instructions, but does not provide any information on how the platform works in general.

Experience: We implemented the installation and setup of this system and experimented with VMware and KVM clusters. These hosts use CentOS 5.5 and CentOS 6.2. In addition, our engineering team connected the private cloud deployed using Cloudstack to the Rightscale management console. This platform is easy to install and performs tasks as expected.

Possible problems and defective patches: When using CentOS 6, there are some errors in running LIBVIRTD. Adding the following code to the/etc/cgconfig.conf file solves this problem:

Group Virt {

CPU {

Cpu.shares = 9216;

}

}

After entering this code, restart the/etc/init.d/cgconfig and start the LIBVIRTD.

Using the console on a website can also create problems. One of the problems is that VNC (virtual network computer) server treats 127.0.0.1 as the default address for this host. To check this issue, execute the following instructions:

NETSTAT-NLP | grep KVM

TCP 0 0 0.0.0.0:5900 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11673/QEMU-KVM

TCP 0 0 0.0.0.0:5901 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11872/QEMU-KVM

TCP 0 0 0.0.0.0:5902 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 15227/QEMU-KVM

TCP 0 0 0.0.0.0:5903 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 12587/QEMU-KVM

Once this address is 127.0.0.1, you should cancel the line annotation Vnc_listen = "0.0.0.0" in the/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf configuration file and restart the virtual machine.

Conclusion: The use of Cloudstack Management console work to our engineering team impressed. This is a rapidly evolving tool that provides a wide range of functions and is provided free of charge. It can be used for production. However, if you use VMware to manage the program, Vcloud director seems to be a better choice.

(Responsible editor: admin)