News

Apache CloudStack Releases New Version

The cloud platform is still seen as struggling, however, when compared with OpenStack, its main competition.

• By Keith Ward
• 10/23/2014

The Apache CloudStack project has released version 4.4.1, the latest iteration of its private, public and hybrid cloud software.

CloudStack v4.4.1 has "dozens of new features and improvements," according to an Apache Software Foundation press release. They include:

• Improved storage management
• Virtual Private Cloud tiers can now span guest networks across availability zones
• Support for VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler
• Improved support for Hyper-V zones, virtual private clouds (VPCs) and storage migration

CloudStack, open source software released under the Apache License v2.0, is a direct competitor to OpenStack, which currently has a tremendous amount of industry momentum. Unlike OpenStack, however, CloudStack doesn't have nearly the same number of vendors backing it, or a comparable weight of contributors to the project.

That's led to a general perception in the industry that it's slowly becoming a marginalized product. Its chief sponsor is Citrix Systems Inc., which uses CloudStack as the engine of its commercial CloudPlatform offering. CloudStack was originally created by Cloud.com, which was bought by Citrix in 2011 for about $200 million. The first version of CloudStack under Citrix control was CloudStack 3.0, released in February 2012. Eventually, Citrix turned the governance of CloudStack over to the Apache Foundation, as it focused on CloudPlatform. (Citrix had its own OpenStack distribution at one time, called Olympus, but abandoned it after the Cloud.com purchase.)

CloudPlatform has suffered its own problems of late, as the Citrix cloud team was shaken up when key executives, including Sameer Dholakia, Shannon Williams and Sheng Liang left the company.

Although CloudStack continues to be regularly updated, in terms of business usage, it lags behind, as many see it as a weakly supported platform with a narrow ecosystem, especially when compared with OpenStack. Whether it will survive in the long term without breaking through those barriers is an open question.