Head in the Clouds

When CloudStack was launched as an open source project back in 2010 our goal was to make CloudStack the leading open source cloud computing platform and to enable our users, partners, and customers to easily use, modify, and contribute to the project. We chose to license the project under the GNU Public License v3 (GPLv3) then.  The reasoning was that this was not only an OSI-approved license but also it allowed us to maintain compatibility with the Apache Software License. At the time it was the right move for the project... but times change.

Today we are announcing our move from the GPLv3 to the Apache License 2.0. We are also planning to apply contribute the CloudStack project to the Apache Software Foundation(ASF) and with their acceptance to turn CloudStack into a truly community run project but with governance provided by the Apache Foundation rather than by Citrix alone.  In addition, Citrix has stepped up its investment in the project and the open source community and decided to become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Foundation. They also will be hiring additional developers, evangelists and providing other resources to help insure the success of the CloudStack project in the long-term.

Why Switch Licenses?

Over the course of the last two years the feedback from our users and partners was that while the GPL was a fine license that it did throw up some roadblocks to their participation and use. Today Citrix has announced their intention to contribute the CloudStack code to the Apache foundation and to license CloudStack 3.0.1 and all future versions under the  Apache Software License.

This decision was not made lightly and frankly when the idea was floated I was a little skeptical as a fan of Linux I was fond of saying, “If the GPL is good enough for Linus, it’s good enough for me.” The problem is that I am only one person and while it was fine for me it was not the license that best served everyone in our community and put up barriers for others to participate.

One of the most powerful but lesser known features of CloudStack is it's ability to integrate with networking devices like F5 and NetScaler loadbalancers. 

With CloudStack 3.0 you can deploy NetScaler with core Load Balancing rules. The core protocols like TCP, HTTP and UDP are supported and you can use the load balancing algorithms like Round Robin, Source IP and Least connection. It also supports session persistency based on Source IP and Cookie.

There's a nice overview of how that works over on the Citrix blog. 

For those of you that are Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) users and are in Silicon Valley the CloudStack community team and some of our developers will be attending the Xen Hackathon at Oracle in Silicon Valley on March 6th-8th. If you want to help make Xen Cloud Platform a better hypervisor for your cloud come on in the XCP project lead Mike McClurg will be there as well for you to discuss where XCP is going. 

What is a Xen Hackathon?

The aim of Xen Hackathons is to give developers in the Xen community the opportunity to meet face to face to discuss development, coordinate, write code and collaborate with other Xen developers. It is a 3 day self-organizing event, where Xen developers work on concrete problems around the Xen codebase in small self-organizing groups.

Xen developers with the following expertise will be present: Xen Hypervisor developers, kernel developers (working on Xen components in the Linux kernel), XCP developers working on project Kronos and the Xen Cloud Platform. Xen on ARM as well is MIPS will also feature in the March 2012 Hackathon.

Xen Hackathons are also great opportunities for companies and open source projects, built on Xen, XCP or commercially based Xen products to test (and fix any issues in their products) against the latest open source baselines. You will have access and be able to work on concrete code problems with Xen developers at the Hackathon.

On February 28th and 29th we'll be holding a two day session focusing on the open source technologies you can use to build, manage and deploy an open source cloud compute environment as well as DevOps presentation on operational methodologies for managing "cloudy" infrastructure.  The program will feature speakers from CloudStack, Citrix, Xen.org, Red Hat, Gluster, PuppetLabs, Opscode, Zenoss and enStratus. 

Even if you can't attend all the sessions feel free to sign-up and we'll make our best effort to get you links to recordings and slide decks after the event.

Day 1 Agenda

Day 1 of Build an Open Source Cloud Day will focus on the infrastructure that compromises an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing environment. The speakers will outline options for virtualization, storage and orchestration that provide the foundation for an open source cloud compute environment.