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Slashdot Talks with David Nalley About Apache CloudStack (Video)
This Citrix Web page at buildacloud.org says, "David is a PMC (Project Management Commitee) member of the Apache CloudStack project, jClouds committer, Fedora contributor and an Open Source Evangelist for the Open Source Business Office at Citrix." CloudStack has been an Apache Top Level Project since March 2013, with David on board all the way. He's obviously the right person to turn to for an Apache CloudStack update, including some commentary on the differences between Apache CloudStack and OpenStack, two projects often viewed as competitors. (Alternate Video Link)
I was at that conference. IBM/Softlayer is built entirely from a fork of cloudstack they brand inhouse as IMS. They also kept announcing baremetal service with small unit billing was running entirely inhouse as cloudstack. Apparently the cloudstack people don't really know who uses it.
Open source: so you can host it yourself, make changes you need, and see how it works.
Cloudstack: so you can ignore all that and let IBM take care of you like a little baby bird.
How about a bit more modern music for the intro to the video rather than western saloon music?
While CloudStack is under an opensource license, Citrix is gaming the system to appear open while keeping a leach on what functionality goes into the mainstream form of this "open" project.
David Nalley brings up that the benefits of CloudStack being an Apache project is that it provides transparency and makes sure that no one company dominates the project. Both of these claims are misleading.
In reality, there is not the type of transparency you would like to have for something claiming to not allow any one company to dominate the project. The list of Project Management Committee members does not indicate who any of them work for. A quick Google of the names on the list seems to indicate that Citrix has more members on the PMC than any other company. While they may not hold over 50%, it is unclear how many others of the PMC have indirect allegiances with Citrix. Also, given that any one member of the PMC can respond to patches with effectively veto power, it should be clear how even holding a small percentage of the PMC can still have a chilling effect on what makes it into the project. There is a very high learning curve to understanding the CloudStack source code enough to contribute and it doesn't take much to discourage someone from trying to contribute.
While this may seem like unwarranted fear, you should keep in mind that Citrix has already crippled the Open Source community's efforts regarding XenServer. In response to Xen being nothing more than a hypervisor and XenServer becoming the prefer API by with to managed it, a GPL/LGPL project was started called XCP (Xen Cloud Platform). This went as far as to include features which Citrix considered top tier feature which should only available for big bucks paided to Citrix. For example, XCP had a "Site Recovery" feature which XenServer Advanced and XenServer Enterprise does not provide. Instead, Citrix expected customers to pay for XenServer Platinum to get such features.
To deal with the XCP threat to their income model, Citrix released XenServer "Free" Edition and put pressure to put a stop to further development of XCP. Since XenServer Free is under a Citrix EULA which explains that "'XenServer Technology' means proprietary object code of the XenServer product that is not Open Source Code [...]" then Citrix can make sure that XenServer Free always remains crippled in comparison to the open source XCP project they ended and in comparison to their own paid versions. While Citrix employees would prefer to call XCP "deprecated," the truth is that they killed it.
As such, Apache CloudStack's support of XCP remains crippled and buggy--after all, if XCP is deprecated then anyone from the PMC should be able to rubber stamp any effort to improve support as also deprecated/wasted effort. But the fencing of CloudStack functionality does not stop there. Like "XenServer Technology" that they want closed up under a tightly controlled EULA, they have other paid products to extend CloudStack to compete with basic functionality of OpenStack. For example, efficient orchestration will never be part of the Apache CloudStack project because then there would be no reason for anyone to buy Citrix CloudPlatform. OpenStack Horizon module provide a portal for customers to self-service their use of a public cloud and is part of the base of OpenStack. Won't be part of the functionality of CloudStack because then there will be no reason for anyone to buy Citrix CloudPortal.
To put icing on the cake, even if you accept that critical functionality will be artificially kept out of the mainstream CloudStack project and choose to pay for support from Citrix, they continue to treat Linux as a second-class citizen. For help with dealing with the some of the issues with deploying CloudStack (critical errors like "java.lang.NullPointerException"), Citrix demanded to access an on-premises workstation via GoTo Meeting
It's quite easy to get Apache CloudStack up and running. There are a few Docker containers for the ACS management server as well as Ansible Playbooks and Chef Cookbooks to deploy it for you, but the manual installation process can realistically be completed in less than an hour (provided a local mirror for things like System VM templates and the RPM/DEB packages).
I've done deployments of both Cloudstack and OpenStack. OpenStack just has an entirely different approach to the problem. Cloudstack is basically, "Where is my computer, storage and what networks can I use" where as OpenStack is more "Please define all of the pieces of your cloud and I will manage them all for you."
Cloudstack deployments are Simple and take 10 minutes to get simple orchestration going. Cloudstack, unless you're running DevCloud is a considerable increase in effort but it will really manage almost everything for you.
I tried and tried and tried to get openstack working, but never got beyond the management server working. In TWO DAYS (as opposed to weeks) I had a working manager, and was ready to manage compute and storage. Also couldstack documentation (mostly) works. The openstack docs were HORRID. Every 'script' that purported to do it automagically failed, or worked only spuriously. Mirantis was also a disaster (only worked 1 of 3 times that I installed). Openstack should be called OpenCrack since it will drive you use drugs.
Hi Anonymous Coward, I'm a Cloudstack community member known as NuxRo. I am not affiliated with any company, though I'm usually a RedHat/CentOS fanboi. Here are some thoughts on your post.
Although Citrix' involvement in Cloudstack is substantial (maybe say 30-40%), I wouldn't say it is _vital_. Anyone can get involved with the project and try to contribute or push for the things that are interesting to him/her. For example, without writing a single line of code I managed to get resizable root disks in v4.4; the code was written by another Apache commiter, completely unrelated to Citrix btw.
This feature has now finally given me the possibility to build a sort of market place (openvm.eu) for ACS. I am not a coder, but contribution needn't be in code alone as you can see and small improvements can lead to more improvements.
Also, Cloudstack's support for KVM has become pretty great and it's used more and more in the community (I run it exclusively in production); you do not really need Xenserver. Alternatively VMWare ESXi can also be used as HV.
And yes, cloud is very hard, no matter what platform you are on, imho. Running a cloud demands ridiculous amounts of time, skills and patience.
Do not let yourself fooled by getting Fuel installed in under 4 hours, that's the easy part; actually 4 hours is a long time, I could give you a fairly complex Cloudstack install in under an hour given all hardware is already installed and connected.
The problem is maintenance. For example Openstack is to this day non-upgradable, perhaps even Mirantis' distribution; otherwise a great project which promises a lot.
Cloudstack's upgrades are very sensitive issues, too, but are doable, there are horror as well as success stories on the mailing lists. Testing is quintessential.
I know you are disappointed by your experiences with Citrix and Xenserver for whatever reason, but believe me, Cloudstack is much more than that. It is Apache software with a growing community; there are many companies making money off it and are interested in its continued development.
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