Networking KVM for CloudStack – a 2018 revisit for CentOS7 & Ubuntu 18.04 | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction We published the original blog post on KVM networking in 2016 – but in the meantime we have moved on a generation in CentOS and Ubuntu operating systems, and some of the original information is therefore out of date. In this revisit of the original blog post we cover new configuration options for CentOS 7.x […]
Secure Live KVM VM Migration with CloudStack 4.11.1 | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction CloudStack 4.11.1 introduces a new security enhancement on top of the new CA framework to secure live KVM VM migrations. This feature allows live migration of guest VMs across KVM hosts using secured TLS enabled libvirtd process. Without this feature, the live migration of guest VMs across KVM hosts would use an unsecured TCP connection, which is prone […]
Software based agent LB for CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction Last year we implemented a new CA Framework on CloudStack 4.11 to make communications between CloudStack management servers it’s hypervisor agents more secure. As part of that work, we introduced the ability for CloudStack agents to connect to multiple management servers, avoiding the usage of an external load balancer. We’ve now extended the CA Framework by […]
What’s new in CloudStack 4.11? | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Version 4.11 of Apache CloudStack has been released with some exciting new features and a long list of improvements and fixes. It includes more than 400 commits, 220 pull requests, and fixes more than 250 issues. This version has been worked on for 8 months and is the first release of the 4.11 LTS releases, […]
CloudStack Usage Service | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction CloudStack usage is a complimentary service which tracks end user consumption of CloudStack resources and summarises this in a separate database for reporting or billing. The usage database can be queried directly, through the CloudStack API, or it can be integrated into external billing or reporting systems. For background information on the usage service […]
CloudStack CA Framework | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction The CloudStack management server listens by default on port 8250 for agents, and this is secured by one-way SSL authentication using the management server’s self-generated server certificates. While this encrypts the connection, it does not authenticate and validate the connecting agent (client). Upcoming features such as support for container/application cluster services require certificate management, and the emerging […]
Host-HA for KVM Hosts in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Intro What is HA? “High availability is a characteristic of a system, which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. ” — Wikipedia HA in CloudStack is currently supported for VMs only. In order to have it enabled, the service offering of the VM should […]
Dynamic Roles in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
Introduction Managing user roles has been a pain for a while, as the model of having a commands.properties file that defines roles and their permissions can be hard to comprehend and use. Due to this, not many CloudStack users made any changes to the default harcoded roles and further enhanced roles. Therefore, ShapeBlue has taken the opportunity to […]
Granular Access Controls in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
An oft-cited limitation in Apache CloudStack is the lack of granular access controls. Historically, when creating an account, there have been four built-in roles to choose from: Root Admin, Resource Admin, Domain Admin, and User. Unfortunately, these built-in roles have been insufficient for the needs of many organizations, who have resorted to various workarounds. Thankfully, this will change in […]
CloudStack 4.7 Metrics View | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive
CloudStack 4.7 (which is due in the coming weeks) will introduce a new metrics view feature throughout the familiar CloudStack interface. We built this functionality to help system architects and admins comprehend resource utilisation and drill into the data to find performance hotspots. Whilst metrics have always been available via the CloudStack API a lot of information hasn’t been […]
