Host Control Plane Status I CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction Diving into the ever-evolving world of Apache CloudStack, it is undeniable that its continuous enhancement has led it to become an influential infrastructure management platform. The recent feature addition, ‘Host Control Plane Status’, further refines this powerful tool by extending the hypervisor host control state in the listing of Virtual Machines / VMs (ie. […]
Visual Resource Metrics I CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction Viewing historical resource consumption data helps cloud users and operators to easily identify bottlenecks or the over-provision of resources, allowing resource owners to estimate and analyse performance. CloudStack already allows for retrieval of metrics data for various resources (eg. Zones, Hosts) and for Instances and their Volumes, but does not display the data in […]
Two-factor Authentication in Apache CloudStack l CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is an authentication method where a user is authorised to login into a system only after successfully presenting two pieces of data, or factors. Something that the user knows plus something which the user possesses. Apache CloudStack 4.18 introduces a 2FA framework designed to bolster security when users access the platform. […]
Adaptive Affinity Groups l CloudStack Feature First Look
In Apache CloudStack, Host Affinity and Host Anti-Affinity refer to the ability to deterministically ensure that a set of Instances run on the same or diverse hypervisor hosts in order to meet specific workload needs. How Affinity Groups Worked Previously Before Apache CloudStack 4.18 there were two types of Affinity Groups: Host Affinity and Host […]
Secure KVM VNC Connections l CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction In a previous blog post (https://www.shapeblue.com/api-driven-console-access/) we described the latest improvements around VNC console access in CloudStack 4.18. These improvements included switching it to an API-driven approach, and introduced a way to secure WebSocket traffic between the CPVM and end-users, whilst the traffic between the CPVM and hosts remained decrypted. This blog post explains […]
API-driven Console Access l CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction: The Apache CloudStack Console Proxy (CPVM) is a type of system virtual machine that presents an Instance’s console view via the web UI (connecting to the VNC port made available through the hypervisor). Both the admin and end-user web UIs offer a console connection. To provide access to the Instances console service, the CPVM […]
CloudStack Managed User Data l CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction When launching a new Instance on Apache CloudStack, users can set a UserData script to be executed by cloud-init during the boot process. The ‘CloudStack Managed UserData’ feature extends this functionality allowing one to automate the installation of packages, update the instance’s OS, and configure applications during instance deployment. Introduced in Apache CloudStack 4.18, […]
What’s New in Apache CloudStack 4.18
Apache CloudStack 4.18 is the latest release of the cloud management platform from the Apache Software Foundation and is a result of months of work from the development community. Apache CloudStack 4.18 is an LTS (Long Term Support) release so will be maintained for a period of 18 months after release. As always, the release […]
System VM and Virtual Router Zero Downtime Upgrade l CloudStack Feature First Look
Introduction Apache CloudStack has always been easier to upgrade than many of its competitors, but a common pain point is that when a new release of Apache CloudStack is deployed, the operations team must organize maintenance windows to allow the redeployment of every customer’s VR. Depending on the number of existing networks, planning and execution […]
IPv6 Support for Isolated and VPC Networks l CloudStack Feature First Look
The IPv6 protocol is a much-needed next step in the world of the Internet and networking in general. With the depletion of publicly routable IPv4 addresses, most providers will need to switch to IPv6, which not only provides a much bigger address space but also offers many other advantages over IPv4, such as improved security, […]
