Entries by Harikrishna Patnala

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Two-factor Authentication in Apache CloudStack l CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is an authentication method where a user is authorised to login into a system only after successfully presenting two pieces of data, or factors. Something that the user knows plus something which the user possesses. Apache CloudStack 4.18 introduces a 2FA framework designed to bolster security when users access the platform. This feature can be enabled globally, by Domain, or for specific users, allowing operators to apply compliance policies for CloudStack access. The framework is also designed to be easily expandable, making it simple to incorporate additional 2FA methods in the future that align with security […]

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CloudStack Managed User Data l CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction When launching a new Instance on Apache CloudStack, users can set a UserData script to be executed by cloud-init during the boot process. The ‘CloudStack Managed UserData’ feature extends this functionality allowing one to automate the installation of packages, update the instance’s OS, and configure applications during instance deployment. Introduced in Apache CloudStack 4.18, Managed UserData enables users to register and manage their own UserData script(s) as a CloudStack resource. It can be associated with a CloudStack Template/ISO, or when a new Instance is being deployed. Managed UserData This new feature makes the following operations available via API or […]

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Flexible Service Offerings l CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction Apache CloudStack Service Offerings are sets of capabilities that a CloudStack admin makes available to users, defining Instance, Volume and Network specifications to be consumed by users when creating their resources. Previously, when users deployed a new Instance, the Root Volume definition was included in the Compute Offering, including disk size, IOPS and storage tags. This behaviour is a limitation when users try to change the Instance Root Volume characteristics, as it is a part of the Compute Offering, used alongside the Instance. To address this behaviour, Root Volume specifications have been decoupled from the Compute Offerings. This new […]

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Automating Infrastructure with CloudStack and Terraform

Apache CloudStack is one of the most commonly used IaaS platforms, orchestrating infrastructure and maximizing the benefits of cloud computing. Many large enterprises already use CloudStack with different use cases, and with ever-growing adoption, there is a need to automate these complex infrastructures and the provision of cloud deployments to: · Minimise time spent on deploying new environments · Make cloud deployments repeatable · Reduce cost · Avoid human error A popular infrastructure provisioning tool used to manage cloud configuration and deployment is Terraform. By using Apache CloudStack with Terraform, companies can easily automate their infrastructure to take advantage of […]

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Granular Control of Dynamic Scaling of VM’s CPU/RAM

Currently, CloudStack allows admins to configure the dynamic scaling of CPU and RAM for the VMs using a global or zone level setting “enable.dynamic.scale.vm” and through a “Dynamically Scalable” flag in templates. However, the global or zone setting applies to all VMs in a particular region or zone and there may be virtual hardware or software limitations on a VM meaning that dynamic scaling would not be applicable (e.g. OS virtual hardware support, OS licensing, application licensing, hypervisor fault tolerance, etc). In order to let the user or admin decide whether to disable dynamic scaling of VM at a more […]

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vSphere Datastore Cluster State Synchronisation

Apache CloudStack 4.15 introduced several new capabilities for vSphere, including support for datastore clusters. Following production use of the new features and feedback from users, an opportunity for improvement was noticed. If a storage pool is added or removed from the datastore cluster in vCenter, to see those changes in CloudStack it is necessary to remove and re-add the primary storage. An improvement to this behaviour ensures that these changes made in vCenter are ‘synchronised’ with CloudStack’s database without removing and re-adding the primary storage. Datastore cluster state synchronisation is triggered in the following three scenarios: 1. New API syncStoragePool […]

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vSphere Advanced Capabilities in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive

Introduction CloudStack vSphere integration has not kept up with the evolution of vSphere itself, and several functions can be performed natively by vSphere much more efficiently than by CloudStack. vSphere also has additional features which would be beneficial to the operators of vSphere based CloudStack clouds. This feature introduces support in CloudStack for VMFS6, vSAN, vVols and datastore clusters. Also, vSphere storage policies are tied with compute and disk offerings to improve linking offerings with storages, and CloudStack will allow inter-cluster VM and volume migrations, meaning that running VMs can now migrate along with all volumes across clusters. Furthermore, storage […]

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Back in the community l Meet The Team

Hello all, I’m Harikrishna, and I’m based in Hyderabad, India. I joined ShapeBlue few months ago and I’m very happy to be part of this amazing team. I started my career with CloudStack as a fresher when it was just incubating to Apache from version 3.x to 4.0, and it was very exciting to be part of a project which had only just been open-sourced. I initially worked on features like VM access reset, dynamic scaling resources of a running VM, and Citrix XenDesktop integration with CloudStack, and it has now been over 7 years since I started working on […]

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