Entries by Nicolas Vazquez

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Auto Enable / Disable KVM Hosts | CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction This feature introduces the capability to automatically disable KVM hosts when a customizable health check fails, and automatically re-enable them when the health check subsequently succeeds. This ensures that existing Hosts remain stable and operational, and new Instances will not be deployed on disabled Hosts (existing Instances running on disabled or auto-disabled hosts are not affected). This feature is particularly beneficial in scenarios where maintaining the health of a large number of Hosts is crucial. For instance, in a data centre with numerous Instances spread across multiple Hosts, this feature can help administrators by automatically isolating Hosts that are […]

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CloudStack VMware environment Migration from vSwitch to dvSwitch | CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction The networking in VMware environments is managed by either standard virtual switches (vSwitch) or distributed virtual switches (dvSwitch). These switches handle the traffic between Instances and the Physical Network. A standard vSwitch needs to be created per-Host, which means that each time a Host is added to a VMware Cluster, a standard vSwitch must be created with the same name on each Host. Whenever CloudStack creates a port group within a standard vSwitch, the port group is created on each individual ESXi Host within the cluster. On the other hand, dvSwitches, which are more sophisticated, do not operate at […]

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Secure KVM VNC Connections l CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction In a previous blog post (https://www.shapeblue.com/api-driven-console-access/) we described the latest improvements around VNC console access in CloudStack 4.18. These improvements included switching it to an API-driven approach, and introduced a way to secure WebSocket traffic between the CPVM and end-users, whilst the traffic between the CPVM and hosts remained decrypted. This blog post explains how we can also secure the traffic between the CPVM and KVM hosts, allowing complete security around the Instance console access. This feature is only supported by the KVM hypervisor at this time. Secure VNC access This feature allows securing Instance console access through CloudStack […]

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API-driven Console Access l CloudStack Feature First Look

Introduction: The Apache CloudStack Console Proxy (CPVM) is a type of system virtual machine that presents an Instance’s console view via the web UI (connecting to the VNC port made available through the hypervisor). Both the admin and end-user web UIs offer a console connection. To provide access to the Instances console service, the CPVM has the following characteristics: • An HTTP server listens to incoming requests from browsers. • A TCP client to connect to the Instance’s VNC port when requested. The CPVM provides a proxy between the user’s browser and the Instance’s console, allowing interaction with the user’s […]

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Reflecting on my Years at ShapeBlue l Meet The Team

Hi everyone, my name is Nicolas Vazquez and I have been working as a software engineer at ShapeBlue for about 5 years now. I live in Uruguay, in Latin America, and as a fun fact I have always lived in the same city. I have a degree in Computer Engineering and outside work I am a husband, a proud father of a young lady and I enjoy playing tennis and exercising. Life before ShapeBlue Before joining ShapeBlue I worked as a Java developer in various fields. But it wasn’t until 2015 that I got into cloud computing as part of […]

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Adding Comments to CloudStack Objects | CloudStack Feature First Look

CloudStack administrators are currently able to add annotations/comments on hosts, domains or virtual machines. This is useful as administrators may comment on the actions taken on those entities, allowing other administrators to know why actions were taken. This new functionality (available from CloudStack version 4.16.0 onwards) extends the scope of the comments feature to users, domain administrators and administrators, allowing them to add comments on most CloudStack objects (that have a UUID): User VMs (existing) Domains (existing) Hosts (existing) Instance groups SSH keypairs Kubernetes Clusters Volumes Snapshots VM Snapshots Networks VPCs Public IP addresses VPN customer gateways Templates ISOs Service […]

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Support Virtual Appliance OVA Templates in VMware | CloudStack Deep Dive

Vendors of virtual appliances (vApp) for VMware often produce ‘templates’ of their appliances in an OVA format. An OVA file will contain disc images, configuration data of the virtual appliance, and sometimes a EULA which must be acknowledged. The purpose of this feature is to enable CloudStack to mimic the end-user experience of importing such an OVA directly into vCenter, the end result being a virtual appliance deployed with the same configuration data in the virtual machines descriptor (VMX) file as would be there if the appliance had been deployed directly through vCenter. The OVA will contain configuration data regarding […]

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Share ISO from UI | CloudStack Feature First Look

CloudStack supports sharing templates and ISOs between accounts and projects through the API ‘updateTemplatePermissions’ and sharing templates through the UI. However, prior to version 4.15, it was not possible to share ISOs from the UI. This feature introduces support for sharing ISOs through different accounts and / or projects via the UI. With this feature, a user or administrator must be able to update the permissions for an ISO via API and UI, being able to: Share the ISO with another account Share the ISO with another project Revoke the access to the ISO for an account Revoke the access […]

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Enable unmanaging of guest instances | CloudStack Feature First Look

This feature allows CloudStack administrators to unmanage guest virtual machines (VMs) from their CloudStack infrastructure. Once unmanaged, CloudStack can no longer monitor, control, or manage provisioning and orchestration related operations on it. This feature is currently supported only on VMware. An interesting use case of this feature (when used in conjunction with the VM ingestion feature) is being able to move guest VMs from one vCenter to another, by unmanaging it from one zone and then importing it into a different zone. It is also possible to perform any out-of-band operations on the VM (once unmanaged from CloudStack) directly through […]

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Enable PVLAN support on L2 networks | CloudStack Feature First Look

Private VLANs have always been partially supported in CloudStack (for shared networks only), in versions prior to 4.14. Administrators could set up Isolated or Promiscuous PVLANs by creating their shared networks in which: Primary VLAN ID = secondary VLAN ID, for Promiscuous PVLANs Primary VLAN ID != secondary VLAN ID, for Isolated PVLANs CloudStack 4.14 introduces some changes in the PVLAN support, by: Extending the existing support for shared networks and L2 networks (initially supported for the VMware hypervisor when using dvSwitches) Extending the PVLAN types to Isolated, Promiscuous and Community Allowing the administrators to explicitly select the PVLAN type […]

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