The CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2025 took place in Milan, Italy from November 19 to 21, bringing together CloudStack users, developers, and operators from across the global community. This annual in person event once again provided a valuable space for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and shaping the future of Apache CloudStack.

Thursday Sessions

Keynote: From Vision to Impact: Making a Difference with CloudStack – John White, US Signal

In this session, John reflected on the first year of building and scaling OpenCloud with CloudStack, the game-changing factors that made the difference, and the lessons learned along the way. Looking ahead, he also shared insights into the evolving open-source landscape, why CloudStack is well-positioned to lead in an evolving landscape, and how the broader community can continue to drive the next chapter of Open Cloud.

Keynote: Working with CloudStack for over 10 years – Wido den Hollander, Your.Online

In this keynote, Wido reflects on his CloudStack journey, shares key milestones, and highlights how CloudStack has remained a stable pillar of his company’s infrastructure for more than 10 years.

Keynote: State of the Union – Nicolas Vazquez, CloudStack VP

In this State of the Union talk, CloudStack VP, Nicolas Vazquez, takes the audience through the past year of collaboration, project developments, and community progress. He also shares his vision for where CloudStack is headed in the years ahead.

Building a sovereign, multi-zone Cloud with CloudStack – Brian Turnbow & Marco Ziglioli, CDLAN

CDLAN adopted CloudStack to build a truly sovereign cloud, distributed across its data centers in Milan and Rome, with a multi-zone architecture and multi-hypervisor support (KVM and VMware). Thanks to their pay-per-use model, their customers and partners can access scalable resources with no upfront costs, while benefiting from hybrid integration and simplified management. In this talk, Brian and Marco share how this resilient infrastructure has enabled CDLAN and its partners to accelerate the adoption of cloud services in the Italian Market.

Infrastructure Strategies and Innovation in the AI Era – Daven Winans, US Signal

This session, held by Daven Winans from US Signal, explores how infrastructure is evolving to support the growing demand for AI, large language models, and inference workloads. Daven walks through real-world performance metrics comparing CPU-only vs GPU-accelerated workloads and x86 vs Arm64 platforms. He also covers the role of open-source hypervisors, GPU virtualization, time slicing, and containerized workloads on high-core hosts — and how these approaches help improve efficiency and reduce stranded resources.

Exploring VMware to CloudStack Migration – Joffrey Luangsaysana & Grégoire Lamodière, DIMSI

This session offers a comprehensive business overview of migrating from VMware to CloudStack, examining impacts on services, cost management, and IT strategy to help organizations maximize their cloud investments.

Extensions Framework (XaaS) – Enabling Orchestrate Anything – Harikrishna Patnala & Marco Sinhoreli, ShapeBlue

In this session, Harkrishna Patnala and Marco Sinhoreli dive into the CloudStack XaaS Extensions Framework! The Extensions Framework in Apache CloudStack enables seamless integration of external services (XaaS) into the CloudStack ecosystem. It allows operators to register and manage custom extensions, supporting a wide range of types such as orchestrators, network elements, and authenticators.

Bringing CloudStack to Life with LLMs – Vivek Kumar, Yotta

Experience the power of AI-driven ChatOps tailored for Apache CloudStack. This modular Python-based chatbot, powered by OpenAI, enables users to ask natural language questions that translate into real-time MySQL queries, fetch logs from Elasticsearch, and deliver actionable insights, all through an intuitive web-based interface. With built-in memory, dynamic configuration, and intelligent log analysis, it redefines how Ops teams troubleshoot, monitor, and interact with cloud infrastructure. Watch this session to see how conversational AI can streamline your operations and accelerate problem resolution.

Back to the Origins of the Internet: Sovereignty as Strategic Survival – Alexander Lapp, proIO

In this session, Alex explores how the internet’s decentralized roots gave way to dependence on a handful of dominant platforms. He unpacks the risks of vendor lock-in, geopolitical pressure, and AI-driven cultural influence and shows how open-source tools like CloudStack enable organisations to regain true control over their data and infrastructure.

Customizing CloudStack Network Topology with VNF Appliances – Wei Zhou, ShapeBlue

The VNF appliance, introduced in Apache CloudStack 4.19, has been used by several CloudStack users as an alternative to the CloudStack Virtual Router. This talk provides an overview of VNF appliances and showcases some real-world use cases. It also introduces ongoing work on the VNF provider framework, which offers much better integration with VNF appliances. Topics includes technical details, the built-in VNF provider, and guidance on how to develop custom VNF providers.

Cost Effective, Secure Repatriation with Ampere & CloudStack – Pete Logan, Ampere

It’s established now that moving workloads off hyperscalers will reduce TCO, but you can offer more when dropping that onto Ampere CPU based systems through better efficiency and high utilisation. In this session, Pete Logan from Ampere describes how, using the joint architecture with CloudStack & ShapeBlue. Bonus; you can port your Graviton and other Arm workloads directly too!

LINSTOR/DRBD updates for CloudStackers – Philipp Reisner, LINBIT

In this session, Philipp provides a concise introduction and overview of LINSTOR and DRBD, explaining how they offer highly available block storage to VMs in CloudStack clusters. From there, Philipp presents the recently introduced features and improvements of LINSTOR and DRBD, including a discussion of the rationale behind the changes and the next items on the project’s roadmap. On the LINSTOR side, this includes: satellite restart time with thousands of resources, general scalability improvements in the range of 1,000 to 10,000 virtual volumes, and storing the master passphrase using systemd credentials (TPM chip), as well as multipathing of DRBD replication links. On the DRBD side: resync without replication, higher bitmap granularity, performance optimizations, zero-copy receive, and more. On the LINSTOR driver in CloudStack: thoughts on online migrating storage volume between primary storage.

Migrating 1000’s of VMs from VMware to CloudStack – Lucian Burlacu, ShapeBlue

Migrating thousands of VMs from VMware to CloudStack enables companies and individuals to cut costs, escape vendor lock-in, and gain operational agility. With the right automation and phased approach, large-scale migrations can be achieved with minimal disruption. This session explores some of the technical steps involved.

KVM Storage Performance: A Comparative Analysis of I/O Modes – Venko Moyankov, StorPool

Building a high-performance, cost-effective cloud requires a deep understanding of the underlying storage infrastructure. The KVM virtualization stack offers a complex landscape of I/O technologies, from traditional iothread and aio modes to the newer, low-overhead io_uring. While these options promise different levels of performance and resource utilization, selecting the optimal configuration for a given workload can be a significant challenge for cloud builders and designers. This presentation dives into a comprehensive benchmarking study designed to demystify these choices. Using industry-standard tools like FIO, pgbench, and rsync, Venko compares a range of KVM storage configurations across key metrics: latency, maximum IOPS, throughput, and CPU overhead. He provides a data-driven comparison of different I/O modes—including io_uring and its predecessors—and explores how specific configurations impact performance for diverse workloads. Watch back the session to gain the practical knowledge needed to make informed design decisions for your cloud infrastructure. It equips you with the insights to understand the trade-offs, identify performance bottlenecks, and build a KVM stack that delivers the best results for your specific needs.

Where’s my Instance? How CloudStack Finds a Suitable Deployment Destination – Jithin Raju, ShapeBlue

Apache CloudStack’s VM placement logic is powerful but often misunderstood. This session, held by Jithin Raju from ShapeBlue, explains how CloudStack selects the most suitable deployment destination across zones, pods, clusters, hosts, and storage. Jithin breaks down the roles of deployment planners, allocation algorithms, and capacity checks, and shows how these components work together to determine where a VM should run. Watch the session back to gain a clear understanding of CloudStack’s decision-making flow and to learn how to design and tune environments for predictable, efficient VM deployments.

Friday Sessions

2,800 VMs in 5 Servers: Hyperconverged Cloud with CloudStack and StorPool – Boyan Krosnov, StorPool

Traditional cloud infrastructures are complex, requiring a diverse array of components including multiple controller servers, dedicated compute hosts, dedicated storage arrays, and a complex array of network hardware. This presentation introduces a new perspective to cloud architecture. Boyan shows how to build a fully functional, professional-grade cloud with everything you need using a highly simplified design: a minimal footprint of just 3 or 5 servers and two Ethernet switches. This optimized architecture consolidates all essential functions — a highly-available CloudStack control plane, distributed software-defined primary storage, and resilient secondary storage — onto a single, streamlined set of servers. He explores how specific features of StorPool Storage enable this consolidation, eliminating the need for numerous specialized components and simplifying both deployment and ongoing operations. Watch the session back to get a clear understanding of how to build a cloud that is not only powerful and reliable but also dramatically easier to manage than traditional designs.

Building India’s Sovereign Hyperscale Cloud with the CloudStack Ecosystem – K B Shiv Kumar, Yotta

An abstract was not provided for this session. 

Panel: CloudStack Exploration at Cyso – Lessons Learned and Pitfalls Encountered – Paul Bankert, Cyso Cloud

This panel discussion centres on Paul Bankert, Founder at Cyso Group, as he shares real-world experiences evaluating and operating open-source cloud platforms. The discussion explores the challenges of OpenStack adoption at scale, including operational complexity, community dynamics, and long-term maintainability, and contrasts these with CloudStack’s simpler architecture and operational model. Paul shares hands-on insights into proof-of-concept deployments, networking automation, multi-tenant and multi-site architectures, and the role of community-driven feature development. The discussion offers a candid look at how cloud builders assess platform choices, manage migrations, and balance innovation, stability, and scalability when selecting infrastructure technologies for the long term.

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Why now is the time to question how we build and operate the cloud

The “cloud conversation” has never been just about cost reduction.
It has always been about control, transparency, and independence — three principles that have long guided IT decisions.

Those principles are still achievable today, but reaching them is becoming increasingly difficult. Not because technology has failed us, but because the fundamental internet structure has changed.

What began as a decentralized and diverse ecosystem has, over the past decade, evolved into a market dominated by a few global players. A small number of providers now decide how cloud infrastructure is designed and operated with remarkable efficiency, but also with a growing sense of dependency as a side effect.

It is no longer a balance; it is an oligopoly — stable, convenient, and therefore deceptive.

That does not mean the major platforms are inherently bad.
They have turned cloud computing into one of the greatest innovation drivers of our time. But it does mean that we need to reassess their role.

The real question is no longer whether organizations use the cloud, but under what conditions.
-Which degrees of freedom are we willing to keep?
-Which risks are we ready to accept?
-And how much transparency are we prepared to demand?

In the end, one simple truth remains: whoever controls the infrastructure also controls the risk. And that is something organizations, regardless of their size, need to bring back into focus.

1. The situation: Growth meets uncertainty

Many companies already rely on cloud models, yet increasingly recognize that costs are often difficult to predict because consumption models have become more complex.
Performance and support are standardized but rarely personal or available around the clock. Technical dependencies quietly emerge through proprietary interfaces and closed ecosystems. Organizations handling sensitive or regulated data, whether in healthcare, manufacturing, or the public sector, realize that cloud is no longer an IT topic. It has become a core part of business strategy.

2. An industry in transition: The Cloud grows up

As the market matures, so do the questions we ask about the cloud.
It is no longer about what we move there, but about how stable, traceable, and controllable those systems truly are.

Centralized control, automated deployment, and global scalability were once signs of progress — and they still are. But as everything becomes more interconnected and abstract, the underlying mechanisms become harder to see.

The cloud works; that is not up for debate.
The real question is under what conditions it will remain sustainable in the long term.

This is exactly where many IT and business leaders find themselves today.
They are searching for balance between scalability and control, between global flexibility and local accountability.

Those who rely entirely on international hyperscalers inevitably operate within an infrastructure and legal framework that is not their own. Extraterritorial access rights, such as those enabled by the US CLOUD Act, symbolize a deeper issue that is not legal but structural: data and responsibility are drifting apart.

The result is a quiet but noticeable shift.

More and more organizations are reevaluating their dependencies, not out of distrust, but out of a desire for predictability, technical transparency, and long-term freedom of choice.

And that brings us back to a concept that has been somewhat forgotten in recent years: 

“The fundamental idea behind the Internet and the WWW is to create a decentralized, redundant, and open system for information sharing that is resilient to failure and promotes transparency and access.”

And Open Source is a part of its technical foundation.

3. Our approach: Open Source as the prerequisite for understanding

Anyone who takes long-term responsibility for infrastructure knows that control does not come from ownership, but from understanding. And understanding only emerges when systems are open enough to inspect, adapt, and repair. That is where much of the cloud industry has drifted toward convenience. Many infrastructures run flawlessly, yet very few people can explain how. Automation, managed services, and layered abstractions have created a kind of black-box operation — efficient, but detached.

At proIO, we wanted to do it differently. From the beginning, we knew that we could only speak credibly about stability, performance, or security if we truly understood the technology and not just consumed it.

That is why we chose a fully open architecture built on Apache CloudStack as our orchestration layer and LINBIT LINSTOR as our storage backbone.

This decision was not ideological; it was strategic. Open Source is not a philosophy, it is a quality attribute. When systems are open, clarity becomes a requirement rather than a luxury. Issues surface earlier, integration becomes cleaner, automation becomes more reliable.

CloudStack meets those criteria. It is not the loudest name in the cloud universe, but it is one of the most consistent. It provides a clear and modular architecture that reduces IaaS to its essentials, an API-first design that enables automation without sacrificing autonomy, and an active community that solves real production challenges rather than inventing new buzzwords. Together, these elements make it possible to do something rare in today’s market: run a cloud we genuinely understand, down to the last layer.

4. What Apache CloudStack enables in practice

Today, our customers use CloudStack as the central interface for all IaaS operations.
Through the API or web interface, they can deploy virtual machines, networks, or firewalls in seconds. Multi-tenancy ensures clear resource allocation and cost transparency, which is especially valuable for internal IT teams and multi-project environments. Integration with open-source storage solutions such as LINBIT LINSTOR delivers high availability and strong performance within the EU. Automation and monitoring with tools such as Ansible, Prometheus, and Grafana make the platform fully DevOps-ready.

The result is a cloud environment that combines flexibility and efficiency with full technical traceability — a system that works with its users, not above them.

5. A look ahead: What this means for Business

The combination of Apache CloudStack and private cloud infrastructures operated in our datacenters represents what we call the third way: as agile as public cloud, as secure as on-premise, and as transparent as open systems should be.

Organizations that invest early in such models are not just building IT capacity; they are building strategic resilience. In the years ahead, those who understand their infrastructure will be the ones who can adapt fastest — technically, economically, and culturally.

Further Reading

Case Study: LINBIT and proIO – Open Source Storage for a Sovereign Private Cloud
https://linbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/proIO_Case_Study_2025.pdf

The post More than just Cloud: Sovereignty as a foundation for businesses appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Cyso Cloud, diamond sponsor of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference, shares real-world insights from our CloudStack journey.

Breaking free from Big Tech dependency

Building on Cyso’s nearly 30  years of independent infrastructure expertise, Cyso Cloud emerged with a clear mission: providing European organisations with a genuine alternative to Big Tech cloud providers. As an independent European infrastructure provider and Kubernetes Certified Service Provider, we’ve built our foundation on principles that matter to European businesses today.

Every workload we host remains within European borders, fully compliant with GDPR requirements, free from the extraterritorial reach that plagues hyperscaler platforms. This commitment to digital sovereignty has shaped every technical decision we make.

Open-source technology is our backbone. We’ve championed OpenStack for years, contributing to the community and building production infrastructure that demonstrates the power of open platforms. Now, as we explore CloudStack as the foundation for our next-generation infrastructure, we’re bringing that same commitment to openness and collaboration.

Two sessions you won’t want to miss

Morning session: the technical deep dive

Revolutionising CloudStack networking with Netris integration
Friday 21 November | Nettuno Hall | 09:30–10:30
Presented by Platform Engineers Thomas Jansema and Noa Omer

How do you automate complex networking configurations in CloudStack at scale? Our platform engineers will demonstrate how Cyso Cloud is tackling one of cloud infrastructure’s biggest challenges: creating a truly automated, scalable networking layer that spans multiple regions.

In this technical session, you’ll discover how the “golden trio” of BGP, EVPN, and VXLAN technologies work together to overcome traditional VLAN limitations and automate stretching private address spaces across sites. You’ll see a live demonstration of CloudStack networking with Netris integration. The session covers the architecture behind automated network configuration across hypervisors, switches, and overlay networks, drawing on experience with Netris in production environments.

Our platform engineers will also share their vision for multi-region VPC connectivity, sketching a view for a direction the community could move to. For anyone running CloudStack in production or evaluating networking options, this session offers practical knowledge you can apply immediately.

Mid-morning session: learning from reality

CloudStack exploration at Cyso: lessons learned and pitfalls encountered
Friday 21 November | Venere Hall | 10:50–11:20
Presented by CEO Paul Bankert

Why does a successful OpenStack provider explore CloudStack? Our CEO Paul Bankert will share the strategic thinking, unexpected challenges, and valuable lessons from Cyso Cloud’s evaluation journey.

This candid session covers the specific limitations that pushed us to evaluate alternatives to our OpenStack infrastructure, the pitfalls we encountered during CloudStack exploration and how to avoid them, plus critical decision points when considering platform migrations.

If you’re weighing infrastructure options, Paul’s honest assessment of what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised us will save you countless hours of trial and error.

Meet us at our sponsored booth

Beyond our presentations, the Cyso Cloud team will be at our sponsored booth throughout the conference. You’ll find the Cyso Cloud team conveniently located in the foyer between the main tracks. Stop by to discuss your networking challenges in CloudStack environments, European cloud infrastructure and data sovereignty requirements, how we’re building the next generation of our cloud services, or any questions about our presentations or technical approach.

The bigger picture

The CloudStack community thrives on real-world experiences and open collaboration. By sharing both our technical innovations with Netris and the honest realities of our platform evaluation, we hope to contribute to the collective knowledge that makes CloudStack stronger for everyone.

See you at the sessions on Friday 21 November!

During the three-day CloudStack Collaboration Conference, both Cyso Cloud sessions take place on Friday 21 November. These sessions offer insights you won’t find in documentation.

Mark your calendar for Friday:

• 09:30–10:30: Technical networking session in Nettuno Hall
• 10:50–11:20: Strategy and lessons learnt in Venere Hall

We look forward to seeing you there and continuing the conversation at our booth. Together, we’re building the future of European cloud infrastructure.

Learn more about Cyso Cloud’s infrastructure and services at cyso.cloud or get in touch with our team to discuss your cloud requirements.

The post Discover how diamond sponsor Cyso Cloud is revolutionising CloudStack networking appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

At ShapeBlue, contributing back is not an afterthought, it’s integral part of how we operate. Our goal is to ensure Apache CloudStack continues to evolve as a modern reliable, and secure cloud management platform that meets the demands of real-world production environments.

Supporting the Project

As the leading independent integrator of CloudStack technologies globally, ShapeBlue maintains an ongoing engineering commitment to the Apache CloudStack project. Our contributions span feature design, development, testing, documentation, and community support.

Feature Development

We don’t develop features only for our customers, but also for the broader community, aligning our work with real-world needs and emerging technologies in the cloud ecosystem. We continuously design and implement new capabilities, working side-by-side with the community. These developments are driven by real-world customer needs and operational experience, helping to ensure that the platform evolves to meet modern requirements. Our focus is on delivering meaningful, production-grade enhancements that are robust, maintainable, and beneficial to the entire CloudStack user base.

Roadmap Collaboration

Our engineers are actively involved in shaping the technical direction of Apache CloudStack. This includes participation in technical design reviews, feature proposal, and long-term architectural planning within the community. We collaborate closely with maintainers, contributors, and service providers to ensure that the project roadmap reflects real-world deployment challenges and aligns the evolving demands of modern cloud environments.

Community Engagement

ShapeBlue believes that a strong community is the foundation of any successful open-source project. That’s why our team actively contributes across community channels such as mailing lists, Slack, and GitHub discussions. This ongoing engagement fosters a culture of collaboration and openness within the CloudStack ecosystem, helping users of all experience levels succeed.

Event Organisation & Contribution

Events pay a crucial role strengthening connections and sharing knowledge across the community. ShapeBlue plays a key role in organising CloudStack events, including the flagship CloudStack Collaboration Conference. Our team contributes to all aspects, from logistics and sponsorship to speaker coordination and promotion. We also deliver technical sessions at each event, keeping the community informed about the latest feature developments and advancements in Apache CloudStack.

→ Explore our team sessions at this year’s #CloudStackCollab

Lowering the Barrier to Entry

One of the biggest hurdles for open-source infrastructure projects is their steep learning curve. To help new users and organisations evaluate CloudStack more easily, we’ve developed a set of hands-on resources:

CloudStack Public Demo Cloud

The ShapeBlue-powered CloudStack Demo offers a hands-on opportunity to explore the capabilities of Apache CloudStack, with no installation or configuration required.

Getting started is simple:

• Register your Account on the CloudStack Demo portal.
• Confirm your Subscription to verify access and unlock the demo cloud.
• Access the 14-day CloudStack Demo and start exploring Apache CloudStack right away.

Once inside, you’ll have access to a fully functional Apache CloudStack environment for two weeks.

Test Drive CloudStack!

CloudStack PoC Guide

Evaluating CloudStack for your organisation? Our PoC guide provides the essential steps and best practices for running a successful Proof of Concept with Apache CloudStack. By following this guide, you’ll understand what to expect from the platform and how to confidently transition from evaluation to production.

Download the PoC Guide

Meet us at #CloudStackCollab!

Want to learn more about our contributions, get support, or connect with our team? Visit our website or come and visit our booth at this year’s CloudStack Collaboration Conference!

The post Giving Back to Apache CloudStack and How ShapeBlue Stays Technically Engaged appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

When CDLAN decided to evolve its cloud platform, our goal was clear: build an environment that combines flexibility, deep visibility, and control. We needed to ensure every workload could run within a trusted, transparent framework. For us, operating Tier IV–grade data centers in Milan and Rome, this meant one thing above all: sovereignty. We required a platform that could fully leverage our infrastructure while maintaining complete jurisdiction over data and operations. Apache CloudStack provided the ideal foundation to make this vision real.

Why and how we chose CloudStack

As stated, our primary need was the creation of a truly sovereign cloud that guarantees our customers full transparency into the true location of their data, but also designed and built to grant resilience in the same site and across different geographical areas. 

Several key features drove our decision:

• Sovereignty and Compliance: CloudStack’s multi-zone architecture was a primary driver. It allows us to distribute, replicate, and recover workloads between our Milan and Rome facilities. This design is essential for ensuring business continuity and compliance with European and national regulations like GDPR and, even more so today, the NIS2 framework is, step by step, coming into place. It also provides a clear geographic mapping of data, which is a critical requirement for organizations that demand to know exactly where their assets reside.
• Flexibility and Integration: A key technical factor was CloudStack’s multi-hypervisor support. By integrating both KVM and VMware, we could align the platform with our customers’ diverse environments and needs. This allows us to maintain a unified operational model while supporting everything from legacy workloads to modern cloud-native deployments.
• A Scalable, Open Model: We wanted to democratize access to cloud resources. CloudStack enabled us to build our environment on a pay-per-use model, giving partners and customers the freedom to scale dynamically without large upfront investments. This keeps costs aligned with actual consumption and, combined with CloudStack’s simplicity, streamlines management. Our teams can now focus on performance and innovation rather than licensing complexity. Our customers have the confidence and freedom to use the platform, always knowing the costs and never encountering unexpected expenses.

This combination of sovereignty, flexibility, and a transparent cost model has been validated by the market. The ultimate recognition of this strategy comes from our customers and partners. Today, our CloudStack platform actively runs approximately 1,000 virtual machines, distributed across the two zones hosted in our Milan and Rome data centers. This adoption is a clear testament to the trust our customers have placed in this powerful, sovereign cloud solution.

Our Migration Story: Enabling Customer Journeys to the Cloud

Our journey wasn’t a simple “lift-and-shift” migration but rather an evolution of our platform to create a unified, hybrid-ready environment. The “migration story” is about how we enable our customers to bridge their existing systems with the cloud.

CloudStack’s strength in multi-hypervisor support (KVM and VMware) was the solution. This allows us to seamlessly onboard customers regardless of their current virtualization platform. Furthermore, CloudStack enabled true hybrid integration. We can now bridge on-premise systems and cloud resources through secure networking and orchestration. The result is a cloud that adapts to the real-world needs of our customers, rather than forcing them to adapt to us.

The flexibility of the platform, combined with the competence and availability of the CDLAN team, has been critical. We don’t just provide infrastructure; we support our customers through every phase of their migration, from planning and architecture to deployment and optimization.

Here are three examples of how this partnership works in practice:

Case 1: The Cloud PBX Provider – Scaling with Cost-Effectiveness A leading Italian Cloud PBX provider needed a platform that was flexible, highly reliable, and, above all, cost-effective to host their core service. Their business model depends on deploying a high volume of virtual machines, each with a specific, small footprint. They found hyperscaler solutions to be financially unpredictable and rigid for this model. The Migration Journey began with a few instances for testing and POC. In a very short time the partner understood the potential of the platform and asked us to support them during a massive migration of all their virtual machines hosted on several cloud services across Italian providers to Cloudstack. Our team worked closely with them to plan the migration and today they run approximately 400 virtual machines on our cloud. The elasticity and pay-per-use model of our CloudStack deployment meant they could rapidly spin up new PBX instances for their clients, but also suspend or stop them based on need without facing upfront or residual costs. The CDLAN team ensured the underlying infrastructure provided the rock-solid reliability their telephony service demands. They achieved the scale and cost-effectiveness they needed to grow their business.

Case 2: The Data-Intensive Client – Delivering Performance Without Unpredictable Costs A second customer had the opposite challenge: they needed to run complex, in-memory data-processing workloads that required an enormous amount of RAM. At the time of their migration, their only viable options appeared to be hyperscalers, but this came with unpredictable billing and high costs that made budgeting impossible. The Migration Journey: They found our platform could deliver the “monster VMs” they needed. The flexibility of our CloudStack environment allowed us to provision virtual machines with 256GB and even 512GB of dedicated RAM. Our team’s competence was crucial, supporting them during the migration, helping them move the VMs from their on-premises datacenter to our cloud solution but also, converting the VM format from VMWare ESXi to KVM qcow2

Case 3: The Pharmaceutical Company – Guaranteeing Compliance and Data Integrity For a company in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, the primary migration driver was not cost or performance, but compliance. They were bound by strict internal regulations on data integrity and faced increasing pressure from national and European regulations like GDPR and the new NIS2 directive that their on-premises datacenter and managing model could not sustain. They were struggling between the need to face important investments to build a new datacenter and the parallel need to change their operative model to achieve  compliance with the new regulatory demands. The Migration Journey was a meticulous, security-first process. The customer found that our sovereign cloud, with all data hosted in our Italian data centers, was the only solution that could meet their stringent requirements. The CDLAN team worked side by side with the customer, helping them with the virtual machine conversion from Microsoft Hyper-V to KVM, providing the necessary documentation, audit support, and architectural guidance to ensure their platform was fully compliant. We demonstrated how the platform’s multi-zone architecture and security controls protected their data integrity, allowing them to innovate while adhering to every single regulation.

Our Engagement: A Manifest for a Better Cloud

Our engagement with Apache CloudStack began as an infrastructure project , but it has quickly evolved into a strategic enabler for new cloud services. Today, our CloudStack-powered environment is one of the basis, probably the strongest for our entire IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) solution, under a sovereign framework.

In our experience, CloudStack has proven that openness and reliability can coexist. This platform is our manifest that demonstrates a cloud solution can be simple, flexible, stable, predictable and convenient , designed to let our customers “Shape their Business in Cloud” with a truly frictionless experience.

This is what our sovereign IaaS solution, powered by CloudStack, offers you:

• Freedom from Complexity: We provide performance similar to a physical infrastructure, but we remove all the cost and complexity of managing the hardware and all the complex underlying orchestration. The management, monitoring, and updating of the core infrastructure is our responsibility. This frees internal IT teams to focus on strategic growth and business priorities, not just keeping the lights on.
• Total Financial Control: Our model is built on a true pay-per-use payment system. You pay only for the resources you are actually using , leading to optimized IT costs and simplified invoicing. There are no hidden fees or complex licensing—even public IPs and internet traffic are included. This is the scalability you need, allowing you to increase or reduce services dynamically according to your needs.
• Complete Operational Autonomy: Through a simple, easy-to-use console, teams get full, autonomous control over virtual resources. they can create, start, and shut down VMs , load their own ISOs , create customized templates from existing VMs to simplify deployment , schedule volume snapshots for a first very simple mechanism of backups, copy them across zones in order to be able to restart the business on a different location in case of disaster, define private networks with virtual firewalls and, in general, gain flexibility to do everything required as with an on-premises solution.
• A Platform Built to follow Needs: Whether you run on Linux KVM or VMware, our multi-hypervisor platform supports any workload. You get constantly updated, cutting-edge technology backed by a dedicated team of experts to support your IT staff.
• Unmatched Performance and Low Latency: Our strategic data center locations, particularly our presence in Milan with direct proximity to the main Italian Internet Exchange (MIX), ensure minimal latency for services access. This provides the fastest, most responsive access for applications and end-users.
• A Fully Integrated Service Ecosystem: We understand that virtual machines are just the beginning. IaaS tenant is the core of cloud-based infrastructure, and we surround it with the high-value services. Our platform is fully integrated with:

• Advanced Data Protection: Go beyond basic snapshots with managed Backup as a Service (BaaS) powered by Veeam technology.
• Flexible Storage Options: Seamlessly attach dedicated block storage via Storage as a Service (iSCSI) or scale limitlessly with S3-compatible object storage.
• Advanced Security: Protect entire tenants with a dedicated, enterprise-grade firewall service.
• True Hybrid Connectivity: Directly connect IaaS environment with physical devices hosted in our data center with dedicated L2 link interconnections.

Your Partner for a Sovereign Cloud

Our journey with Apache CloudStack is not just a technical success story; it is a strategic choice for a different kind of cloud. It proves that it is possible to build a top-tier IaaS platform that is open, flexible, and powerful, all while guaranteeing the data sovereignty that modern European enterprises demand.

But a platform itself is only half the solution. The true power of our cloud comes from the combination of CloudStack’s robust architecture CDLAN’s interconnected low-latency data centers and our rich ecosystem of integrated services.This entire environment is managed by the expert technical teams that design, support, and optimize it.

Technology alone doesn’t solve business challenges. It’s the competence and availability of our engineers that makes the difference. Our team partners with customers through every phase—from complex migration planning and architectural design to performance optimization—ensuring their journey to the cloud is simple, seamless and successful. We have built the cloud we believe our customers deserve: one that is transparent, cost-effective, and adapts to their needs, not the other way around.

We are proud to be part of the vibrant Apache CloudStack community. We invite you to learn more about our sovereign IaaS solution and discover how you can accelerate your own journey to the cloud, backed by a partner and an expert team you can trust.

The post Building a Sovereign, Multi-Zone Cloud with Apache CloudStack appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

As a Gold Sponsor of this year’s CloudStack Collaboration Conference, Stack Console is proud to support and celebrate the Apache CloudStack community — a community that continues to make open-source cloud orchestration accessible, stable, and enterprise-ready.

Why Stack Console Chose Apache CloudStack

At Stack Console, our mission is to help data centers, hosting companies, and cloud service providers transform their infrastructure into a fully managed, monetizable, and user-friendly cloud business.

When we set out to integrate with open-source orchestrators, Apache CloudStack stood out for its:

• Robust architecture and production-grade stability
• Simple yet powerful API-driven design
• Multi-hypervisor flexibility
• Vibrant and collaborative community

These qualities align perfectly with Stack Console’s vision — to make cloud operations seamless for both providers and their end users.

Building a Unified Cloud Management Experience

Stack Console adds a complete business management and automation layer on top of Apache CloudStack.
Our platform enables:

• Self-service provisioning and lifecycle management for virtual machines and projects
• Automated billing and metering for compute, storage, and egress usage
• Reseller and partner management, supporting multi-tiered ecosystems with flexible pricing and margin controls
• White-label capabilities so each provider can deliver their own branded cloud experience
• Subscription, prepaid, and postpaid billing models with multi-currency and tax compliance
• AI-assisted operations through StackAI, allowing users to manage and monitor resources with intelligent automation and natural language interaction

With Stack Console, CloudStack users can deliver a public-cloud-like experience to their customers — with full control, transparency, and flexibility.

Powering CloudStack Deployments Worldwide

Our integration with Apache CloudStack has enabled providers across India, the US, and Europe to deploy, operate, and scale their cloud services efficiently.
By combining CloudStack’s orchestration power with Stack Console’s automation, billing, reseller management, and AI capabilities, service providers are achieving faster time-to-market and improved profitability.

We look forward to connecting with the CloudStack community at the Collaboration Conference — sharing experiences, exploring innovations, and continuing our shared mission to empower open-source cloud ecosystems.

Learn more at: www.stackconsole.io

The post Stack Console: Empowering Cloud Providers with Apache CloudStack appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

One year ago at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference, US Signal introduced OpenCloud, an enterprise-ready platform built on Apache CloudStack. The launch marked more than a new product release. It reflected a deeper commitment to openness, flexibility, and community-driven innovation.

Since then, OpenCloud has gained strong customer adoption, expanded capabilities, and strengthened collaboration across US Signal’s engineering, product teams and partners. The past year has proven that enterprise reliability and open-source innovation can thrive together.

A Foundation Built on Trust and Performance

The first year focused on proving what CloudStack could do at scale. US Signal invested in stability, reliability, and customer experience, while refining migrations and operations to meet enterprise standards. Continuous feedback helped shape features that deliver predictable costs, workload flexibility, and simplified management, all built on the power of open-source software.

Innovation Through Collaboration

Community and partnership fueled much of OpenCloud’s progress. US Signal integrated CloudStack with public cloud platforms like Azure Arc and AWS IAM Roles Anywhere to enable unified hybrid management. A partnership with Commvault brings image-based backup and recovery directly into CloudStack, delivering enterprise-grade protection without added complexity. These initiatives show how collaboration drives real-world results.

Building for the AI Era

As AI workloads rise, US Signal continues to evolve its infrastructure strategies. The team is exploring GPU acceleration, open-source hypervisors, and containerized workloads to boost performance and efficiency. CloudStack’s flexibility allows these innovations to take shape quickly, supporting the next generation of compute-intensive applications.

This year also brought several key advancements to the OpenCloud ecosystem. US Signal introduced OpenCloud Desktop as a Service (DaaS), giving enterprises and service providers a secure, cloud-hosted desktop experience built for flexibility and scale. The company also launched US Signal SyncSafe Replication,an agent-based replication service that makes it easier to move and protect workloads across environments. Looking ahead, US Signal is partnering with Ampere to bring Arm-based processing into OpenCloud next year, improving performance-per-watt efficiency for next-generation workloads. Together, these innovations expand what OpenCloud can deliver today while laying the groundwork for what’s next.

The Power of an Open-Source Mindset

Moving from proprietary systems to open collaboration has changed how US Signal builds and operates. By engaging in the CloudStack community, the team has gained not only technical insight but also a renewed appreciation for transparency and shared problem-solving. Open-source participation has strengthened the company’s culture and commitment to continuous improvement.

Looking Ahead

OpenCloud’s first year proved that open-source and enterprise goals can align seamlessly. The journey has just begun, and US Signal remains focused on giving customers more control, visibility, and choice in how they operate in the cloud.

Join US Signal at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference

Learn more about US Signal’s OpenCloud successes and innovations at this year’s conference.

US Signal CloudStack Collaboration Conference Sessions at a Glance

November 20

10:15 – 10:45 AM
Keynote: Building and Scaling OpenCloud with Apache CloudStack
John White, Chief Operating Officer, US Signal

2:10 – 2:40 PM
Session: Infrastructure Strategies and Innovation in the AI Era
Daven Winans, Vice President of Engineering & Innovation, US Signal

3:30 – 4:30 PM
Workshop: Bridging CloudStack with Multi-Cloud
Taylor Greiner, Director of Innovation, US Signal

November 21

9:00 – 9:30 AM
Session: Building OpenCloud with Apache CloudStack: Customer Impact and What’s Next
David Humes, Vice President of Product Development, US Signal

1:40 – 2:10 PM
Joint Session: Image-Based Backups with CloudStack APIs: US Signal + Commvault Integration
David Humes, Vice President of Product Development, US Signal and Commvault Representatives

3:40 – 4:10 PM
Session: Issues, Pull Requests, Mailing Lists, Oh My: Gaining Clarity in an Open Source Support Model
Alex Dietrich, Director of Network Engineering, US Signal

To keep up to date with US Signal’s OpenCloud Journey, follow us on LinkedIn.

The post One Year Later: US Signal’s OpenCloud Journey with Apache CloudStack appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Powers Next-Generation, Sustainable Private Clouds with Unmatched Efficiency

As AI begins to augment traditional workloads, this drives demand for datacenter space, compute resources, and power.  With this burden increasing, the requirement for more efficient computing platforms becomes critical for enterprises and regional or national cloud providers that do not have the resources of the largest cloud providers. The largest hyperscale cloud providers have adopted CPUs based on the Arm architecture as a major component of their infrastructure, both for their own hosted services, and for customer applications.

Simultaneously, concerns around data sovereignty, security, and compliance are driving a resurgence in private and on-premises cloud infrastructure. Organizations want to retain control over their critical data, especially as AI inference agents process sensitive corporate information locally.  These trends combined with increasing use of AI RAG databases create affinity to local infrastructure leading to repatriation and upgrades to existing datacenters.

Finally, recent events in the virtualization space have fomented a wave of software modernization. With new strategies for both containerization and virtualization enabling the adoption of more efficient computing within private clouds a revolution in retrofitting on-premises and bespoke infrastructure is under way, taking advantage of more efficient AI Compute platforms that maximize the computing density in existing or new physical spaces and power envelopes.

CloudStack IaaS Platform 

CloudStack, the robust open-source IaaS platform; ShapeBlue, the world’s largest independent CloudStack integrator; and Ampere Computing, a leader in efficient AI Compute, have collaborated to deliver a leading solution meeting all the requirements above.  Traditional virtualization infrastructure, dense containerization enabling the next generation of AI enabled services, and uncompromising power efficiency are the hallmarks of this solution.  A reference architecture, complete with native Arm support, is available to assist enterprises or clouds in building new modern private clouds using Ampere platforms or integrating them into existing brown field deployments with existing CloudStack deployments.

The ShapeBlue solution seamlessly combines the proven orchestration capabilities of CloudStack with the remarkable energy efficiency and high-performance of Ampere® processors while empowering organizations to build and manage modern cloud environments that are not only cost-optimized but also significantly more sustainable.

Come See Us at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference  

At the Cloudstack Collaboration Conference in Milan Italy, Pete Logan, Distinguished Field Engineer from Ampere Computing will walk the audience through this solution in his talk on November 20, 2025:  Unlock Next-Gen Efficiency: Building Sustainable & Performant CloudStack Environments with Ampere and ShapeBlue.

This session introduces the CloudStack/ShapeBlue/Ampere Solution and Reference architecture as a key tool in delivering superior Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a significantly reduced carbon footprint for private cloud deployments. It will highlight the technical advancements and specific contributions from ShapeBlue that enable seamless deployment, management, and optimization of Arm-based instances within CloudStack. Additionally showcasing real-world use cases of the reference architecture while demonstrating how production-ready platforms can be used to build scalable, high-performance, and greener cloud services today.

Ampere Technology Use Case: US Signal

At last year’s CloudStack conference, Ampere and US Signal began a collaboration to bring Arm-based technology into their existing CloudStack deployment on a mixed Arm and x86 infrastructure.

“US Signal is excited to explore the integration of Ampere’s Arm-based technology into our OpenCloud platform as we look toward the next phase of AI. Arm architecture is uniquely optimized for AI inference and emerging Small Language Model (SLM) workloads that demand high efficiency, scalability, and lower power consumption. Combining CloudStack’s open architecture with Ampere’s high-performance, energy-efficient compute aligns perfectly with our vision for OpenCloud: enabling customers to run modern, AI-driven workloads with greater density, flexibility, and sustainability. We’re proud to collaborate with Ampere to advance the next generation of open, efficient cloud infrastructure.”

 ~ Daven Winans, VP of Engineering & Innovation, US Signal

To learn more about their integration strategies, check out Daven Winan’s session on November 20“Infrastructure Strategies and Innovation in the AI Era.”

Register for the conference and attend the session to see how Ampere, CloudStack, and ShapeBlue are jointly shaping the future of cloud infrastructure, empowering you to unlock next-generation efficiency and sustainability.

Resources:

• Ampere Computing
• Ampere PDF: ShapeBlue and Ampere Reference Architecture for IaaS Cloud on Arm64 Architecture
• ShapBlue Blog: ShapeBlue and Ampere Reference Architecture

The post Ampere & ShapeBlue Provide Arm Enabled CloudStack Reference Architecture appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

The shift from legacy data centers to the Cloud Era is complete. Organizations now navigate a complex world of private, public, and hybrid clouds, often managed by Virtual Data Centers (VDC). At the core of every modern cloud project is storage, yet traditional, monolithic storage arrays are failing to meet current demands for:

• Petabyte-scale scalability.
• 24 / 7 / 365 availability and non-disruptive operations.
• Flexible deployment options.
• Unmatched performance.
• Simplified management.
• Reduced costs.

Why Software-Defined Storage is the Answer

To address these challenges, organizations are moving to Software-Defined Storage (SDS). By leveraging commodity off-the-shelf servers, SDS delivers massive cost savings, flexible architecture, and eliminates storage silos by creating a multi-purpose, on-premises cloud storage pool.

StorPool Storage is built on this advanced SDS architecture.

• Non-Disruptive Uptime: Our cluster architecture and non-disruptive operations (including hot fixes, patches, and upgrades) eliminate all planned downtime, delivering 99.999% uptime across our entire customer base, as measured on production systems.
• Extreme Scalability and Performance: StorPool is designed to scale beyond 1 PB in a single cluster. Its distributed architecture, efficient use of NVMe/SSD, and low computational overhead deliver unmatched speed: latency under 200 μs to VMs and applications, even under sustained high workloads.
• Simple, Fully-Managed Service: StorPool is provided as a fully-managed service. This eliminates the need for dedicated, deep-dive storage expertise on your IT staff, freeing them from routine day-to-day maintenance.

Seamless Integration with Apache CloudStack

For CloudStack environments, StorPool’s native plugin allows for the automatic handling of all storage tasks during the creation and configuration of VMs, ensuring seamless integration and simplifying your cloud management workflow.

The Amito Success Story

Amito, Ltd., a global provider of enterprise-grade IaaS solutions, manages hundreds of TBs across 28 data centers. They needed to replace multiple legacy storage systems with a single solution that met all the modern requirements listed above while continuing to use CloudStack.

Following their migration to StorPool, Amito realized significant ongoing cost savings and efficiencies. Specifically, the same data they previously housed now required 35% less storage space. This dramatic reduction was a direct result of StorPool’s highly efficient implementation of snapshots, superior data density, and the complete elimination of storage silos.

To learn more about how StorPool elevates Apache CloudStack, visit our website and be sure to check out the full Amito / StorPool case study.

The post Easily Manage PBs in Your Cloud with Apache CloudStack and StorPool appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

While Apache CloudStack has open source roots going back over a decade and is currently on its fourth major version release, the platform has been gaining more attention as more businesses and organizations seek open source alternatives to commercial offerings such as VMware virtualization management solutions.

Since early 2021, the LINBIT® team has actively developed for the CloudStack platform, with most of the work focusing on a CloudStack storage plugin that integrates the open source software-defined storage (SDS) management system, LINSTOR®, with CloudStack. The plugin was merged into the Apache CloudStack codebase in September 2021 and brings SDS, high availability (HA), and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities to CloudStack primary storage.

By using LINSTOR, you can have highly available CloudStack primary storage for your KVM¹ virtual machine (VM) virtual disks, because the back-end storage will be replicated by DRBD®. You will also bring to your CloudStack primary storage other benefits that come with LINSTOR. Some of these benefits are:

• Automatic primary storage provisioning
• Highly available CloudStack primary storage and VM live migrations
• Quality of Service (QoS) control and tiered storage
• Snapshots and backup shipping for disaster recovery
• Monitoring and alerting

This article provides an overview of these benefits.

Automatic primary storage provisioning

A CloudStack administrator has a variety of storage types available to use to back CloudStack primary storage. However, as discussed in CloudStack documentation, there are two ways an administrator can manage CloudStack primary storage: statically and dynamically.

Static storage management is the traditional way. Here, an administrator allocates a set amount of some storage, such as a NFS share, iSCSI target, or even local storage. Administrators can then use that set amount of storage in CloudStack to carve out storage volumes that will back VM disks.

The newer way to provision CloudStack primary storage is dynamically. By using a CloudStack storage plugin, such as the LINSTOR plugin, an administrator turns over the storage allocation control to a storage system, such as LINSTOR. This storage system then handles requests from CloudStack to provision storage dynamically, as needed. This opens up doors to other benefits discussed in this article such as high availability, tiered storage, backups, and more.

Highly available CloudStack primary storage and VM live migrations

LINSTOR is known as an SDS tool for creating and managing DRBD block device resources. While this is not a strict requirement, by using DRBD in-real-time data replication, you can create high availability storage clusters. Creating and managing highly available storage is LINSTOR’s most frequent use case.

With the LINSTOR storage plugin for CloudStack, your CloudStack primary storage can be highly available. One of the benefits of bringing high availability to CloudStack primary storage is that you can then live migrate CloudStack VMs, that is, you can migrate a VM to another node, while the VM is up and running.

Quality of service control and tiered storage

By integrating LINSTOR with CloudStack, an administrator can also have the flexibility to control QoS offerings related to storage. You can configure different storage pools in LINSTOR that have different physical disks backing them, and then connect different disk offerings in CloudStack to these different LINSTOR storage pools. One disk offering might connect to a LINSTOR storage pool backed by slower disks, another by faster disks, to give a basic example.

You can then select different disk offerings to back different VM disks which will affect VM performance on your platform. If you are a service provider, you can use these different offerings to create tiered storage offerings for your customers, as part of your business model. Another article on the LINBIT blog, “Configuring Tiered Storage in CloudStack Using LINSTOR”, has more details on this topic, including step-by-step instructions for how to set this up.

You can also restrict a disk offering’s performance by setting an IOPS value for the disk offering in CloudStack. The LINSTOR CloudStack plugin takes this value and translates it into LINSTOR settings that constrain the storage performance.

 IMPORTANT: Currently, setting CloudStack QoS IOPS values when using the LINSTOR storage plugin requires cgroups v1 on the storage nodes. Setting QoS storage IOPS values do not affect storage performance on cgroups v2 systems. To manage QoS settings on systems running cgroups v2, use the QoS type “Hypervisor” rather than “Storage” within CloudStack disk offerings.

Snapshots and disaster recovery

If you deal at all with data, the topic of backups and disaster recovery should never be too far from your thoughts. This is especially true if you deal with data that is not your own, for example, when in a service provider role. LINSTOR can provide the means to back up storage resources, and data stored within them, when you use either thin-provisioned LVM or ZFS logical volumes as a back-end storage layer.

Backups in LINSTOR take the form of logical volume point-in-time snapshots. You can send these backups to the same LINSTOR cluster, a remote off-site LINSTOR cluster, or else to S3 compatible storage, such as AWS S3, MinIO, Storj storage, and others.

A LINSTOR administrator can take resource snapshots manually or else automatically, on a schedule, by using the LINSTOR scheduled backup shipping feature. In a disaster recovery situation, you can use backups to restore LINSTOR storage resources and the data they contain to known good point-in-time states.

Within a CloudStack deployment where you are using the LINSTOR storage plugin, this can be a way that you can restore CloudStack primary storage, that is, your or your customers’ virtual machines, and their data, if you need to.

Monitoring

Just as CloudStack has Prometheus endpoints that you can use to monitor CloudStack resources and metrics, LINSTOR also has Prometheus endpoints and alerts for LINSTOR and DRBD states. You can use these to create alerting rules or Grafana dashboards to help monitor your deployment and resources so that you and your team can react when needed.

A LINBIT blog article, “Monitoring Clusters Using Prometheus & DRBD Reactor”, can tell you more on the topic of monitoring with LINBIT software. You can use DRBD Reactor as an easier way to export Prometheus metrics related to DRBD, for example. If you are following LINSTOR best practices and have made the LINSTOR controller service highly available in your cluster, DRBD Reactor will already be there for you to use for exporting Prometheus metrics, at least on nodes that can potentially run the LINSTOR controller service. For monitoring using Prometheus metrics, you would also need to install and configure DRBD Reactor on any LINSTOR satellite nodes, if these are not also potential LINSTOR controller nodes.

Beyond a storage plugin

Besides releasing new features and other improvements to the LINSTOR CloudStack storage plugin, and the upstream CloudStack codebase, the LINBIT team released the LINBIT® CloudStack® HCI Appliance in late 2024. This software appliance, distributed as a freely available ISO installer image, makes it easy to install a ready-made CloudStack deployment with LINSTOR-managed CloudStack storage in a hyperconverged 3-or-more-node architecture.

If you or your team are new to CloudStack or LINBIT software, the HCI Appliance can be a great way to get up and running quickly. The appliance includes LINBIT-developed open source software such as DRBD, LINSTOR, DRBD Reactor, LINSTOR Gateway, and related utilities, plus the LINSTOR integration plugin for CloudStack, all of which facilitate SDS, HA, and DR capabilities for storage within CloudStack.

Of course you are not limited to an HCI deployment. You can deploy LINSTOR in a storage cluster separate from but connected to your CloudStack deployment.

A CloudStack chapter in the LINSTOR User Guide

The CloudStack chapter in the LINSTOR User Guide describes how you can install and use the LINSTOR CloudStack plugin for KVM hypervisors. The chapter includes instructions for creating a sample LINSTOR and CloudStack deployment to get you quickly into a testing environment.

A video tutorial for integrating LINSTOR with CloudStack

LINBIT developer Rene Peinthor also made a video that overviews installing the LINSTOR CloudStack plugin.

1. You can only use LINSTOR to create and manage HA storage for KVM (QCOW2 format) VM disks. However, you might be able to use the open source LINSTOR Gateway software which can help you create HA iSCSI or NFS storage, which you can then use as a storage back end for other hypervisors in CloudStack such as VMware vSphere, XCP-ng, or XenServer.

The post The Benefits of Using LINSTOR with CloudStack appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

13 Years of Connection and Collaboration

The CloudStack Collaboration Conference (CCC) was born in 2012 in Las Vegas — a gathering fueled by curiosity, innovation, and the belief that technology thrives when people connect. Over the past 13 years, CCC has evolved — sometimes as an independent event, other times as part of ApacheCon — but always with the same mission: to keep the CloudStack community connected, engaged, and inspired.

Through more than a decade of shared experiences, we’ve learned that connection is as essential as code. With nothing but passion and a shared sense of purpose, we launched our first online edition of CCC. It has always been about talking, collaborating, and building great technology together.

13 years later, CCC remains a celebration of community, creativity, and connection — and the journey is far from over.

From Niche to Hybrid and Growing into a Global Event

Throughout its existence, the CloudStack Collaboration Conference experienced steady growth. In 2022, the CloudStack community took a bold step forward and hosted its first hybrid event in Sofia, Bulgaria, combining in-person interaction with global live streaming. The turnout was strong, with enthusiastic participation from speakers, sponsors, and attendees. The exhibition space was buzzing with demos, success stories, and open-source innovations.

In 2023, we moved to Paris, thanks to our local partner DIMSI, and once again brought the community together. 2024 took us to Madrid, with incredible support from Jotelulu. And now in 2025, we’re heading to Milan, partnering with CDLAN.

We’re incredibly grateful to our local partners who help us bring the event to life each year, and to our long-term event sponsors -like ShapeBlue, LINBIT, StorPool, DIMSI, Your.Online, and others – who continue to support and believe in the power of this community.

Why People Come to the CloudStack Collaboration Conference

Over the years, we’ve welcomed attendees from 50+ countries. Each year, our attendance grows by 25–32%, and our mission remains the same: to bring together people who build, use, and innovate with Apache CloudStack.

People come to CCC to:

• Learn more about the project and its latest features
• Discover real-world use cases and success stories
• Collaborate with contributors on new ideas and improvements
• Generate sales opportunities and connect with potential clients
• Gain brand visibility in the open-source cloud ecosystem
• Recruit or discover top technical talent
• Understand business strategies for building sustainable, vendor-independent cloud infrastructure

Reflecting the Market Shift

As one of the people helping to organise the event, I believe 2023 and 2024 were game-changing years for Apache CloudStack. With major shifts in the cloud and virtualization markets, more and more companies are realising that open-source can be the backbone of their infrastructure – ensuring vendor independence, cost efficiency, and long-term sustainability.

Our 2025 event will reflect this new market reality. We’re showcasing not just technical advancements, but also the business strategies and success stories that prove CloudStack’s value in production environments.

Building Something That Lasts

The CloudStack Collaboration Conference is more than just a conference—it’s a masterpiece of community effort, a showcase of what we can achieve together. For me personally, the goal has always been to grow steadily, maintain high-quality talks, and foster strong collaboration with all supporting organisations.

To all the volunteers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees who make this possible each year: thank you. Let’s make 2025 another successful year for Apache CloudStack—and for this community we all believe in.

The post CloudStack Collaboration Conference: A Growing Hub for Open-Source Innovation appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

About weSystems – More Than Just Cloud

At weSystems, we see ourselves not merely as a provider of cloud infrastructure, but as a strategic enabler for our clients. Based in Germany, we specialize in IT infrastructure and managed services tailored to the specific needs of businesses that require precision, reliability, and flexibility. Whether it’s public, private, or hybrid cloud environments, we guide our clients through every step – from initial strategic considerations to planning and deployment, and into day-to-day operations. We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all architectures. Instead, we build infrastructure that reflects our clients’ real-world workflows, industry requirements, and long-term goals. Our teams combine deep technical expertise with a strong service culture, because we know that even the most elegant architecture is only as good as the people behind it. One of the key components of our offering is a cloud environment built on Apache CloudStack, and we’ve never regretted this decision. Quite the opposite: It remains one of the strongest elements of our platform, and one that we constantly evolve and improve.

Why Apache CloudStack? Intuitive power with enterprise control

Our choice of Apache CloudStack wasn’t made lightly. We needed a platform that was robust, proven, and open, but also intuitive and practical in day-to-day operations. Apache CloudStack delivered all of that and more. One of the standout advantages is its remarkably clear and intuitive GUI. From our own DevOps engineers to end users and even less technical project stakeholders, the interface wins people over instantly. Everything from virtual machine provisioning to advanced networking and security management is accessible without needing to dig through layers of abstraction or vendor-specific terminology. The learning curve is short, and the control is precise. But it’s not just about looks. Technically, CloudStack is a powerhouse. We’re particularly still impressed by the rich and highly flexible networking capabilities. Whether it’s isolated networks, shared VLANs, Virtual Private Clouds, or more complex, software-defined topologies, CloudStack allows us to model customer-specific network architectures that go far beyond the standard offerings of many hyperscalers. This flexibility makes CloudStack the ideal foundation for complex, multi-tier cloud projects with high security and availability demands. We’ve found the platform to be stable, scalable, and API-rich, making integration and automation straightforward. It’s also remarkably efficient in resource utilization, allowing us to keep operational costs low without compromising on performance or resilience.

The Challenge: An ERP environment pushing against its limits

When Domain 6, a leading ERP integrator with a global client base and more than 150 Microsoft Dynamics Navision implementations, approached us, they were looking for a better infrastructure partner for a demanding client case. Their customer had outgrown its previous cloud environment, facing constant performance issues, limited scalability, and unacceptable downtime. The system was becoming difficult and expensive to maintain, while security, backup, and disaster recovery remained unreliable at best. To make matters worse, the customer lacked responsive technical support. They needed a platform that could evolve with their business, one that didn’t require overhauling infrastructure every time the workload changed.

The Solution: Custom-Built ERP Cloud with weSystems and CloudStack

Together with Domain 6, we designed and deployed a tailored infrastructure solution based on Apache CloudStack within the weSystems cloud. This environment now powers the customer’s Microsoft Dynamics Navision deployment, and the transformation was immediate. We used CloudStack’s customizable templates to create a ready-to-deploy blueprint for each business unit’s ERP needs, allowing Domain 6 to spin up new, secure Navision instances in minutes. The underlying infrastructure was architected for high availability, with automatic failover and distributed storage, ensuring that even during heavy usage, the system remains responsive and resilient. Thanks to CloudStack’s advanced networking features, we could mirror the customer’s existing business segmentation in the cloud. Each department operates in its secure environment, with granular firewall rules, VPN access, and load-balanced entry points. And because weSystems offers continuous managed service support, Domain 6 no longer needs to worry about infrastructure troubleshooting. Our team is just a direct call or message away. No ticket ping-pong, no endless waiting loops.

Real results, real value

The impact? A reduction in infrastructure costs, driven by more efficient resource utilization and our transparent, usage-based pricing model. Performance bottlenecks disappeared, uptime went from unreliable to near-perfect, and both Domain 6 and their end customer gained the confidence to scale without fear of breaking things.

“Together with weSystems, we have transformed our customers’ operations with unmatched flexibility and cost efficiency. Their ERP system runs seamlessly, and weSystems’ support team is always there for us, providing invaluable support and consultation.”
– Stilyana Petrova, Managing Partner at Domain 6

Future-proof infrastructure, built together

For us at weSystems, this collaboration was more than just another cloud deployment. It was a confirmation of what’s possible when you combine deep technical capabilities, a flexible open-source foundation, and a human-first service model. Apache CloudStack continues to be a cornerstone of our platform, not just for what it enables technically, but for how it empowers our clients to think bigger and act faster. With CloudStack, we can build not just infrastructure, but a true platform for digital evolution. Whether you’re looking to modernize your ERP hosting, roll out secure environments across business units, or launch a multi-cloud application landscape, our team is here to design the right solution with you, not just for you.

The post Transforming ERP performance with tailored cloud infrastructure: How Domain 6 leveraged the weSystems CloudStack platform appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

The CloudStack Collaboration Conference is the largest, annual in-person gathering for the global Apache CloudStack community, bringing together developers, users, and tech leaders to dive into the latest innovations in open-source cloud and virtualization management.

Call for Presentations

The Call for Presentations is open, giving you the opportunity to share your knowledge and experience with the CloudStack community! The #CloudStackCollab event team is looking for session proposals that highlight technical insights, real-world user stories, best practices, new features, and innovative approaches to open-source cloud technology.

Hackathon Day – November 20^th

The event kicks off on November 20th with a dedicated hackathon, where developers, engineers, and project committers have the opportunity to collaborate to solve real-world challenges, experiment with new ideas, and drive innovation across the Apache CloudStack ecosystem.

Deep-dive Sessions & Expert Panels – November 20^th and 21^st

The conference continues on November 21st and 22nd with a full agenda of technical sessions and panel discussions. Attendees will gain insights into recent developments, share practical knowledge, and examine key trends shaping cloud infrastructure and open-source virtualization. Panel discussions will feature experts and industry leaders addressing critical topics, challenges, and future directions for Apache CloudStack.

Support the Future of Open-Source Cloud by Becoming an Event Sponsor

The CloudStack community is inviting organisations to become sponsors of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference. This is an opportunity to align your brand with a leading open-source project, connect with a global community of developers and cloud professionals, and demonstrate your commitment to innovation in cloud infrastructure.

Join us in Milan this November to engage with the community, showcase your expertise, and help shape the next chapter of open-source cloud computing.

The post CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2025 – Join Global Cloud leaders this November in Milan appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Held at the Orense 34, the conference featured a series of in-depth sessions, workshops, and discussions on everything from CloudStack architecture and scalability to automation, security, and best practices. It was an invaluable chance for attendees to learn from industry leaders, share real-world experiences, and explore the latest advancements in CloudStack.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our sponsors for their support in making this event possible: Aptum, ShapeBlue, LINBIT, StorPool, Cloudian, Yotta, DIMSI, Netris, Your.Online, Leaseweb, proIO, Ampere, CDLAN, Jotelulu and weSystems.

In this blog, we share the session recordings, slides, abstracts and speakers social links. You can also see the pictures taken at the event by clicking the button below.

Thursday Sessions

Keynote: Navigating the Next Wave of Innovation, John White, COO, US Signal

In an era where technological advancements shape the future of industries, open-source stands at the precipice of the next major disruption. This keynote explored the current state of the industry and highlights the immense potential for transformation through open-source technologies.

Keynote: Building India’s Sovereign Hyperscale Cloud with the CloudStack Ecosystem, Sunil Gupta, Co-founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta

Sunil talks about the massive digital transformation in India and how Yotta has partnered with the Government to build multi-region hyperscale sovereign GovCloud (perhaps largest outside US & EU) using CloudStack and other partner’s technology stack.

How CloudStack is Helping Leaseweb to Run Cloud Globally, Neven Dogovic, Product Owner Public Cloud, Leaseweb

In this session, Neven shares Leaseweb’s experience on their extensive experience with Apache CloudStack as a leading cloud provider.

What is New in Apache CloudStack, Rohit Yadav, VP of Engineering, ShapeBlue

An in-depth session on the latest advancements in Apache CloudStack, with a special focus on the exciting new features and improvements in the 4.20 release. As one of the leading open-source cloud management platforms, CloudStack continues to evolve to meet the needs of modern cloud infrastructures. This session covered key updates that enhance functionality, scalability, and user experience, empowering cloud operators and developers alike.

Scaling CloudStack to 100K Hosts and Millions of Instances, Abhishek Kumar, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

Abhishek discusses the why, how, and what of an exciting CloudStack scalability project aimed at significantly expanding its capacity to support 100,000 hosts and millions of VMs, volumes, networks, accounts, and domains. Explore CloudStack’s current scalability limits and assess how much further we can push its boundaries. Discuss the innovations, challenges, and strategies required for CloudStack to thrive in hyper-scale environments, and consider what it would take to achieve this ambitious level of performance and reliability.

The Importance of a Proper Out-of-Band Network When Running CloudStack, Wido den Hollander, CTO, Your.Online

Often overlooked, but super important: a proper Out-of-Band (OOB) network. When everything goes wrong you need proper access to your CloudStack environment in order to diagnose and resolve any issues. A OOB network is very important. In this talk, Wido discusses how to design and implement a good OOB network and have CloudStack benefit from it.

VMware/KVM to CloudStack/KVM Migration – tools and options within CloudStack, Andrija Panic, Cloud Architect, ShapeBlue

In this talk, you will learn how CloudStack can help you import/migrate VMware/KVM instances/volumes to CloudStack and what options there are for operators to migrate those external workloads.

Majority in DRBD, Philipp Reisner, CEO, LINBIT

LINSTOR/DRBD became a primary storage option for Apache CloudStack nearly three years ago. In this session, Philipp shares insights about how DRBD avoids split-brain situations. DRBD relies on the principle of quorum. Philipp dives into the topic and explain all its interesting aspects. How does it deal with an even number of replicas, what does last-man-standing mean in the context, and how does it recover a primary that lost quorum? The session also briefly discusses how it interacts with failover in CloudStack and how we could improve that with future development. The session touches on all the theoretical aspects and also has the necessary configuration snippets relevant to the deployment of LINSTOR/DRBD in the context of Apache CloudStack.

Enhancements to CloudStack Kubernetes Service, Pearl Dsilva, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

With growing popularity of the CloudStack Kubernetes Service, efforts have been made to further improve this plugin and provide more flexibility. As of ACS 4.21, CKS will support deploying clusters with custom templates, with the ability of configuring different offerings and templates for different Kubernetes node types. It will also have support to add external nodes (VMs / bare metal hosts) as worker nodes to a pre-created CKS cluster. To adapt to production standards, CKS will now support unstacked ETCD as well and will also have a CNI plugin framework which will provide users the flexibility to use a CNI of their choice. In this talk, Pearl delves into the CloudStack CSI driver and it’s integration with CloudStack.

CloudStack Networking in Action: Inspiration, Practical Tips and Sharing Experience, Stephan Bienek, Head of Hosting, WeSystems

CloudStack provides an awesome Networking feature-set, which enables building simple and complex solutions within one platform. In this session, Stephan shares weSystems experience and practical tips, how they use the various CloudStack Networking features to build tailored solutions. An inspiring tour through Isolated- , Shared- and Layer2-Networks using ConfigDrive, Service functions and external Gateways in IPv4 and IPv6 scenarios.

Evaluating CloudStack Against Other Hypervisors: A Performance Analysis, Daven Winans, VP of Product, US Signal

In response to these industry shifts, US Signal initiated a research and development project aimed at exploring alternative virtualization solutions to the dominant Broadcom option. The goal for us all is to ensure predictability in both pricing and performance for our users which we will explore in this conversation.

Watch Daven’s session, as he uncovers insights and strategies that can empower you to make more informed decisions about your virtualization infrastructure. Don’t miss this opportunity to see how CloudStack measures up against other hypervisors and how it can elevate your cloud operations.

Integrating Wireguard into CloudStack, Marco Ziglioli, Cloud Architect, CDLAN

CloudStack currently offers support for road warrior and site2site IPsec VPNs. WireGuard is a modern VPN solution known for its lightweight codebase, cryptographic security, and ease of configuration compared to traditional VPN protocols like IPsec or OpenVPN. CDLAN’s goal is to generalize the vpn instantiation allowing the possibility to use wireguard instead of IPsec as protocol. By embedding WireGuard into CloudStack, the platform enhances its ability to provide secure and efficient access to cloud resources in isolated networks. This session examines a possible implementation of WireGuard inside the Virtual Routers and its deployment and configuration through CloudStack.

Management Server Maintenance in CloudStack, Suresh Kumar Anaparti, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

In this session, Suresh briefs a new feature: “Support for Management Server Maintenance in CloudStack”. This feature enables admins and operators to keep the management server in maintenance mode for patching or to apply any updates. He also covers how the host agents connect to other available servers while preparing for maintenance, along with the introduction of new APIs.

Friday Sessions

Building a Sovereign DBaaS supporting CloudStack, Johan Andersson, CTO, Severalnines

In this talk, Johan discusses how Severalnines implemented a scalable, Sovereign DBaaS for open-source databases on CloudStack for Pappaya Cloud. Attendees learn practical considerations for native Kubernetes Control Plane (CP) infrastructure design and get pointers on how to build integrations between the CP and CloudStack from authentication to Day 2 operations automation. You also learn about the specific techniques and tooling needed to streamline and automate core DBaaS workflows, such as infrastructure integration, scaling, high availability and disaster recovery, user and tenant management, and more!

(Slides Pending)

CDLAN Open to Innovation the Choice Was CloudStack, Marco Ziglioli, Cloud Architect, CDLAN

CDLAN is a Milan based Telecommunications provider in Italy specialized in the B2B market. When they began to look into offering cloud services, they were wary of being locked into a $$Vendor$$. CDLAN’s choice fell on cloudstack and it is heavily used in their B2B cloud services today. Join Marco to hear CDLAN’s story on why and how CloudStack has become an integral part of CDLAN’s offering.

BACKROLL 1.0 is Out, Matthias Dhellin, Ousmane Diarra, Pierre Charton, DIMSI

Backroll is an open-source backup solution for KVM guests provided by DIMSI. In this session, you hear about the latest news of the project. DIMSI team members also go through a demo to show you how to set up Backroll, configure your storage and hypervisor in order to backup and restore your VMs. They also showcase the latest features such as a plugin which integrates Backroll into Apache CloudStack.

Routed Mode: Static and dynamic routing, Wei Zhou, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

ACS 4.20 introduces the ROUTED mode for IPv4 networks. In ROUTED mode on isolated networks and VPCs the CloudStack VR no longer provides Source NAT, allowing for end-users to create purely routed networks, significantly improving network bandwidth and potentially allowing for public IPs to be allocated to user VMs without operator intervention. Simple dynamic routing introduces dynamic BGP capabilities to ACS, facilitating the use of ROUTED mode networks by automatically peering BGP sessions with upstream routers, thus removing from the cloud provider the onerous task of setting static routes on upstream routers.

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External Deployment Integration in CloudStack, Harikrishna Patnala, Alexandre Mattioli, ShapeBlue

The CloudStack external deployment integration enables the deployment and management of external workloads such as baremetal servers, non-ACS VMs, and SaaS stacks directly from Apache CloudStack (ACS). This talk explores the design, development, and practical utilization of the framework, showcasing its capabilities in managing diverse infrastructure and simplifying multi-environment operations. Attendees gain a deeper understanding of how this integration enhances the flexibility and scope of ACS. This framework is set to be released with Apache CloudStack 4.21.

Network Architecture for public and GPU-based AI cloud providers, Alex Saroyan, CEO, Netris

This talk discusses the challenges and solutions of networking for GPU-based AI training clusters. It also offered a Q&A to share experiences of launching GPUaaS clouds based on NVIDIA and Generic GPU and Networking stacks.

Snapshot Copy Using Primary Storage, Nikolay Tenev, Solutions Architect, StorPool

Apache CloudStack 4.19 introduced a new feature called “Snapshot Copy.” It allows you to take a snapshot of a volume in one zone and copy it to another and can be employed in Disaster Recovery scenarios. The implementation depends on the secondary storage and secondary storage VM to copy the snapshots between the zones. This is good for infrequent snapshot copies, but it can become a problem when a large number of snapshots have to be regularly copied. To solve this, we added a new feature, “Snapshot Copy Using Primary Storage”. It optimizes the dataflow and improves efficiency and capacity by offloading the copy operation to the primary storage. Join Nikolay as he discusses how it works and the specifics of the process. If you are planning to implement disaster recovery to your cloud services or want to implement this feature to different storage plugins you don’t want to miss this one.

Shared FileSystem as a First Class Feature, Abhisar Sinha, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

Talk on the new feature Shared FileSystems. A fully managed file storage service, offering a simple way to create and use file systems that can be accessed by multiple instances simultaneously.

Cloud Security and Compliances, Kaushik Bora, Principal Solution Architect, Yotta

The session includes the challenges/solutions to mitigate the general Security and Compliances requirements and a few unresolved issues (specific to security) with Apache CloudStack.

Monetize CloudStack with CloudOps Software, Richard Hotchkin, Vice President & General Manager, Software, Aptum

Turn your CloudStack infrastructure into a revenue engine with the CloudOps software. Offer dynamic pricing, product catalogs, commitments, and invoicing, all while enabling reseller and branding capabilities across multi-tenant environments. Unlock integrations with AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and more to maximize your investment.

2 years of VMware Exodus: our perspective as a recognized Open-Source virtualization alternative, Olivier Lambert, CEO, Vates

This talk explores open-source alternatives to VMware virtualization, based on the experience of Vates. Combining both technical and market perspectives, Olivier discusses global trends, challenges in migrating to open-source solutions, and the potential implications of VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom. The presentation covers technical aspects of the virtualization stack, including hypervisors, orchestration, and backups, and how these elements can be integrated into modern infrastructures. Additionally, Olivier examines the impact on cloud and edge computing, as well as the roles of major industry players such as Nutanix, Microsoft, and IBM/RedHat.

Seamless CloudStack Integration: Cloudian’s Role in Modern Cloud Architectures, Vikram Fernandes, Director of Business Development and Alliances, Cloudian

The integration of Cloudian Hybrid Cloud with Apache CloudStack delivers a scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solution for managing object storage within hybrid cloud environments. Cloudian’s HyperStore, a S3-compatible object storage platform, complements CloudStack’s infrastructure management by enabling seamless storage provisioning, data tiering, and cross-cloud operations. This integration simplifies hybrid cloud deployments, ensuring data sovereignty, reducing latency, and optimizing resource utilization. It supports a wide array of use cases, including disaster recovery, backup, content distribution, and analytics. With native S3 API compatibility and automated policy-based storage management, the combined solution enhances agility while reducing operational overhead for enterprises and service providers.

A New CloudStack Driver Model, Rohit Yadav, VP of Engineering, ShapeBlue

This talk proposes an exciting “Mother of All Plugins” framework for Apache CloudStack. This innovative meta-framework empowers vendors, operators, and admins to extend CloudStack’s capabilities using any programming language of their choice and offer more flexibility and speed for developing custom features and extensions. Join Rohit to discover how this game-changing driver model can empower you to customise CloudStack faster, giving you a competitive edge in driving cloud innovation and meeting evolving demands.

The Apache CloudStack Governance Model, Daan Hoogland, Application Architect, ShapeBlue

The Apache CloudStack project is part of the large portfolio of ASF projects and acts as an independent software project under the Apache umbrella. It is bound by the Apache bylaws, but also has its own bylaws and traditions. As part of the ASF it is bound by an honour code of inclusivity. It is also a consent based democratic entity. What this all means is explained in the talk.

GPU as a first class feature in CloudStack, Vishesh Jindal, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

With the rise of AI, VDI, cryptocurrency mining, simulations, and advanced graphics processing, the demand for GPU resources has surged dramatically. However, Apache CloudStack currently lacks first-class support for GPUs. This talk covers the current state of GPU support in CloudStack, the challenges of managing GPU resources, and proposes a feature design to make GPU a first-class CloudStack resource. Attendees gain insights into the technical hurdles and potential solutions to bring seamless GPU support into their IaaS platform.

Using the Packer Provider for CloudStack: What’s Missing, Swen Brüseke, CEO, ProIO

Wouldn’t it be nice to create CloudStack templates directly on CloudStack itself, fully automated, without any manual intervention? In this session, Swen shares how proIO is using HashiCorp’s Packer to achieve this and what features they needed to develop for the community-driven provider to get closer to this goal. Demo included!

NSX Integration on CloudStack, Nicolas Vazquez, Software Engineer, ShapeBlue

In this talk, Nicolas goes through the VMware NSX integration on Apache CloudStack, introduced on version 4.20 as a CloudStack plugin. The NSX plugin introduces NSX 4 as a network service provider in CloudStack allowing users to create and manage Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) in CloudStack utilizing NSX SDN, orchestrating the network functionalities such as: routing, port forwarding, load balancing, DNS, DHCP, ACLs and more.

A Customer-centric Approach to Reimagining Private Cloud Hosting, David Humes, VP of Product, US Signal

This session focuses on US Signal’s customer-centered approach to building OpenCloud, as well as what they see as opportunities for the CloudStack project on the horizon in terms of supporting enterprise workloads.

CloudStack’s role in the era of AI clouds, Kshitish Purohit, CPO, Yotta

What role can CloudStack play in the AI revolution? What are the opportunities for development? What value(s) and value system does CloudStack bring to the table? In this session, Kshitish dives into the answers.

Backup & Recovery in CloudStack, Jithin Raju, Cloud Architect, ShapeBlue

The ability to reliably back up and restore cloud instances is critical for maintaining operational continuity and safeguarding against data loss. This session provides an overview of the backup and recovery options available within CloudStack. The talk includes Backup and Recovery framework and providers: Veeam, Dell NetWorker, Dimsi Backroll, and NAS. This session is ideal for CloudStack administrators, IT managers, and anyone responsible for data protection in cloud environments.

Creating a Cloudstack Usage Service with Kafka, Aron Wagner, CEO, American Cloud

The current CloudStack usage service did not meet American Cloud’s needs to build a reliable billing engine, so they built a new one using Kafka and Cloudstack Events. Watch the session to learn more!

Evaluating Cloud Costs: On-Premise CloudStack vs. Hyperscalers, Marco Sinhorelli, Technical Marketing Manager, ShapeBlue

Choosing between running your own cloud infrastructure and using services from major providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud can be a tough decision. In this talk, Marco walks you through a comparison of the costs involved in both options using a Cloud Cost Calculator and Pricing Report. He shares insights into how these costs stack up over time, based on a case study of a mid-sized company. If you’re considering whether to stick with a public cloud or move to an on-premise setup, this session gives you a clear picture of the financial implications and helps you make a more informed choice.

The post Event Roundup: CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024 appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

proIO is continuing its support of the CloudStack community and is pleased to announce that it will be a Silver Partner and Sponsor of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference (CCC) 2024 in Madrid for the second consecutive year. The CCC is bringing together IT-professionals from around the world to exchange knowledge, share innovations, and discuss best practices in cloud computing.

About proIO – Our Mission and Services

As a cloud pioneer based in Germany, proIO is providing cloud services since 2004 to  its customers across various industries and clients. With a comprehensive service range that includes customized cloud solutions for Public Clouds and Private Clouds, Managed Hosting, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Remote Hands, proIO delivers a well-rounded service model designed to address the full spectrum of business needs.

For a sovereign cloud, it is not just the location that is crucial, but also the question of who operates the cloud and what technology is used. proIO believes in open source as the only way to achieve secure software and transparent data security, free from the restrictions of vendor lock-in, wich is slowing down the rate of innovation and limiting flexibility. Our vision is a future where businesses can concentrate on their core operations, with IT functioning effortlessly in the background. For businesses ready to elevate their cloud strategy, proIO offers a  complimentary initial analysis—an opportunity to explore tailored solutions designed to meet specific goals and enhance operational efficiency. proIO is committed to building trusted partnerships that drive measurable, long-term success.

Commitment to the CloudStack Community

As an active contributor to the community, proIO shares its expertise through projects and events like the CCC on a regular basis. proIO is dedicated to fostering a vibrant community through collaboration and knowledge sharing. By actively engaging with experts and industry leaders, proIO enhances its proficiency in CloudStack while contributing to its continuous development. This commitment of collaboration allows proIO to deliver improved solutions to its clients, while also enriching the community. With a focus on innovation and growth, proIO strives to create a supportive environment where everyone can thrive.

Supporting the CCC

proIO’s sponsorship of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference underscores its commitment to accessible, sustainable, and transparent software solutions. As Swen Brüseke, CEO of proIO, states, “We believe in an open ecosystem where innovation thrives and security is a priority, benefiting everyone involved.” The CCC provides a unique opportunity for proIO to engage in discussions and help shape a shared vision for a future-proof IT landscape. proIO looks forward to meaningful collaborations and working with the community to advance the future.

The post proIO as a Silver Partner and Sponsor of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024 appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Why Data Sovereignty Matters to India

As India’s digital landscape expands, ensuring data sovereignty and security has become crucial. For India, national data independence is about more than just controlling information; it involves safeguarding critical infrastructure, protecting public services, and maintaining compliance with data policies that serve the country’s interests. The Indian government has made it clear that data sovereignty is foundational to the country’s secure digital future, and steps are already being taken to establish hyperscale data centers across the nation.

By retaining control over not only the data itself but also the technology ecosystem, India strengthens its resilience. A sovereign cloud minimises reliance on external providers, reducing vulnerabilities to geopolitical pressures and potential service disruptions, and fortifying India’s capacity to manage its digital destiny independently.

Yotta’s Role in Building India’s GovCloud

In the race to build a secure and scalable cloud infrastructure, Yotta Data Services is taking a lead role. As a key player in data centers and cloud technology, Yotta is helping shape the GovCloud ecosystem with solutions tailored to India’s needs. With a commitment to delivering hyperscale, sovereign solutions, Yotta has developed expertise across private clouds, enterprise-grade public clouds, and specialized AI-focused clouds.

Yotta’s efforts include close collaborations with national agencies to create multi-region GovClouds that bring some of the largest sovereign cloud infrastructures to India. This is a significant achievement, rivalled only by similar setups in the US and the EU. Yotta’s vision reflects the importance of building cloud systems that are not only powerful but also secure and independent, tailored to the demands of India’s growing digital economy.

A key milestone in this journey is Ananta Cloud, powered by Yotta in collaboration with Software Technology Parks of India, an S&T autonomous society under the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Ananta Cloud offers a secure, scalable platform for businesses, public sector organisations, and enterprises, ensuring data remains within India’s jurisdiction. Its comprehensive offerings span Cloud Compute, Storage and Backup, Network Services, Cloud Management, Cloud Migration, Disaster Recovery, AI, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Services, among others. Additionally, Yotta has been commissioned by another government entity to design, build, and manage a cutting-edge data center – marking it as potentially one of the largest GovCloud globally, following those in the US and EU.

The CloudStack Ecosystem: A Foundation for India’s Sovereign Cloud

At the heart of this effort is CloudStack, an open-source platform that has proven to be a powerful foundation for India’s GovCloud initiative. CloudStack was chosen for its simplicity, ease of management, and scalability, making it an ideal choice for a multi-region setup like GovCloud. Its open-source nature allows seamless integration with complementary solutions, and it is continuously refined by an active community that ensures it remains adaptable to evolving needs and challenges.

India’s GovCloud Stack

Building a secure and scalable GovCloud requires a precisely curated technology stack, each component bringing unique strengths to the table:

• CloudStack: Serving as the orchestrator, CloudStack manages the complex scaling and resource allocation required for multi-regional support.
• StorPool: This storage solution efficiently and securely manages data, ensuring quick and reliable access and retrieval.
• Netris: Through advanced networking and software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities, Netris enables the building of flexible and secure networks within the cloud infrastructure.
• Apiculus: Apiculus enhances the user experience, making it easy for end-users to navigate and access cloud services effortlessly.

Together, these technologies create a robust, hyperscale cloud infrastructure tailored to India’s specific needs. Each component in this ecosystem plays a critical role, contributing specialised capabilities to form a high-performance, resilient cloud environment suited to supporting the nation’s digital transformation journey.

A Blueprint for Global Sovereign Cloud Models

India’s GovCloud model offers a new path forward for countries aiming to create their own sovereign cloud infrastructures. Yotta’s approach, enabled by CloudStack, sets an example of how nations can establish secure and compliant cloud environments without compromising data sovereignty.

Global cloud providers are taking note, too. The Indian GovCloud model opens up opportunities for cloud providers to collaborate and expand into regions with unique compliance needs. With a flexible and interoperable foundation like CloudStack, cloud providers can work alongside national governments to build secure infrastructures that respect data sovereignty.

Looking Ahead: Yotta’s Commitment to India’s Digital Future

Yotta is committed to further scaling India’s sovereign cloud infrastructure, with a focus on security, compliance, innovation, and strategic partnerships. As India’s demand for data independence grows, Yotta aims to lead the charge by developing infrastructures that can handle the country’s growing digital needs. The company is inviting industry partners, developers, and global stakeholders to join them in this mission, helping to shape India’s cloud journey as it becomes a model for digital sovereignty worldwide.

India’s emphasis on a sovereign, scalable, and secure cloud is not just forward-thinking—it’s essential. As India continues its digital transformation, Yotta stands ready to support and scale the infrastructure required, ensuring that India’s digital assets remain under its control and contribute to a thriving digital economy.

The post The Road to Data Sovereignty: How Yotta is Strengthening India’s Cloud Infrastructure appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Adoption of CloudStack has been rapidly increasing as more organizations recognize it as an excellent platform for building private clouds. As if to validate this, more and more managed service providers have migrated to private clouds built on the CloudStack foundation.

Storage has always been central to any data center infrastructure project, which is unsurprising as all IT-related services are centered around data. This is especially true for service providers. Their customers trust the provider with their data, which means service providers need to ensure that their customers’ data is protected and available to customers 24/7, so the storage solution they choose needs to be reliable and “always on”.

The other major concern for service providers is the performance of their storage. While IOPS and throughput have been the typical measurements of storage performance, it turns out that they only have a secondary effect on end-user satisfaction. The largest contributing factor there is response time.

What this means for the service providers is that, in addition to the usual considerations of ease-of-use and management, and lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO), providers need to select a storage solution that serves data with low latency. Low latency itself, however, isn’t enough. Service providers need a solution that can provide consistent low latency even under sustained heavy workloads.

At StorPool, we’ve created a fully-managed storage solution that meets all of the requirements discussed above. Don’t just take our word for it, though. Check out this case study on RapidCompute, an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider who deployed StorPool Storage with its CloudStack native plugin and how it met their main requirements of:

• Low total cost of ownership
• Multiple performance tiers
• High performance for large OLTP databases
• Non-disruptive hardware refreshes
• High fault-tolerance
• Ease of migration from their legacy storage

All while their administrators manage storage without ever leaving the CloudStack interface. Read about RapidCompute’s success with StorPool and learn how we can do the same for you.

The post Simplify Your Daily Routine with CloudStack-Integrated Storage appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

It’s a tumultuous time for digital infrastructure. From the emergence of controversial new licensing models (and their accompanying price hikes) to the failure of hyperscalers to make good on promises of cost savings, many consumers are scrambling to find cost-effective, compliant, stable, and secure cloud servicing options.

But there’s good news.

Against this confused and unclear background, Apache CloudStack is proving itself ideally positioned to support. 

Apache CloudStack: Cutting Through Complexity

Apache CloudStack (ACS), often referred to simply as CloudStack, is a platform that has been supporting businesses and services providers as an open-source project since 2010. CloudStack has a long history of providing quality infrastructure orchestration, supporting many of the most common vendor offerings, enabling a provider the ability to deliver services to their customers through a comprehensive solution to meet the specific needs of a diverse set of use cases. 

Flexibility is a must. 

As an infrastructure orchestrator, CloudStack provides a consistent platform and API for managing all aspects of the computing stack, including compute, storage and networking. CloudStack supports multiple hypervisors, with VMware and KVM being two of the most popular, allowing your business to prioritize what is most important for your use case.  As most readers will appreciate, the orchestration of simple VMs is not sufficient to support the extent of a customer’s expectations. The ability to provide suitable storage solutions to meet different use cases, such as machine learning or long-term backups, require different underlying implementations and architectures. CloudStack provides a wide range of integrations and supported protocols to meet the varied storage needs of different customer use cases.

Additionally, a VM provides limited value without a network to make the workloads accessible to their target audience. CloudStack provides an extensive set of virtual networking capabilities, orchestrating both private and public IP space as well as different network topologies and vendor solutions. Standard network concepts like firewall rules, port forwarding and VPNs are all supported. Additionally, many concepts are supported to provide high performance networks through dedicated hardware configured within the datacenter. 

Simpler is better.

One of the key and unique features of CloudStack is the ability to abstract away the underlying implementation from the user’s experience with the service. This allows providers the flexibility to leverage the vendors and relationships they have without exposing those details to their users. This is especially important as things change within the market and new vendors or topologies are introduced into a provider’s ecosystem.  

An example of market shifts which CloudStack has been effective in supporting providers through is the recent VMware license changes after the purchase by Broadcom. Many organizations have been forced to re-evaluate the value for money of their VMware deployments, and the ability to transition to another platform has left a lot of organizations with complicated business and technical decisions. CloudStack is helping organizations with these challenging decisions by providing supported migration paths between different hypervisors.

For example, CloudStack supports the migration of workloads from VMware deployments to KVM. CloudStack also supports the ability for VMware workloads to be transitioned under the CloudStack management umbrella so a future decision could be made. This allows for providers to transition all or part of their workloads to a different hypervisor, like KVM, over time as required. It also allows for the provider to offer different offerings which are backed by different hypervisors based on their customer’s needs and budget.   

CloudOps: Making the Most of CloudStack

At Aptum, we have also appreciated CloudStack’s ability to support many different architectures and topologies, enabling providers to establish a best fit solution to their customer’s needs. We have developed a CloudOps Software service which supports the productization and monetization of CloudStack, along with other orchestration platforms. CloudOps Software was developed to support service providers get the most out of their CloudStack investments by giving them tools to monetize their customer’s usage in many interesting and compelling ways.

With features such as multi-level multi-tenancy, with support for resellers and branding being built in, the CloudOps Software solution provides endless go-to-market opportunities. Similar to how CloudStack is able to abstract away the infrastructure concepts from the user’s experience, CloudOps Software is able to abstract away the underlying service’s tenant implementation with its extensive role-based access control (RBAC) and provider management. 

Business needs and technical requirements: two sides of the same coin. 

The combination of Apache CloudStack to abstract away the technical complexity and Aptum’s CloudOps Software to deliver business value through its productization and monetization engine creates new efficiencies for tech leaders. Together, they enable Services providers to own their destiny in delivering against the technical needs of their customers, while ensuring a strong business model is maintained. 

Struggling with cloud complexity? Let’s chat about it! We’d love to hear your stories and share some practical solutions at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference in Madrid, November 20-22. Swing by Aptum’s booth, or join our workshop with CTO Will Stevens to see how our CloudOps Software can help you get more out of CloudStack—think streamlined deployments, easier scaling, and new ways to grow your cloud offering.

Ready to connect? Register now and meet us there!

The post How Apache CloudStack Supports a Disrupted Market   appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

As the new generation of cloud service providers (CSPs) strives to meet the growing demands of their customers, scalability and automation in network infrastructure become critical factors. Apache CloudStack, a popular open-source cloud computing software for new CSPs, presents certain networking challenges when used with traditional switch fabrics. This article explores these challenges and introduces how Netris provides a scalable, automated networking solution that seamlessly integrates with Apache CloudStack and allows you to build a truly future-proof cloud service offering.

The Limitations of Traditional Switch Fabrics with CloudStack

Apache CloudStack requires a robust switch fabric to manage network isolation between Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). Commonly, this isolation is achieved using VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks). However, VLANs have a hard limit of 4,096 identifiers (per IEEE 802.1Q standard), which restricts the number of VPCs a CSP can support. For cloud environments of any size, this limitation becomes a significant bottleneck upfront or growth-wise. 

Apache CloudStack does support Tungsten Fabric as an isolation method, which was supposed to address the scalability issue. However, the Tungsten Fabric project was shut down in August 2024. It was originally a Juniper Networks proprietary SDN called Open Contrail and wasn’t open, then Juniper opened it and renamed it Tungsten Fabric, and finally wind down in August 2024. 

Other supported isolation methods do not offer encapsulations or markings that switch fabric or other network components can understand, making the CloudStack deployment to operate as an “island”.

To overcome scalability challenges, CloudStack offers the ability to use VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN) instead of VLANs. VXLAN extends the number of available network identifiers to 16 million, theoretically supporting a vast number of VPCs. However, integrating VXLAN with traditional switch fabrics presents new challenges.

Challenges with the default Multicast-based VXLAN Isolation

Most traditional switch fabric solutions—such as Cisco ACI, Arista CloudVision, Juniper Apstra, and others—do not natively integrate with CloudStack’s VXLAN implementation. As a result, CloudStack’s default VXLAN, based on multicast, operates as a VXLAN “island,” isolated from the physical network infrastructure. This isolation creates several problems:

– Can’t extend VPCs: Without integration between the VXLAN control plane of the physical switch fabric and the VXLAN control plane the Apache CloudStack there’s no scalable way to extend the virtual network beyond the boundaries of the CloudStack. 

– No Direct Connect Equivalent: CSPs cannot offer services similar to AWS Direct Connect, which would allow customers to establish private connectivity between CloudStack VPC and their data centers or offices.

– Scaling Limitations of CloudStack’s Virtual Router: CloudStack’s built-in virtual router does not scale efficiently for large environments. Replacing it with an external component isn’t feasible without VXLAN control plane integration.

Netris: A Solution for Scalable, Automated Networking

Netris addresses these challenges by offering network automation, abstraction, and operations software that is purpose-built for building and operating clouds.

Netris’ switch fabric manager natively integrates with CloudStack controller through API and with its virtual VXLAN fabric using BGP/EVPN control plane. This integration enables CSPs to build scalable and automated network infrastructures that overcome the limitations of traditional switch fabrics.

Seamless VXLAN Integration

By integrating with CloudStack’s virtual VXLAN fabric using BGP/EVPN and APIs, Netris enables the virtual network segments to be extendable into the physical network switches. Basically, the switch fabric’s VXLAN fabric is connected with CloudStack’s VXLAN fabric at the underlay and control plane levels, and the Netris controller is connected with the CloudStack controller on API level – two integrations exchanging vital metadata for seamless operation. This native integration provides several benefits:

– Extended VPC Connectivity: Enables connectivity between VPCs and external networks, breaking the limitations of the VXLAN “island.”

– AWS-like Direct Connect Functionality: CSPs can offer services equivalent to AWS Direct Connect, allowing customers to establish private, high-throughput connections to their VPCs.

– Scalable Network Isolation: Supports overlapping IP addresses across numerous VPCs without the constraints of VLAN limits.

Replacing the Virtual Router with Netris SoftGate

Netris SoftGate is a cloud networking functions software designed for CSPs. It runs on dedicated Linux servers serving any VM, Container, or Bare Metal endpoint connected to Netris-managed switch fabric. Netris SoftGate seamlessly replaces CloudStack’s virtual router, offering a more scalable and robust solution, while the end-users still continue using CloudStack’s native methods. 

– NAT function: Netris SoftGate provides scalable NAT functionality for Internet Gateway (SNAT), NAT Gateway (Port forwarding), and Elastic IP (1:1 DNAT) functionalities. 

– Elastic Load Balancer: Netris Layer-4 load balancer integrates with Apache CloudStack for Elastic Load Balancer functionality. Netris Layer-4 load balancer has TCP and HTTP health checks and is using Maglev algorithm for consistent hashing to provide horizontal scalability. 

– Network Access Control: ACLs defined in Apache CloudStack are picked up by Netris. The external traffic is controlled on SoftGate nodes, while local traffic between VPCs or Subnets/Tiers is locally controlled on CloudStack hypervisors.

– Scalability: SoftGate can scale out horizontally by adding more nodes, accommodating growing network demands without performance degradation. SoftGate is running on dedicated servers, and the load distribution and multi-tenancy are automatically handled by Netris’s network automation engine.

How Netris Enhances CloudStack Operations

With Netris integrated into Apache CloudStack, CSPs and their customers experience a more streamlined and scalable networking environment.

Seamless End-User Experience

End-users continue to interact with CloudStack as usual:

– Create VPCs: Users can create Virtual Private Clouds without worrying about underlying network limitations.

– Configure NAT and Load Balancing: Set up NAT rules and load balancer configurations directly within CloudStack or through Kubernetes.

– Manage Network Access Control: Define access control rules to secure network traffic.

Netris handles the complexity behind the scenes, automatically translating these user configurations into appropriate configuration of the switch fabric and running cloud networking functions on the SoftGate.

Streamlining Cloud Provider’s Network Engineering

Netris streamlines network engineering through network automation and abstraction, multi-vendor hardware, and an expert technical assistance center.

–  Network Automation: Netris automates day-0/1 and day-2 operations of network switch fabrics and SoftGate, so there’s no need to develop tedious home-grown scripts to go and scrap CLIs or learn complex APIs. Netris controller provides an intuitive web console and Terraform provider for network engineers and devops/netops to manage all aspects of the physical switch network from a centralized controller. 

– Multi-Vendor Hardware: Netris fabric manager supports ethernet switches of various vendors such as NVIDIA (Mellanox), Arista, Dell, Edge Core, and other vendors will follow. SoftGate only requires Ubuntu Linux and a certain amount of CPU/RAM resources, so it is compatible with all modern servers.

– Support: Netris provides 24/7/365 support through highly qualified network experts who can help you anytime you need technical assistance.

Benefits of Using Netris with Apache CloudStack

Integrating Netris with Apache CloudStack offers several advantages for CSPs:

– Scalability: Overcomes VLAN limitations, supporting millions of VPCs with overlapping IPs.

– Flexibility: Provides the ability to offer services akin to AWS, GCP, and other large cloud providers.

– Performance: Replaces the less scalable virtual router with a robust, horizontally scalable solution.

– Automation: Streamlines network operations through automation, reducing the potential for human error.

– Cost-Effectiveness: Leverages network switches from multiple hardware vendors and commodity servers instead of expensive routers and firewalls, minimizing hardware cost.

Conclusion

As cloud environments continue to grow in scale and complexity, CSPs need networking solutions that can keep pace. Netris offers a scalable, automated networking approach that integrates seamlessly with Apache CloudStack. By addressing the limitations of traditional switch fabrics and enhancing network functionality, Netris enables CSPs to deliver robust, flexible, and high-performance services to their customers.

The post Scalable Automated Networking for Apache CloudStack appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

This year, the Leaseweb HQ in Amsterdam, Netherlands, kicked off an exciting new initiative for developing the next generation of cloud infrastructure – European Cloud Campus.

In collaboration with the European Commission and based on the IPCEI funds granted by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, this project aims to strengthen Europe’s digital and technical sovereignty by establishing a fully European cloud. We are one of over 100 organizations from twelve EU member states to be chosen to participate in the IPCEI CIS (The Important project of Common European Interest on Cloud Infrastructure and Services), which has funding totaling to around three billion euros. It is from under this framework that our European Cloud Campus was established. The idea is to help create a “Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum” that prevents European cloud infrastructure from being tied to a single provider and establishes a local European Digital Sovereign Cloud.

Why is the IPCEI CIS important?

Digital Sovereignty

Data sovereignty has been a hot topic in Europe for some time now, with concerns around the privacy and security of sensitive European data in the cloud. This is because currently, public cloud infrastructure is dominated by a handful of hyperscalers, which are not accountable to EU law in the same way that a local company would be. For air-tight security and GDPR compliance, European data needs a European sovereign cloud. The IPCEI CIS aims to create European independence in the cloud by removing the dependency on non-European players, which will result in European digital sovereignty.

Vendor lock-in

Europe’s dependency on these foreign companies also leads to issues around scalability, interoperability, and competitiveness. Vendor lock-in has hindered European providers from competing in the market, so Leaseweb is helping to develop an open ecosystem for financial and technological advantages, also enhancing switching capabilities in line with the Data Act.

Economic Boost

The IPCEI CIS will create jobs, attract investments, boost European partnerships and foster growth opportunities for the European region. This will greatly benefit locals but also make the region more appealing to knowledge workers in the EU, whose skills are needed to help combat the shortage of IT talent.

Cost-efficiency

Supporting regional cloud providers rather than non-EU hyperscalers will ensure there are cost-effective alternatives for the European market. Combating the current oligopoly and fostering competition will be a key part of bringing infrastructure costs down, stimulating growth in the European digital economy and providing independent cyber security digital infrastructure.

Therefore, the European Cloud Campus supports the increasing demand for independent European-based digital infrastructure providers, data processing technologies, AI, and cloud applications. Hence, the need to develop a European sovereign cloud and its incorporation shaping Europe’s digital future based on EU Cloud Computing.

What does Leaseweb aim to achieve?

The IPCEI CIS fits well with Leaseweb’s broader goals to deliver hybrid cloud services that are highly scalable, energy efficient, automated, vertically integrated and multi-tenant.

Sustainability

Leaseweb has already been committed to reducing our carbon footprint for some time, with our Green Team leading the way towards our sustainability goals.The IPCEI CIS is an exciting opportunity to revolutionize the way our systems  e will be working towards perfecting green computing in Europe by developing sustainable solutions wherever we can and investigating how we can measure the sustainability of the cloud. Leaseweb is an established member of the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact through CISPE.  The IPCEI CIS is an exciting opportunity to revolutionize the way our systems impact the environment. We will be working towards perfecting green computing in Europe by developing sustainable solutions wherever we can and investigating how we can measure the sustainability of the cloud. Leaseweb is an established member of the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact through CISPE.

Cybersecurity

Under the IPCEI CIS, security is a major priority when designing and building the new infrastructure, implementing NIS2 and other European state-of-the-art cybersecurity principles for independent cloud computing federated digital infrastructure. The more digital independence Europe has, the stronger our security.

Collaboration

The IPCEI CIS will require enormous collaboration, and we are excited to partner with educational institutions, NGOs, and other European companies. We believe that building open-source software is key to securing Europe’s digital future and we are excited to contribute. Our vision is for Europe to not just compete in the market, but to lead it. So, we will be training ‘cloud workers’ to uplift a growing new workforce and prepare for Europe’s future.

Learn more about Leaseweb’s European Cloud Campus.

Be sure to attend the talk of our Product Owner, Neven Dogovic, on IPCEI and Leaseweb’s European Cloud Campus at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference in Madrid this November.

The post Leaseweb’s European Cloud Campus Takes Off appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Scalability and data security are two fundamental requirements of an on-prem enterprise storage platform. Scalability ensures the platform will meet your need for storage consolidation both now and into the future. Robust security protects your most valuable asset – your company’s data — from the full range of threat vectors. Cloudian is a proven leader in both.

This blog discusses how Cloudian’s S3-compatible software was designed from the start to deliver on these requirements.

Scalability  

Cloudian was built for simple, modular scalability to exabytes. Here’s how.

Modular design for capacity-on-demand

Cloudian is built on a fully peer-to-peer software architecture that enables limitless expansion of storage capacity, allowing enterprises to scale their storage from terabytes to petabytes without service interruptions. In the Cloudian architecture, each storage “node” consists of an industry-standard server running an instance of Cloudian HyperStore software. All nodes run the same software and are therefore identical in terms of its features and capabilities. As nodes are added the total usable capacity increases.

Performance scalability

Along with capacity, performance also scales as storage nodes are added. Because all Cloudian nodes can respond to incoming requests, the aggregate bandwidth of the system increases with each additional node, ensuring consistent and efficient data access. This means you can grow the environment without creating the performance bottlenecks found in scale-up storage platforms.

Multi-tenancy for management efficiency

To capitalize on scale, it’s imperative that you be able to securely share that capacity among many difference users and workloads. Cloudian HyperStore is a multi-tenant environment, allowing a single storage system to serve multiple customers, or “tenants.” Each tenant’s data is isolated in its own namespace. It remains invisible to other tenants, ensuring privacy and security. This secure sharing capability delivers on the operational benefits of a limitlessly scalable data lake by letting you add workloads without fear of compromising sensitive information.

Erasure coding and replication ensure data durability

Data durability is closely connected to scalability in the Cloudian architecture. To achieve scale, Cloudian HyperStore aggregates raw capacity from multiple independent server nodes. Data can be stored to those independent nodes using techniques including erasure coding and/or replication to achieve the desired level of data durability.

Erasure coding divides data into fragments, encoding them with redundant data pieces, and distributing them across multiple nodes, which can all be at the same site or at multiple sites. This ensures that data can be reconstructed even if some fragments are lost.

Data replication creates multiple copies of data and storing them across different nodes, providing redundancy and high availability.

Erasure coding can be configured in a number of ways, including the most common configuration, “4+2”, in which data is sharded across six nodes in a manner that allows for full data access even if two nodes were to fail. Many other EC configs are possible, along with different levels of data replication. The result is configurable data durability, up to (and even beyone) 14 nines data durability.

Bucket-level policies for granular control

Additionally, Cloudian HyperStore’s bucket-level storage policies enable precise control over data durability and performance characteristics for each data type. This flexibility allows organizations to tailor their storage strategy to meet specific needs, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. By selecting appropriate storage policies, businesses can optimize for high performance where needed and ensure robust data protection for critical information.

Software-defined for operational flexibility

Cloudian’s software-defined approach also contributes to scalability. Cloudian is deployed on standard x86 hardware of most any type, flexibility allows organizations to scale easily with commodity infrastructure or with existing infrastructure. This reduces capital expenditure while maintaining high performance and reliability.

Security

Security is critical for a cloud-like infrastructure. Cloudian is designed to be a shared platform, and it’s designed to be distributed across sites, if needed. Access controls and data security were designed in at multiple levels to achieve this flexibility in a highly secure way.

Security certifications

With the most security certifications in object storage, HyperStore helps organizations meet compliance requirements effectively.

• FIPS 140-2 Data Encryption Validation: NIST awarded Cloudian’s FIPS 140-2 Level 1 validation, signifying that HyperStore data encryption methods have been independently reviewed and tested.
• HyperStore is also certified to meet the requirements of SEC Rule 17a-4(f), CFTC 17 C.F.R. § 1.31, FINRA 4511c, IDW PS 880 (German) and OR §§ 957ff (Swiss) regulations, and meets the data sanitization standards specified by NIST 800-88.

Ransomware protection

To protect against ransomware corruption, Cloudian offers S3 Object Lock (WORM, write once, read many) functionality. Once Object Lock is enabled, your data is made immutable and cannot be altered or deleted until the policy-defined retention period is met. Ransomware cannot encrypt the data.

Intrusion defense

In addition, HyperStore is hardened by the use of HyperStore Shell (HSH) and RootDisable, securing the solution at the system level, even disabling root access to make the solution impregnable. Similar solutions typically have porous root access leaving system-level breaches possible. This is a hardened solution, verified in government testing, and is certified compliant with the non-rewritable, non-erasable storage requirements of  SEC Rule 17a-4(f).

Summary

Cloudian HyperStore is a robust and scalable storage platform that addresses the needs of modern enterprises. Its capabilities as an AI Data Lake and software-defined storage solution provide flexibility, security, and seamless integration with cloud services, making it a practical choice for managing the complexities of digital transformation and data growth. The system’s modular growth capabilities and performance scaling ensure that it can meet the demands of any organization, regardless of size.

The post How Cloudian HyperStore Delivers Scalability and Data Security appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024 is announcing a new Sponsorship Opportunity – Become a Digital Sponsor at the Event!

If you would like to support the community and contribute to the project, but your budget is tight by the end of the year, or you cannot travel, we have an option for you!

A new digital sponsorship package for the CloudStack Collaboration 2024 is available now at a promo rate – 1500 EUR €950 EUR until October 10th.

This sponsorship is an exclusive sponsorship option for small and medium companies who may be seeking to support the event and the CloudStack project via alternative pricing points and get some visibility over their work in the community. By becoming a digital sponsor, your company receives:

• 2 x Sponsored social media posts on the official CloudStack social media (LinkedIn and X) – related to your work in the Community and with CloudStack.

• 1 sponsored blog to be featured on the event website – https://www.cloudstackcollab.org/blog/

• Your company logo to be featured on the sponsors section of the event website

• Digital and verbal recognition throughout the event. This may be in the form of verbally thanking sponsors and featuring sponsors’ logos on session slides

• 1-2 minutes interview pre-recorded before the event to be featured on the CloudStack YouTube channel. This interview will discuss topics such as why your company has chosen to support the conference and Apache CloudStack project, your use case with Apache CloudStack and relevant topics in the cloud computing industry.

The post Digital Sponsorship Opportunity for the CloudStack Collaboration Conference appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Hello, I am Ivet, and I have been involved in the organization of the CloudStack Collaboration Conference for the last 4 years. I am excited to have the chance to organize the event in Madrid this year together with other volunteers from the CloudStack Community. I’ve been involved in the IT sector since the beginning of my career, focusing on companies either building their own infra or selling cloud, storage and managed services. As a person with 15 years of experience in this sector, I have had the chance to meet a vast majority of the people from the industry in person, visit key events, and learn from them. I gathered unique experience and knowledge of the IT industry and made a lot of connections and friendships. Now, I am happy to contribute my knowledge and skills to the organisation of the largest get-together of a viral open-source community – the Apache CloudStack Community.

Can you give us an overview of CloudStack Collaboration Conference?

CCC2024 is a global gathering for individuals who use, contribute to, or are interested in the Apache CloudStack project. As an open-source project with steadily growing interest over the years, the CloudStack community is widely dispersed across the globe. While the community has strong online collaboration and communication mechanisms, we believe that in-person interaction is invaluable.

Once a year, we create an opportunity for face-to-face engagement, which offers significant benefits to all involved. Users can deepen their knowledge, companies can explore new features and capabilities, and contributors can connect with like-minded individuals for future collaboration. The event also offers sponsors unique opportunities to tap into the community’s expertise, explore new business prospects, and forge strategic partnerships.

What visitors can expect from the event this year?

We do the CloudStack Collaboration Conference as independent event for a 4 year. The first year we started as an online event, due to the pandemic. Next 2 years we did it in Sofia and Paris as a hybrid event. As people have no more constrains for travelling, this year we are back to the in-person only format. In my opinion, the in-person format is something preferred from all speakers, attendees and sponsors.

The biggest difference from previous years is that this year, we are extending the event to a three-day format and will start with a hackathon. It will create a focused environment where developers can rapidly prototype, build, and improve features. This concentrated effort can result in significant progress in a short period, advancing the project quickly.

Also I expect it to bring together a diverse group of contributors, fostering collaboration and strengthening the community around CloudStack. Networking, exchanging ideas, and building relationships, which are crucial for the project’s long-term sustainability – this is our target for this year.

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced in organizing this event, and how did you overcome them?

One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced in organizing CCC is securing the necessary budget. Events, particularly in the IT sector, are costly to organize, with expenses ranging from venue rental and technical equipment to marketing efforts, video coverage. Our project doesn’t receive external funding or grants, so we rely entirely on sponsorships to cover these costs.

Securing sponsorships, however, can be a significant hurdle. It requires building strong relationships with potential sponsors and demonstrating the value that the CloudStack Collaboration Conference can offer them in terms of visibility and networking. To overcome this challenge, we’ve focused on clearly communicating the benefits to sponsors, such as access to a highly targeted audience and the opportunity to engage directly with key stakeholders in the industry.

What does success look like for this event, and how do you measure it?

Success for this event is multi-faceted, encompassing several key areas that reflect both the immediate impact and long-term benefits of the event.

First and foremost, success means delivering a valuable and engaging experience for all participants—attendees, speakers, sponsors, and contributors alike. Going a step backwards, the success for me is to have diverse speakers, presenting their achievements with CloudStack. Of course we are also measuring the number of attendees and their engagement with the talks and sponsors.For sponsors, success is measured by their satisfaction with the visibility and engagement they receive during the event.

We also consider the growth and impact on the community as a long-term measure of success. This includes an increase in contributors, a more robust and engaged community, and the creation of new collaborations or partnerships that extend beyond the event itself.

What inspired you to organize IT events, and what keeps you motivated?

For many years, I’ve been on the other side of the stage—participating in major IT events as an exhibitor, sponsor, and speaker. Being in this role is both challenging and immensely rewarding. I find great inspiration in seeing the smiles of community members I have the privilege to meet and in hearing diverse talks and success stories related to Apache CloudStack. The greatest reward for me is contributing to the growth and development of the community and being part of its ongoing success.

The post Interview with Ivet Petrova Madzharova: Behind the Scenes at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

One of the benefits of integrating LINSTOR®, the LINBIT® developed software-defined storage utility, with Apache CloudStack is that you can use it to compliment CloudStack’s disk offerings to provide tiered storage within CloudStack. Tiered storage just means different types of storage, for example, faster or slower storage. Having tiered storage within a system or platform gives you the flexibility to choose where you store data. For example, you might want to store frequently accessed data on faster storage and less frequently accessed data, such as backups, on slower storage. This flexibility also lets you have different storage offerings for customers depending on different product plans.

CloudStack supports tiered storage through its concept of disk offerings. By configuring different disk offerings, a CloudStack administrator has “a choice of disk size and IOPS (Quality of Service) for primary data storage.”¹ LINBIT friends, ShapeBlue, posted a great blog article that further explores the topic of CloudStack disk offerings within the broader context of the different storage options within CloudStack. This blog post is essential reading if you are new to the topic or if you are interested in learning more about CloudStack’s storage options and capabilities.

LINSTOR supports tiered storage through its concepts of storage pools and resource groups. You can create storage pools in LINSTOR that have different back-end physical devices and different logical volume types on top of them, such as LVM or ZFS volumes. You can then create different LINSTOR resource groups that you can associate with different storage pools. LINSTOR resource groups serve as templates for resources that you create from them. In the case of integrating LINSTOR with CloudStack by using the LINSTOR CloudStack plugin, resources will be created automatically from resource groups when needed.

This article will show you how you can easily create different LINSTOR storage pools and resource groups, and then associate them with different CloudStack disk offerings.

Prerequisites

This article assumes that you have a CloudStack cluster and a LINSTOR cluster already set up. These clusters can share nodes if you want, they do not need to be physically (or virtually) separate clusters. You will also need to have different storage back end devices connected to your diskful LINSTOR satellite nodes. This article uses two backing devices, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd, on each LINSTOR satellite node. You will need to use your imagination that these are actually different physical devices. For the sake of example, /dev/sdc will be faster storage, such as an NVMe drive. The /dev/sdd device will be slower storage, such as a traditional spinning magnetic hard disk drive. This is a simplistic example to get you quickly started. In a real-world deployment, the storage back end would likely be multiple devices in a RAID configuration, either for redundancy or performance reasons, or both. However, the underlying concepts and commands in this article will be the same whether your storage pool is backed by a single device or multiple devices in a RAID configuration.

In this article, the example CloudStack and LINSTOR cluster consists of four nodes: cloudstack-0 through cloudstack-3. The cloudstack-0 node runs the CloudStack installation and is also the LINSTOR controller node. This node also runs the LINSTOR client software. The remaining three nodes are LINSTOR satellite nodes.

Setting Up Tiered Storage Using LINSTOR

Configuring tiered storage in LINSTOR for this use case involves creating a different storage pool for each backing device, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd, on each LINSTOR satellite node and then creating different resource groups that are backed by the different storage pools.

Creating LINSTOR Storage Pools

To create a thin-provisioned storage pool named lvm-thin-fast backed by /dev/sdc, on the LINSTOR controller node enter the following command:

# for node in cloudstack-{1..3}; do \
linstor physical-storage create-device-pool --pool-name lvm_fastpool \
LVMTHIN $node /dev/sdc --storage-pool lvm-thin-fast; done

To create a thin-provisioned storage pool named lvm-thin-notasfast backed by /dev/sdd, on the LINSTOR controller node enter the following command:

# for node in cloudstack-{1..3}; do \
linstor physical-storage create-device-pool --pool-name lvm_notasfastpool \
LVMTHIN $node /dev/sdd --storage-pool lvm-thin-notasfast; done

NOTE: The choice of using an LVM thin-provisioned storage as a back end for these storage pools is for example only. You might also choose thick-provisioned LVM, or thin or thick-provisioned ZFS as back ends, depending on your needs.

Resource Groups

Next, create two LINSTOR resource groups, one for each of the storage pools that you just created.

On your LINSTOR controller node, enter the following commands:

# linstor resource-group create my_fast_group \
--storage-pool lvm-thin-fast \
--place-count 2
# linstor resource-group create my_notasfast_group \
--storage-pool lvm-thin-notasfast \
--place-count 2

Specifying a placement count of two ensures that LINSTOR will automatically place and maintain two copies of any resources created from the resource group on diskful nodes in the cluster. On any remaining LINSTOR satellite nodes in the cluster, LINSTOR will place a diskless copy of the resource.

Enter a linstor resource-group list command and output will show your two newly created resource groups:

╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
┊ ResourceGroup      ┊ SelectFilter                       ┊ VlmNrs ┊ Description ┊
╞════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╡
[...]
╞┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄╡
┊ my_fast_group      ┊ PlaceCount: 2                      ┊        ┊             ┊
┊                    ┊ StoragePool(s): lvm-thin-fast      ┊        ┊             ┊
╞┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄╡
┊ my_notasfast_group ┊ PlaceCount: 2                      ┊        ┊             ┊
┊                    ┊ StoragePool(s): lvm-thin-notasfast ┊        ┊             ┊
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Creating Primary Storage in CloudStack

To create new primary storage in CloudStack, backed by your new LINSTOR storage pools, navigate to the CloudStack web interface (http://cloudstack-0:8008, in this example) and log in as an administrator.

Next, click the “Primary storage” item from within the “Infrastructure” left menu list. Then, click the “Add primary storage” button.

Creating Fast Primary Storage

To create primary storage backed by your “fast” LINSTOR storage pool, complete the fields as shown in the screen grab. Replace the server address shown, cloudstack-0, to match the LINSTOR controller node hostname or IP address in your environment.

Creating Not As Fast Primary Storage

To create primary storage backed by your “not as fast” LINSTOR storage pool, complete the fields as shown in the screen grab. Again, replace the server address shown, cloudstack-0, to match the LINSTOR controller node hostname or IP address in your environment.

When you create primary storage in CloudStack, the key to being able to link the primary storage that you create with CloudStack disk offerings is the “storage tags” field.

Setting Up Disk Offerings in CloudStack

After creating your different CloudStack primary storage, next create a disk offering based on each primary storage. To do this, click the “Disk offerings” item within the “Service offerings” left menu list. Next, click the “Add disk offering” button.

Complete the fields as shown in the screen grab to create a “fast” disk offering.

Next, click the “Add disk offering” button again and complete the fields as shown in the screen grab to create a “not as fast” disk offering.

QoS Settings

While this simplistic example did not configure them, you could, if you wanted to, configure some basic quality of service (QoS) for your disk offerings. You can do this at the CloudStack level by clicking either the hypervisor or the storage selector under the “QoS type” field when you add a disk offering.

If you select the storage QoS type, then you can specify minimum and maximum IOPS for the disk offering. You must also configure an “IOPS total” number when you configure your CloudStack primary storage. When CloudStack provisions new resources from the disk offering, the “Max IOPS” number that you configured for the disk offering will be subtracted from the “IOPS total” number that you configured for the primary storage associated with the disk offering.

To arrive at reasonable IOPS numbers to use for your primary storage and for your disk offerings, you will need to do some benchmarking. A utility such as Fio can help you benchmark.

LINBIT solutions architects have written blog posts about benchmarking LINSTOR and DRBD® if you want to get some general ideas about the process:

• Benchmarking DRBD
• Benchmarking on Ampere Altra Max Platform with LINBIT SDS

As a service provider, configuring QoS for your disk offerings might be a further way that you can have tiered offerings for the deployment options that you offer your customers. Or it can simply be a way that you can ensure performance levels for your storage, for internal reasons.

Conclusion

Having support for tiered storage is important because it gives you flexibility. You have the flexibility to use different storage types, for example, slower or faster, for different workloads. You also have the flexibility to use tiered storage as the basis for different product plans that you can offer your customers, for example, if you are a virtual private server (VPS) service provider. Thankfully, configuring tiered storage in CloudStack using LINSTOR and the LINSTOR CloudStack storage plugin is easy to do.

If you are interested in evaluating LINSTOR for your CloudStack deployment, or if you have questions about how you might use or configure LINSTOR for your specific needs, reach out to the LINBIT team or join us and the community of LINBIT software users in the LINBIT community forums. CloudStack also has documentation which you can find hosted on the Apache Software Foundation website.

The post Configuring Tiered Storage in CloudStack Using LINSTOR appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

As a Gold Sponsor, Your.Online will be making a significant contribution to the conference experience by helping covering the costs of the event, alongside the other event sponsors. They will also be paying for the drinks at the end of Day 2, where attendees unwind, network, and share their insights with one another.

About CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024

The CloudStack Collaboration Conference is a premier event that brings together developers, users, and enthusiasts of Apache CloudStack from around the world. This year’s conference promises a rich agenda featuring insightful talks, hands-on sessions, and ample networking opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a newcomer to the world of cloud computing, CCC 2024 will offer valuable experiences and takeaways.

Your.Online: Empowering Digital Potential

Your.Online is a forward-thinking company dedicated to providing highly standardized managed services that help high-intent customers achieve their full online potential. With a robust track record in acquiring, developing, and empowering strong local brands, Your.Online excels in nurturing entrepreneurial spirit and uniting teams of local builders. Their commitment to innovation is reflected in their support for industry-leading events like #CSCollab2024.

CTO at Your.Online, Wido den Hollander shared “Your.Online has been a long-time user of CloudStack. We understand the importance of in-person meetings, as it grows the community and makes it stronger. Therefore, we sponsor the CloudStack Collaboration Conference, it’s an investment in the project”

Register for CCC 2024 and Submit Your CFP

Don’t miss your chance to be part of this landmark event! Registration is now open, and we encourage you to secure your spot soon, as the early bird ticket discount ends on September 16^th. Additionally, the Call for Presentations (CFP) is open until 20^th September for those interested in presenting their insights and innovations at the conference. Whether you would like to share your use case or an integration of feature you have been working on, the community welcomes your submissions.

We look forward to seeing you in Madrid and sharing the experience with you. Join us in celebrating the future of cloud computing!

The post Your.Online Joins CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024 as Gold Sponsor! appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

However, none of this would be possible without the incredible support of our sponsors. Their contributions are the backbone of this event, ensuring that we can bring together a diverse community of developers, users, and CloudStack enthusiasts. The funds raised by our sponsors go directly into making the CloudStack Collaboration Conference a reality, covering everything from venue arrangements to catering.

This blog delves into each sponsor’s services, how they contribute to the CloudStack community and why they have chosen to sponsor the event.

ShapeBlue

“ShapeBlue is the largest independent integrator of CloudStack technologies globally. We combine hundreds of man-years of experience designing and building complex cloud, network, and storage infrastructure with globally leading skills in Apache CloudStack. Our services include consulting, integration, training and infrastructure support. Our technical teams are all active contributors to the Apache CloudStack project, and a good percentage of our team are also project committers.

We are deeply committed to the Apache CloudStack community and helping companies, who would like to embrace the benefits of open-source technology. At ShapeBlue we believe that the usage of open-source solutions and CloudStack specifically, is the sustainable way in which businesses can ensure their profitability and vendor independence. 

As part of our team, we have 18 Project Committers and 8 PMC members. All our team members are active in the community and always available to help you learn more about the technology, set up your Apache CloudStack PoC, or resolve a technical issue. Beyond technical support, we are dedicated to promoting the project’s value proposition, organizing events and local user groups, and enhancing the project’s marketing and brand awareness.

For another year, ShapeBlue is supporting the CloudStack Collaboration Conference.

For us, this event is the annual highlight for the global CloudStack community. The opportunity to gather the entire community in one place is immensely valuable for both project development and community growth. Each year, we contribute to the conference by assisting with organisation, providing speakers, and organising workshops and interactive sessions. Every company that benefits from an open-source project should also give back. We look forward to meeting all partners, customers, and friends in Madrid.”

• Ivet Petrova, Marketing Director at ShapeBlue.

LINBIT

“LINBIT® is the force behind DRBD®, the de facto open source standard for high-availability (HA) software, and LINSTOR®, which manages data storage for enterprise virtualization and cloud computing. Both open-source software’s build the basis for our software-defined storage solution LINBIT SDS. It delivers ultra-fast, resilient block storage for private and cloud infrastructure. Using LINBIT SDS enables companies to use commodity hardware to create high-performance storage clusters. With an integration to CloudStack, LINBIT SDS simplifies building, running, and controlling block storage. It includes the DRBD Kernel Driver, LINSTOR Volume Manager, an intuitive GUI that simplifies multi-cluster management, and 24/7 support.

LINBIT’s main contribution to CloudStack is the LINSTOR driver. This driver not only brings a new driver for Primary Storage to CloudStack but also makes one of LINBIT’s developers an Apache contributor. With this driver, the whole LINSTOR/DRBD storage stack becomes available for CloudStack. This enables users to build performant storage for their Clouds with open-source software only out of commodity hardware. It comes with all features expected from a storage software stack: snapshots, synchronous replication for HA, optional encryption at rest, optional encryption in transit, asynchronous replication between sites, and continuous snapshot delta shipping for backup and disaster recovery purposes.

CCC is the premier event for meeting the CloudStack community, learning about cool projects for end customers, and hearing about the new features coming to CloudStack. LINBIT is proud to be at CCC for the third time. As open-source is in our company DNA, we feel right at home at the event about the greatest Open-Source software stack for building clouds. We are looking forward to meeting you at CCC in Madrid.”

• Philipp Reisner, CEO at LINBIT

StorPool

“StorPool Storage is a block-storage platform designed for modern, large-scale cloud infrastructure. The platform delivers the ultimate speed, agility, scalability, and cost performance required by modern applications and users.

StorPool’s customers are IT service providers building public, private and hybrid clouds – typically Managed Service Providers, Cloud Service Providers, hosting companies, SaaS vendors and other enterprises.

The StorPool Storage platform is a Storage as a Service (STaaS) offering, with a bring your own servers model. It combines software, plus a fully managed storage service that transforms industry-standard hardware into an ultra-fast, highly available and scalable storage system.

StorPool is a longtime supporter of the CloudStack community. Our data storage is a leading choice for CloudStack storage with a seamless integration.

A longtime supporter of the CloudStack community, StorPool delivers the ultimate modern data storage solution for Apache CloudStack primary and secondary storage needs. With Apache CloudStack and StorPool Storage, cloud providers, MSPs and enterprises can deploy a highly automated cloud that delivers the application performance and reliability our users need while easily addressing changes in user requirements over the long term.

StorPool is excited to support the CloudStack community once again at CCC 2024. The event is a great opportunity for our team to meet and reconnect with technical experts and CloudStack enthusiasts. Each year at this show, we look forward to learning from the attendees, hearing about their experiences in working with CloudStack, and diving into the storage layer to better understand the role data storage plays in the performance, scalability and cost optimization of their clouds.”

• Katerina Temelkova, Full Stack Marketer at StorPool

proIO

“proIO is a Private Cloud Provider dedicated to supporting German SMBs across various industries through its Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Managed Hosting solutions, based out of Frankfurt, Germany. With a strong belief in open-source technology, proIO leverages its extensive experience with Apache CloudStack to deliver tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of its customers.

Apache CloudStack enables proIO to offer highly customized solutions with its minimal footprint, flexibility, ease of use, and compatibility with standard hardware. These attributes allow proIO to optimize and streamline its customers’ IT infrastructure, reflecting our commitment to providing efficient, customer-focused solutions.

Our commitment to open-source principles is demonstrated through active participation in community events, where we share insights and engage in meaningful dialogue with the CloudStack community. This ongoing involvement helps foster innovation and collaboration within the open-source ecosystem.

Supporting the CloudStack Collaboration Conference (CCC) is a natural extension of our values and mission. By sponsoring CCC, we aim to strengthen our connection with the CloudStack community, promote innovation, and contribute to the development of open-source technologies that are crucial to our operations. The conference offers a valuable platform for knowledge exchange, networking with industry peers, and staying updated on the latest advancements in cloud technology, all of which are essential for our continuous commitment to our customers and the broader tech community.”

• Swen Brüseke, CEO at proIO

CDLAN

“We fuel the growth and competitiveness of companies with a robust network infrastructure and two state-of-the-art data centers.

Our hallmark is an unwavering commitment to customer focus and clear, direct offerings.

We view digitalization not just as a mere trend but as an accelerator of technological and cultural transformations. We trust human relationships because we believe they are the lifeblood of technological innovation.

Proud owners of C21, the Tier IV Compliant Data Center located in the heart of Caldera Park, Milan, and E100, our Data Center in Rome.

Our team contributes to the CloudStack community by actively reporting bugs and suggesting improvements to the developers. Additionally, in the coming months, we plan to start developing several small features that we will make publicly available once completed. By participating in this way, we aim to support the continuous improvement and evolution of the CloudStack platform, contributing to its reliability and functionality for all users. Our commitment to these efforts reflects our dedication to fostering a vibrant and collaborative open-source ecosystem. 

We are supporting the CloudStack Collaboration Conference because we firmly believe in the importance and value of these events. This in-person gathering is a unique opportunity for the global CloudStack community and open-source technology enthusiasts to meet, establish meaningful contacts, and engage in thoughtful exchanges. By supporting this event, we are investing in the growth and development of our community, ensuring that we stay at the forefront of technological advancements and best practices, while also benefiting from high-quality training and insights from community leaders, project members, and contributors.”

• Salvatore Sciacco, R&D at CDLAN

The post Sponsors for this Year’s CloudStack Collaboration Conference appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

Exclusive In-Person Experience in 2024

This year’s conference is breaking new ground by going exclusively in-person. After careful consideration, collecting feedback from the community and planning, this year we will offer to the community the opportunity to meet face-to-face, fostering deeper connections and more meaningful interactions than ever before.

We did our best to deliver the CloudStack Community to everybody interested during the pandemic period for a few years. Now, we are focusing on growing the community and giving a chance to all contributors, committers and people interested into the project, to meet in-person and interact in a better way.

What to Expect

For those new to the new community, the CloudStack Collaboration Conference is an annual event aimed at developers, operators and users to discuss and evolve the open-source software project, its functionality and real-world operability. This event will introduce you to the CloudStack family, community leaders, project members and contributors.

To gain insight into previous sessions, you’re welcome to explore last year’s event recap blog.

Call for Speakers

The event team is currently accepting session proposals, providing you the opportunity to host your own session on the global stage. If you have a story about CloudStack, building cloud infrastructure, developing CloudStack features or integration, security, scalability, multi-cloud, submit your talk now!

Sponsorship Opportunity

The CloudStack Collaboration Conference is the leading international gathering for enthusiasts of CloudStack and open-source cloud enthusiasts. It is embraced by prominent telecoms, corporations, and Fortune 100 firms worldwide. Seize the chance to support the conference and gain access to network with senior staff and executives from these prestigious organizations. As a sponsor, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with developers, cloud architects, and technical leaders. Additionally, partnering with the CloudStack Collaboration Conference will elevate your brand’s visibility within one of the world’s most dynamic and lively open-source communities.

Download the sponsorship prospectus to learn more about what is included in the different sponsorship packages. 

If you have any questions about #CloudStackConf2024, or would like to sponsor the conference, email the event team at: [email protected]

The post CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2024 appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

The conference, arranged by a group of volunteers from the Apache CloudStack Community, took place in the voco hotel, in Porte de Clichy, Paris. It hosted over 350 attendees from 30+ countries, with 47 speakers holding sessions and workshops.

The Apache CloudStack community would like to express their gratitude to the sponsors of the conference, whose support made the event a reality – ShapeBlue, StorPool, LINBIT, DIMSI, Vates, mitteldeutsche IT, Leaseweb, proIO and Your.Online.

This blog provides a summary of the event, featuring the session slides and recordings.

Day 1 Sessions

State of the Union, Rohit Yadav
The Apache CloudStack project has had another exciting year – with growth in adoption, functionality and community size. In the project’s annual State of The Union talk, the current VP of the project, Rohit Yadav, reflects on the last year of the project’s collaboration, developments in CloudStack and community activity. He sets out how he sees the project developing over the next few years.

What’s New in CloudStack 4.19, Abhishek Kumar
This session gives a brief introduction of the new and exciting feature in the latest (upcoming) CloudStack LTS release, ie, 4.19.0. The discussion includes the details on the timeline of the CloudStack 4.19.0 release, overview of some of the marquee, new features of the release – Object storage framework, KVM ingestion, Hypervisor agnostic simple DRS, CAPC aware CKS, OAuth2, DRaaS with Multi zone disaster recovery, etc and a summary of improvements added since the previous major LTS release of the CloudStack, ie, 4.18.0.

Keynote Talk: Open Source is Not Dead, Charles Schulz
Successful Open Source companies change their business models and then the open source license they were distributing their software on. More and more it feels like Open Source is just a marketing buzzword designed to lure customers to a particular solution. On the regulatory front, the EU is implementing the CRA and handling software as it were trucks manufacturing. Is there any hope left for Open Source? Has it failed in delivering its premise? Fear not. Open Source’s not dead. It has already won and it will prevail again.

Why and How CloudStack at weSystems, Stephan Bienek
Why? What? How? During the session, Stephan shares what made weSystems choose CloudStack as their main platform, which they base most of their managed services on. In addition, he talks about which services they provide based on CloudStack and how they integrated and use CloudStack today.

How We Use CloudStack to Provide Managed Hosting, Swen Brüseke
Swen shows how proIO utilize Cloudstack to provide customers with managed hosting solutions and versatile public and private cloud solutions, mainly based on open-source software.

Panel Discussion: Apache CloudStack Question Time, Giles Sirett, Wido den Hollander, Stephan Bienek, Swen Brüseke
Panel group – taking a range of submitted questions from the audience (across any subject).

   KVM Security Groups Under the Hood, Wido den Hollander 
They are just a few clicks in the UI or a single API call, but how do security groups work at KVM hypervisor level? How do they filter traffic and what else do they do in addition to firewalling? What Anti-Spoofing policies are implemented by the security groups? In this talk, Wido dives into the specifics of the security groups on the KVM hypervisor for both IPv4 and IPv6.

Elevating Privacy and Security in CloudStack, Boris Stoyanov
In an increasingly interconnected digital landscape, safeguarding data privacy and ensuring robust security measures are paramount. CloudStack offers a dynamic ecosystem for deploying and managing cloud resources. However, to fully harness its potential, it is crucial to address privacy and security concerns effectively. This presentation explores the realm of possibilities and demonstrates how CloudStack can enhance the privacy and security of your cloud deployments. Boris examines practical approaches to protect sensitive data, fortify communications, and secure your infra against emerging threats. Join us on a journey to discover how CloudStack can be your trusted ally in the quest for a more secure and private cloud environment.

Migrating VMware Infra to KVM Using CloudStack, Nicolas Vazquez
In this session, Nicolas presents a new feature, targeted for CloudStack 4.19, which allows administrators to migrate Instances from a VMware environment (external or connected to CloudStack) and import them into a KVM CloudStack-managed environment.

Updates on the LINSTOR Driver for CloudStack, Rene Peinthor
About two Years ago, the LINSTOR driver for CloudStack was merged into the CloudStack code base, and it has received updates since then. Rene gives a quick overview of LINSTOR/DRBD and the driver, followed by more details on recently added features. One is the ability to optionally store data snapshots on secondary storage, about making deep copies of templates vs using snapshots, about using LINSTOR/DRBD on XCP-ng hypervisors under Apache CloudStack, and (if finished by November) about VM-snapshots on LINSTOR/DRBD.

Zero to Cloud Hero: Crafting a Private Cloud from Scratch with XCP-ng, Xen Orchestra and CloudStack, Olivier Lambert
Dive into the seamless integration of the Vates stack as the foundation for your CloudStack deployment. In this workshop, you’ll witness the power and simplicity of XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra. From a blank slate to a fully operational private cloud, Olivier guides you through each pivotal step. Learn how to streamline your cloud setup process and unlock the potential of a private cloud infrastructure that’s both efficient and easy to manage. Watch to discover how to transform bare metal into a cloud powerhouse in mere minutes.

VNF Integration and Support in CloudStack, Wei Zhou
In this session, Wei presents how CloudStack 4.19 adds the capability to easily and quickly perform a light-touch integration of networking appliances with ACS, allowing for operators to offer a broader range of networking services while empowering end-users to effortlessly deploy their own virtualized network functions.

Developments to CloudStack’s SDN ecosystem: Integration with VMWare NSX 4, Pearl Dsilva, Alexandre Mattioli
In recent releases, Apache CloudStack has been evolving towards richer support for Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions. In ACS 4.18, we introduced integration with Tungsten Fabric SDN, which opened ACS to several long-awaited features such as overlay networks, BGP, MPLS and other sophisticated networking capabilities. We now are working towards integrating VMWare NSX 4 with CloudStack, which will enable agile software-defined infrastructure for building cloud-native micro-segmented application environments on VMWare using CloudStack. In this talk, Pearl and Alex delve into the expansion of ACS’s SDN ecosystem with the integration of VMWare NSX 4, thus enabling operators to make informed decisions regarding the right SDN platform for their CloudStack deployment. They also look into what it takes to create a new network provider in CloudStack.

Backroll, News and Demo, Pierre Charton, Matthias Dhellin, Ousmane Diarra
Pierre, Matthias, and Ousmane demonstrate the new Backroll version, with a new and easy installation process. They also give a demo of the new features of the project and its integration with CloudStack, providing an all-in-one solution.

Backup and Disaster Recovery with CloudStack and StorPool – Workshop, Venko Moyankov
One of the main shortcomings of CloudStack compared to VMware is the lack of built-in support for disaster recovery. In this workshop, Venko shows how you can build a cloud using Apache CloudStack and StorPool storage that features disaster recovery capabilities and off-site backups. He shows a reference architecture of the solution, followed by a live demo on how to set backup policies, backup virtual machines and recover the VMs in a site-down event. The workshop allows an open discussion about the practical aspects of implementing a DR service, the difficulties of building such solutions and how to address them.

Mitigating Common CloudStack Instance Deployment Failures, Jithin Raju
A discussion on the common failures when using CloudStack taking instance deployment as an example. The session includes 15 specific failure scenarios, their causes, and possible mitigation steps.

Day 2 Sessions

How to Re-use Old Hardware with CloudStack. Saving Money and the Environment, Wido den Hollander
CloudStack allows you to use older hardware for a longer time in your cloud environment. By using older hardware for a longer time you can save money and the environment by not producing new hardware.

  Hypervisor Agnostic DRS in CloudStack – Brief overview & demo, Vishesh Jindal
Vishesh has been working on the feature hypervisor-agnostic DRS in Cloudstack. He briefly overviews the implementation and discusses the algorithms currently available and how they can improve resource allocation and workload balancing in virtualized environments. Additionally, Vishesh showcases a live demo of hypervisor agnostic DRS in action, highlighting its capabilities and effectiveness.

Building a Software Makerspace with CloudStack to Drive Innovation by Improving Learning and Research Abilities at Universities, Jonas Willén, Pierre Le Fèvre, Emil Karlsson
A makerspace today is focused on turning ideas into physical prototypes by providing resources in terms of tools and infrastructure. In a university, a makerspace provides students with an opportunity to build a portfolio. Students experiment through an entire development life cycle by creating prototypes for each stage of a cycle. It has been shown to be a productive method for learning. To the best of our knowledge, software development is yet to be included in the makerspace concept. In the case of our software makerspace, it is following the same principles as a traditional makerspace for device and mechanical prototyping, but instead provides software development tools. One such indispensable tool is cloud-based infrastructure. A cloud facilitates rapid prototyping of machine learning tools, microservices, IoT data mining, etc. This talk presents their approach to extend the concept of a makerspace to software development using a student developed private cloud. They present the method they used to gather requirements from various researchers and students. They also present the final design and the current implementation of the cloud using Apache CloudStack. Finally, they discuss how other universities could implement their own software makerspace and its benefits.

DRBD Deep Dive, Philipp Reisner
LINSTOR/DRBD became a primary storage option for Apache CloudStack nearly two years ago. In this session, Philipp shares insights about the internals of DRBD, the data-path part of the data-storage solution. Knowing about DRBD’s meta-data, the activity log, and the bitmap will enable you to make more educated decisions when it comes to selecting the right hardware for your next ApacheCloudStack+LINSTOR+DRBD deployment. When your servers have different storage tiers, what are the advantages and trade-offs regarding putting data and meta-data on different tiers? Recently, DRBD got a new transport, load-balancing TCP, that joins the existing TCP transport, and the RDMA transport received important updates. Looking beyond DRBD, what is important to know when selecting the RAID level and data alignment? Philipp concludes the session with comments regarding LVM compared to ZFS.

Setting Up Your First CloudStack Environment with Beginners Challenges, MD Rasel
Are you eager to embark on your journey into the world of cloud computing with Apache CloudStack but don’t know where to start? This informative session is designed especially for beginners. MD Rasel guides you through the essential steps of setting up your very first CloudStack environment, from initial installation to basic configuration. This session aims to equip newcomers to Apache CloudStack with the fundamental knowledge and practical skills required to establish their own cloud infrastructure. MR Rasel addresses common challenges that beginners often encounter during the setup process and provide valuable insights on how to overcome them. The session consists of a combination of presentations and live demonstrations. Attendees had the opportunity to follow along with the setup process in real time and ask questions.

Transitioning from VMware vCloud to Apache CloudStack: A Path to Profitability and Competitiveness, Marco Sinhoreli
In this session, Marco explores the potential of migrating from VMware vCloud to Apache CloudStack with KVM. VMware vCloud Suite is a robust cloud infrastructure and management solution that combines vSphere and vRealize Suite, providing automation and operations capabilities for traditional and modern infrastructure and apps. However, the transition to Apache CloudStack can offer enhanced profitability and competitiveness. Marco delves into the benefits of Apache CloudStack, including its cost-effectiveness and open-source nature, and discusses how a gradual migration from VMware vCloud can reduce ownership costs, increase profitability, and enhance competitiveness. He also covers the practical steps and considerations in planning and executing this transition effectively.

CloudStack and GitOps at Enterprise Scale, Alex Dometrius, Rene Glover
The AT&T team recently embarked on a journey with CloudStack and has since deployed a solution which encompasses multiple data-centers. This talk focuses on how they are using open-source tools like CloudStack, FreeIPA, and Metal as a Service (MaaS) to support KVM-based VM provisioning at an enterprise scale within a GitOps model.

2FA and OAuth2 in CloudStack, Andrija Panić
This talk is about authentication and authorization – Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) and OAuth2 explaining their critical roles in enhancing security and user experience within the realm of Apache CloudStack. With Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), we strengthen the authentication process, mitigate password-related or usual login vulnerabilities, and ensure compliance with security standards. On the other side of the authentication spectrum, OAuth2, the industry-standard authorization framework, simplifies the process of granting access to resources. Andrija discusses how this can be used and how it fits in CloudStack.

Centralized Logging Feature in CloudStack using ELK and Grafana, Kiran Chavala
In this session, Kiran demonstrates how to centralize all the CloudStack-related logs in one place using Elastic Search and generate beautiful dashboards in Grafana. This session simplifies the troubleshooting process involved with CloudStack and quickly helps to resolve the issue.

DRaaS using Snapshot copy and destination selection (DRaaS), Alexandre Mattioli
Apache CloudStack 4.19 introduces the capability for end-users to copy their root disk or volume snapshots to one (or more) ACS Zones without operator intervention. In this talk, Alex shows how this simple yet powerful new feature enables for end-users to control where their data resides and for operators to provide low-cost and robust DRaaS to their customers.

  Use Existing Assets to Build a Powerful In-house Cloud Solution, Magali Pervan, Joffrey Luangsaysana, Grégoire Lamodière
How to minimize the impact when it’s time to implement a cloud solution for automating internal workloads and delivering efficient solutions? Magali, Joffrey, and Grégoire present a case study of a successful hardware reuse project, including key metrics: Business objectives, Performance objectives and Financial objectives.

CloudStack Managed User Data and Demo, Harikrishna Patnala
We know existing Userdata support in CloudStack enables users to inject custom scripts or data into virtual machines during provisioning, facilitating automation and customization of VM setup and configuration. This talk is about delivering the extended support of userdata with “Managed UserData” which enables users to register and manage their own UserData script(s) as a CloudStack resource – followed by a demo.

  Project Sustainability and Vendor Contributions in an Apache Governance Model – Panel, Ivet Petrova, Dahn Hoogland and Alex Ivanov
This Panel discusses the Apache CloudStack project sustainability and vendor contributions in an Apache Governance Model. The participants present the different points of view from the development perspective, vendor contributions and PMCs. Panellists share their perspectives on how to help the project grow, increase its visibility and ensure its longevity and healthy development.

  Enabling DPU Hardware Accelerators in XCP-ng Cloud Platform Environment, Andrei Semenov
In cloud computing environments, VMs require fast access to resources like storage and networking. The hardware that the VMs access is implemented in software and/or by passing through a dedicated hardware device. Software-based solutions consume extra CPU cycles, thus resulting in poor performance. Also, these require to expose a device-model to the guest, thus increasing the attack surface. Conversely, hardware passthrough provides better performance and security but can be expensive in terms of the number of physical resources, since each device is dedicated to a single VM. This talk focuses on how Vates is working on sharing hardware resources among VMs by relying on dedicated processors named Data Processing Units (DPU). More precisely, Vates work on offloading Xen hypervisor of storage emulation by relying on Kalray K200 DPU PCIe controllers, a hardware accelerator based on MPPA architecture.

CloudStack Object Storage – An Introduction, Vladimir Petrov
CloudStack 4.19 introduces a new framework for object storage. In this talk, Vladi explains what has driven this development, the architecture chosen and current integration points with Object store providers.

Confidence in CloudStack, Aron Wagner, Nathan Gleason
In an ever-growing landscape of thousands of virtualization and cloud native projects it can be hard to understand what projects reliably just work. Fortunately for the growing community at CloudStack that is precisely what we (American Cloud) found.

  Declarative Kubernetes Cluster Deployment with Cloudstack and Cluster API, Ozhan Karaman
Are you currently managing Kubernetes clusters in the cloud and considering a transition to on-premises infrastructure using Cloudstack? This session is an exciting demonstration of how you can deploy Kubernetes clusters in a declarative manner, leveraging the capabilities of Cloudstack and Cluster API. In this demo, Ozhan showcases a comprehensive solution that combines Packer, Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Cluster API, and Cluster Autoscaler to create a seamless on-premises deployment strategy adaptable to diverse requirements over Cloudstack Infrastructure.

Extending KVM Host HA for Non-NFS Storage, Alex Ivanov
The current KVM Host HA feature depends on the existence of an NFS primary storage to detect which nodes are online, even if other types of primary storage are used. StorPool extends the HA feature to allow other methods to be used for this. The new implementation adds support for using StorPool Storage for HA heartbeats, removing the need for NFS primary storage. The solution developed by StorPool allows new storage vendors and protocols to be added easily.

Live Demo Showcase: Unveiling Dell PowerFlex’s IaaS Capabilities with Apache CloudStack, Florian Coulombel
Dell PowerFlex is the latest storage platform to offer advanced integration with Apache CloudStack. Powerflex, a software-defined platform, has built a reputation for performance, agility, and scalability and is already being used in a number of large-scale CloudStack IaaS environments. Watch the session to see the live demo of the integration and automation capabilities. Some of the key features showcased are: Infrastructure Provisioning and Configuration, VM operations & lifecycle management and Infrastructure Management & Monitoring.

Import Export Virtual Machine for KVM Hypervisor, Ayush Pandey
Ayush talks about his contribution as a GSoC Contributor, for implementing the Import-Export Instances feature for the KVM Hypervisor.

 

The post CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2023 Event Roundup appeared first on CloudstackCollab.org.

For the first time, the CloudStack Collaboration Conference was held as a hybrid event. It was streamed live on Hubilo for those who were not able to attend in-person. As it was the first time the community had collaborated in-person since the pandemic, we managed to collect a record number of physical attendees!

The conference hosted over 370 participants and 48 speakers from 32 countries. In total, there were 38 sessions from leading CloudStack experts, users and skilful engineers from the open-source world. These sessions included: technical talks, user stories, new features and integrations presentations and more.

The Apache CloudStack community is grateful to the event’s sponsors, for helping make the event a reality – ShapeBlue, LINBIT, DIMSI, StorPool, Apiculus by IndiQus, StackBill, Stack Console, CLDIN and Hubilo. 

This blog shares the event highlights including session recordings, slides and speaker information for anybody who was not able to make it.

Day 1 Sessions:

Keynote talk: Apache CloudStack – Charting a Path for the Next 10 years and Beyond – Simon Weller CloudStack since its inception has been a significant player in the cloud market, enabling service providers and enterprise customers to drive success, while controlling their own destinies. With the constant evolution of technology and rapidly changing market dynamics, join Simon as he reflects on an exciting 10 years of innovation and looks to the future.

About Simon Weller: Simon Weller is the new VP of Apache CloudStack announced in late March 2022. Simon has been an Apache CloudStack PMC member for the last few years. He has a strong technology background in multiple competencies, including networking and systems.

What’s New In Apache CloudStack 4.17 – Nicolas Vazquez 

4.17.0 is the latest Apache CloudStack major release. In this talk, Nicolas goes through the new features introduced in this version from an administrator/user perspective, explaining their benefits and the problems those features resolve. He also ran a live demo to see the new features in action.

About Nicolas Vazquez: Nicolas Vazquez is a Senior Software Engineer at ShapeBlue and is a PMC member of the Apache CloudStack project. He spends his time designing and implementing features in Apache CloudStack and can be seen acting as a release manager also. Nicolas is based in Uruguay and is a father of a young girl. He is a fan of sports, enjoys playing tennis and football. In his free time, he also enjoys reading and listening to economic and political materials.

cloud-init: How Does It Really Work? – Wido den Hollander cloud-init is the standard for provisioning Virtual Machines in almost all cloud platforms. CloudStack is supported as a DataSource in cloud-init. How does this process actually work and how does this data magically provision the virtual machine? Find out by watching this talk!

New Networking Capabilities In ACS And How To Leverage Them For VNF Deployments – Alexandre Mattioli

Several new networking capabilities such as IPv6 support, fully routed Virtual Router, user-driven shared networks and others have been added to CloudStack since its 4.17 release. In this talk, Alex looks at how to use these new capabilities together in order to seamlessly enable the deployment of Virtual Network Functions via ACS.

About Amal Ranjith: A Big fan of Linux – enjoyed working with server round the clock. A Techie with 25 Years of experience, Co-founder of Assistanz Networks Pvt. Ltd. and logged in over 10,000+ servers for helping clients, teams, datacenters, web hosts and enterprise companies. Less expressive and more action-oriented in nature co-founded FogPanel which was acquired in 2015. Now working on a mission to make StackBill – one of the most preferred CMP by 2025. Founder of StackWatch – an AI-based server monitoring system. Towards his hobby over innovative cosmetics and Fragrance oils. Founded GlamBella – a company producing and trading cosmetics and fragrance oils.

VM Autoscaling With CloudStack VR As Network Provider – Wei Zhou

In this talk, Wei looks at the new VM autoscaling functionality in CloudStack (due for the 4.18 release) that gives VM autoscaling without relying on any external devices.

About Abhishek Kumar: Abhishek Kumar is a committer of the Apache CloudStack project and has worked on the notable features such as VM ingestion, CloudStack Kubernetes Service, IPv6 support, etc. He works as a Software Engineer at ShapeBlue.

How To Monetise & Bill CloudStack – A Practical Open Approach – K B Shiv Kumar

This talk is for ISPs looking to bill CloudStack resources, and for software developers looking to build a billing solution around CloudStack. This talk looks at covering multiple business and technical use cases (for example: plans, catalogues, flexible billing, tiered offerings, account management, etc.) for running a public cloud and how the same can be achieved using CloudStack. It does not delve into any specific billing system but instead focuses on an open approach to how ACS features can be leveraged to implement billing and monetise CloudStack.

About K B Shiv Kumar: Shiv is the Co-Founder and CTO of IndiQus Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and a CloudStack user turned evangelist since 2013. He loves tinkering on CloudStack and the possibilities it offers. He has deployed multiple public and private clouds running CloudStack in the South Asian region and has also integrated legacy systems with CloudStack. He would love to share his experiences with like-minded professionals.

Choosing A Kubernetes Integration Technology That’s Right For You – David Jumani

Apache CloudStack has two different ways of integrating with Kubernetes: – The CloudStack Kubernetes services – The CloudStack Cluster API provider (CAPI) In this talk, David compares the two different technologies, their use cases and their approach. He goes into detail on the architecture of each approach and what drove their development.

The Best Storage Solution For CloudStack: LINSTOR – Yusuf Yıldız

This session was an interactive session on extending Apache CloudStack with LINSTOR. LINSTOR is Open source Software Defined Storage designed to manage block storage devices for large clusters. The unique structure of LINSTOR helps you overcome countless roadblocks when you want to set up reliable storage. This demo covered; The steps to building a reliable and high-performance SDS for your CloudStack environment, The benefits of the stack Comparing LINSTOR with other SDS offerings – what you should know.

Amazon EKS Anywhere is a deployment option for Amazon EKS that enables customers to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on customer-managed infrastructure, supported by AWS. Customers can already run Amazon EKS Anywhere on their own on-premises infrastructure on bare metal servers or using VMware vSphere. In this session, you will learn about the Cluster API provider for Apache CloudStack, and how customers can now create and operate Amazon EKS Anywhere clusters on Apache CloudStack environments on-premises.

About Abhishek Ranjan: Abhishek is the CTO with CSC e-Governance Services India a special purpose vehicle under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt of India. He runs the technology behind CSC which drives the world’s largest front end service delivery points to deliver government & business services across the nation reaching the remotest of the country on a digital format. CSC’s Digital platform supports multi domain products & services ranging from government, business, aadhaar, insurance, travel, education, utilities, bill payments, fintech apps for banking services delivery. Prior to CSC he worked with the UIDAI, where he was engaged as member of the technology team that built Aadhaar, during his Aadhaar days he was involved in building the Aadhaar Biometric Attendance system, Digital Life Certificate & several other exciting and challenging projects which were widely adopted across the nation. He previously did his bachelors in engineering from BITS Mesra and passionately participates in Application Architecture, Product Design & Development, Big Data Analysis and specializes in Product Strategy, Strategic Tech Planning & Technology Leadership.

VM Console Enhancements – Nicolas Vazquez

In this talk, Nicolas introduces a new model for console access to instances in CloudStack. He explains both “how” and “why” CloudStack has moved from an embedded HTML client iframe to an API-driven generated console. He also delves into recent enhancements to the security and access to the console, including an extra security client validation approach.

About Nicolas Vazquez: Nicolas Vazquez is a Senior Software Engineer at ShapeBlue and is a PMC member of the Apache CloudStack project. He spends his time designing and implementing features in Apache CloudStack and can be seen acting as a release manager also. Nicolas is based in Uruguay and is a father of a young girl. He is a fan of sports, enjoys playing tennis and football. In his free time, he also enjoys reading and listening to economic and political materials.

Providing Microsoft Azure Functions And Microsoft Dataverse Resources With CloudStack – Quentin Roccia, Christophe Gondouin, Pierre Charton

Many business projects (CRM, ERP, etc) are using proprietary cloud solutions that may be available outside these major clouds. Christophe, Pierre and Quentin will demonstrate the possibilities to use Apache Cloudstack when working on the Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Dataverse world, providing the same features on an open-source cloud solution.

About the speakers: Christophe Senior code and platform architect, DIMSI partner, Christophe is helping all technical teams to choose best patterns and implementations to deliver fast, reliable and clean software solutions When not trashing and re-coding software developed by our team, you may find him playing with his 2 children, drinking beers with his friends or on his computer watching Series Pierre Senior back-end developer, Pierre is in charge of Backroll integration inside Cloudstack. Pierre has a proven track record of successful c# and Java projects. When not playing with his keyboard, Pierre is surfing, WingFoiling or bodyboarding on the Brittany coast. Quentin Senior DevOps engineer & Cloud enabler, DIMSI partner Quentin is in charge of DIMSI custom developments on Apache Cloudstack deployment : customer portal, backup solution. On a daily basis, he helps our customers and our developers to use and embrace Devops methodology, by building CI/CD pipelines (GitLab, Azure Devops), dockerizing apps and automate things as much as possible… When not DevOps’ing, Quentin loves to binge watch series and movies, play with his cat “Boogie” and is a crazy fan of street food.

Our Journey Developing Kubernetes CAPI Provider For Apache CloudStack – David Jumani

The Kubernetes Cluster API (CAPI) sub-project aims to simplify and unify the Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management. With almost a dozen provider implementations, we decided to add our own provider implementation for Apache CloudStack. But how simple was it? With several CRDs, controllers, API versions, and even experimental features, and e2e tests to develop, it’s easy to get lost in the details and can seem quite overwhelming. Join us to discover how we did it! We detail our journey, from building an initial prototype over a weekend to a full-fledged, production-ready application, and deployed in an environment with over 10s of 1000s of hosts! We share the pitfalls, hacks, learnings, and key takeaways from our journey to develop CAPC – the CAPI Provider for Apache CloudStack.

About David Jumani: David is a CloudStack committer, member of the Kubernetes Org and Software Engineer at ShapeBlue.

CloudStack At NTT DATA Business Solutions – Andre Walter

Learn more about the Implementation and use of Apache CloudStack at NTT DATA Business Solutions GMS.

About Andre Walter: Andre Walter has been with NTT DATA for 10 years now, previously engaged at SAP focusing on Software on Demand Solutions and bringing it into production. He leads Cloud Infrastructure Services, which runs 24×7 Infrastructure Services & Data Center operations globally and has been implementing CloudStack successfully since 2014. When not at work, you might see him training for a Marathon.

Volume Encryption In CloudStack – Vladimir Petrov

In this talk, Vladi looks at the new Volume encryption option (due in CloudStack 4.18). He presents the new ability to use encrypted root and data volumes on different storage types, the benefits and the current limitations of the implementation.

About the speakers: Slavka Peleva is a software developer at StorPool Storage and has been a passionate CloudStack Commiter since 2021. She is part of the CloudStack community and is excited to work on new features and capabilities to improve the open-source cloud management solution. At StorPool Slavka is responsible for the product integration with Cloudstack and is working on its native implementation in the technology. With her dedication and efforts in creating the StorPool’s plugin for CloudStack, companies can build reliable and speedy storage that is powered by the two technologies. Venko Moyankov is the Solutions Lead at StorPool Storage, a fully managed data storage solution that transforms commodity hardware into a shared, powerful, highly available, and reliable storage system. He has experience with managing large virtualizations, working in telcos, designing and supporting the infrastructure of large enterprises. In the last year his focus has been in helping companies globally to build the best storage solution according to their needs and projects. Alex Ivanov is the Product Lead at StorPool Storage and is responsible for the product strategy and tactics at the company. He has experience in the storage market and a deep understanding of the needs and priorities of businesses managing large-scale clouds to run diverse, mission-critical workloads. At StorPool, he works closely with the team to evolve the StorPool primary storage platform and expand its capabilities and usefulness for various use cases. His goal – ensure StorPool cost-effectively delivers above and beyond what is possible with other primary storage products to help customers achieve their commercial and technical goals.

Backroll: Production Grade KVM Backup Solution Integrated in CloudStack – Grégoire Lamodière, Quentin Roccia, Pierre Charton Backroll is not only a production-grade KVM backup solution. It is also being integrated inside Apache Cloudstack using the Backup and restore framework. Pierre and Quentin show how it works, the feature list, and how the integration has been made.

About Daan Hoogland: Daan Hoogland has been a software developer in about all roles available in the field, starting in 1991. Provisioning has been a recurring theme in his carreer. Functional design, Programming, Testing and also Functional Management and Operations, have been his main responsibilities over the years. At present He works as a software engineer at Shapeblue Ltd. and as a Technical Official at World Triathlon and the NTB (Dutch triathlon organisation) and is a Pilates – and Triathlon trainer.

10x Your Cloud Business With Stack Console & CloudStack – Saurabh Rapatwar

Every cloud service provider wants to boost their sales, but how? With the help of Stack Console’s reseller management module and CloudStack, a data center or cloud service provider can build resellers/partners and provide them with an automated white-label cloud management platform so they can sell cloud services under their own brand, such as compute, Kubernetes, load balancer, block storage, and so on. Many of resellers are likely to be small and medium-sized businesses that want to get into the cloud market, so this is great news for them. Service providers will still make money whether a customer buys a service directly from them or through one of their resellers.

About Venko Moyankov: Venko Moyankov is a solution architect at StorPool Storage. He has experience with managing large virtualizations, working in telcos, designing and supporting the infrastructure of large enterprises. In the last year his focus has been in helping companies globally to build the best storage solution according to their needs and projects.

The Curious Case Of Cloud Repatriation – Sunando Bhattacharya

In this session, we examine how enterprises are realising that Hyperscaler clouds are not the best solution for all their cloud needs and are now repatriating a large part of their workloads to various private cloud platforms. We also examine how CloudStack is best placed to address the needs of these enterprises.

What’s Coming In CloudStack 4.18 – Boris Stoyanov A first look at some of the work-in-progress features due in the upcoming CloudStack 4.18 release.

About Boris Stoyanov: Boris is a committer and PMC at Apache CloudStack also works at ShapeBlue and is devoted to testing CloudStack.

Beating The Hyperscalers With A High-performance, Cost-efficient Cloud With Apiculus And StorPool – Alex Ivanov, Sunando Bhattacharya, Kshitish Purohit

Setting up and operating a public cloud that is not only hyperscale-grade, but can actually beat the hyperscalers, requires a unique combination of a high-performance, cost-efficient and UX-first approach. In this workshop, IndiQus and StorPool showcase how the Apiculus and StorPool solutions, together with CloudStack, can create that winning formula for local, domestic and regional cloud providers.

About the speakers: Alex Ivanov, Product Lead at StorPool Storage Alex Ivanov is the Product Lead at StorPool Storage and is responsible for the product strategy and tactics at the company. He has experience in the storage market and a deep understanding of the needs and priorities of businesses managing large-scale clouds to run diverse, mission-critical workloads. At StorPool, he works closely with the team to evolve the StorPool primary storage platform and expand its capabilities and usefulness for various use cases. His goal – ensure StorPool cost-effectively delivers above and beyond what is possible with other primary storage products to help customers achieve their commercial and technical goals. Venko Moyankov, Solutions Architect at StorPool Storage Venko Moyankov is the Solutions Lead at StorPool Storage, a fully managed data storage solution that transforms commodity hardware into a shared, powerful, highly available, and reliable storage system. He has experience with managing large virtualizations, working in telcos, designing and supporting the infrastructure of large enterprises. In the last year his focus has been in helping companies globally to build the best storage solution according to their needs and projects. Sunando is the Co-Founder and CEO at IndiQus Technologies. With over 20 years of experience in the internet, telecom and cloud domains, Sunando drives the overall business vision at IndiQus. Outside of work, Sunando is a motorcycle enthusiast who rides along the highways and high mountain roads of India. Kshitish is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at IndiQus. Kshitish has over 15 years of experience in the user experience, product management and startup domains, and has been an entrepreneur for all his career. Kshitish is also a trail and mountain athlete, and can be found exploring and mapping new trails, or running a mountain race, when not working.

UI Test Cases With CloudStack – Magali Pervan, Navid Abdoul

Each Cloudstack update is a critical process to prevent production issues. At DIMSI, we aim to reduce downtimes and regressions as much as possible for our end users. We are now implementing automated UI Tests to cover all main use cases whenever a new release is published. Navid and Magali give an overview of how it is being done, and the next steps, including potential integration inside the code project.

Using AI To Place VMs On Hypervisors – Sina Kashipazha

CloudStack’s VM placement policies don’t fit the current need of the industry. We have to create external tools to load balance VMs on hosts. We have an idea (which is under heavy development) to implement an AI algorithm to manage VM placement on a host. The algorithm is triggered based on a criteria (like when there is no place for a VM with 64G Ram and 32 core), which results in changing the placement of the VMs on a system.

About Sina Kashipazha: My name is Sina, I’m a software engineer with a passion for distributed applications, computer networks, and the cloud. To turn my passion into a career, I joined Computer Network Lab at my university as a research assistant and developed various network and cloud tools. After that, I joined the LeaseWeb company to expand my knowledge of complex production cloud environments. Currently, I am the Software Engineer in the CloudStack team of LeaseWeb. I’m responsible for all the infrastructure and management tasks for our public and private cloud, which runs in 8 regions in 7 different countries on 3 different continents.

Upgrading From Rovius CloudPlatform to Apache CloudStack – Andrija Panic

As many organizations prefer the freedom of open-source Apache CloudStack to commercial distributions, the need to migrate seamlessly to CloudStack is increasing. In this practical, demo-led talk, Andrija will look at the steps required to make a reliable migration from Accelerite’s Rovius Cloud platform to Apache CloudStack.

About Andrija Panic: Andrija Panic is a Cloud Architect at ShapeBlue, the Cloud Specialists, and is a committer and PMC member of Apache CloudStack. Andrija spends most of his time designing and implementing IaaS solutions based on Apache CloudStack.

Next-Gen Virtual Routers And Zero Downtime Upgrades – Rohit Yadav

CloudStack 4.17 finally reached a point where upgrades can be performed with zero network downtime. In this talk, Rohit: – looks at the history of CloudStack virtual router upgrades and how they have evolved towards this point – looks in detail at the new “Live patching” functionality in CloudStack 4.17 which enables zero downtime upgrades – discusses the limitations of the new functionality – demo’s the new upgrade process The talk also discusses the design and implementation of other recent changes in the virtual router, such as: – systemvmtemplate improvements – turn-key bundling of systemvmtemplates for automatic setup and upgrades – deprecation of systemvm.iso And discusses the future roadmap of VR and related next-gen networking features, the new VR agent and further improvements.

About Rohit Yadav: Rohit Yadav is a committer and PMC member of Apache CloudStack project, and oversees the Software Engineering function at ShapeBlue, providing leadership and mentorship to our ever-growing Engineering Team.

News And Development Update Of The CloudStack Tungsten Fabric SDN Plug-in – Sven Vogel, Huy Le Minh

This talk involved a demo of the Tungsten Fabric Plugin and details what the important features are.

About Sven Vogel: Sven Vogel is a German IT-Specialist with 15+ years experience in IT and member of the Apache Software Foundation. Before he got invited to join the mother foundation, he has been the Chairman / VP of Apache Cloudstack and an active Committer for a few years. He is well-known for driving various projects and supporting everyone who needs technological exchange, advise or upskilling. His interest in cloud-technologies is both – his professional and personal passion and he looks forward meeting you to talk about why system-relevant institutions need our help as open source technologists.

Adding New Data Sources And Resources To CloudStack Terraform Provider – Daman Arora

As of today, CloudStack-Terraform Provider v0.4.0 supports 25 resource types, and 1 data source type. It is the first release of CloudStack’s own provider, named CloudStack-Terraform Provider. The following link provides a complete list of Resources and Data Sources: https://registry.terraform.io/providers/cloudstack/cloudstack/latest/docs I am a GSoC contributor for 2022 and am extending the list of Terraform Data Sources and Resources offered by CloudStack Terraform. I am currently working on the following project: CloudStack Terraform Provider – Add datasources for the existing resources https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2022/projects/ZVraist1 I would like to present a tutorial/workshop as a knowledge transfer session. As CloudStack continues to grow in terms of resources, an explanation of how to extend Terraform provider will be beneficial to anyone who is interested in this area. In addition, I will share technical details regarding the provider during the presentation.

About the speakers: Will Stevens is CloudOps’ CTO and has been involved in CloudStack for many years. He was much more active in previous years, as the ACS VP and release manager, and still remains on the PMC. Daniel Murray is a Developer at CloudOps and is focused on the CloudMC product. He has worked on the integration between Apache CloudStack and CloudMC.

StackBill – Simplified Cloud Management Platform – Rafi Md In this talk, Rafi shares the vision of StackBill and how they simplified cloud management with Apache Cloudstack. Key challenges of Datacenters on becoming a Cloud Datacenter and how stackbill solves it. New Features of StackBill added 2022 which would help datacenter, enterprises and telcos on measuring and maximizing their business.

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