SystemVM Templates - Upgrade Imrpovements

SystemVM template – Upgrade Improvements

When upgrading Apache CloudStack (ACS) to a newer version one must manually register new SystemVM templates before upgrading the packages. Failing to do so means having to roll back the database to the previous version, register the new template and start the upgrade again. We’ve developed a process (available as of CloudStack 4.16.0) to automate SystemVM template registration at the point the packages are upgraded (if not already registered). Manual SystemVM template registration will still be supported, but not mandatory. Instead, if you update the link to the packages (eg. /etc/yum.repos.d/cloudstack.repo on a RHEL based system), and run the command […]

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Adding Comments to CloudStack Objects

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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Custom Resource Icons - CloudStack

Support for Custom Resource Icons in CloudStack | CloudStack Feature First Look

A CloudStack resource is typically identified by its name or description, and when creating and managing resources, zones are often named by their geographical location, team/company name for domains, accounts, projects and so on. However, as icons and images are generally easier to quickly identify we wanted to improve the user experience by providing the ability to create custom icons for resources. Support for custom icons has been provided to a subset of resources including: • Zones • Templates / ISOs • Virtual Machines (if no icon of its own, will inherit the respective template / ISO icon) • Accounts […]

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Import Virtual Machines in CloudStack

Import Virtual Machines in CloudStack

Since CloudStack 4.14 it has been possible to import virtual machines (VMs) from a vSphere cluster directly into CloudStack, which introduced the concept of managed and unmanaged VMs. Managed VMs are those controlled by CloudStack, whereas unmanaged VMs have been either deployed directly on the hypervisor or removed from CloudStack (using the unmanageVirtualMachine API). To work with these unmanaged and managed VMs the following APIs are available, but there was no support in the UI: listUnmanagedInstances: list all unmanaged VMs (for a vSphere cluster) importUnmanagedInstance: import an unmanaged VM (from vSphere cluster) into CloudStack With the next LTS release of […]

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CloudStack Rocky Linux and openSUSE support blog

Rocky Linux and openSUSE Support in CloudStack

In December 2020, Red Hat announced major changes to the roadmap of its CentOS distribution, including the early end of life of CentOS 8 in December 2021. Due to this sudden and unexpected change, new Linux distributions have been developed as possible alternatives to CentOS, which are binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (RHEL8). One such distribution is Rocky Linux (named as a tribute to early CentOS co-founder Rocky McGaugh).   Rocky Linux Support in CloudStack Led by Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the CentOS project, Rocky Linux is a community-supported, production-grade enterprise operating system designed to be 100% compatible […]

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Enable Bulk Actions via CloudStack UI

Enable Bulk Actions via the CloudStack UI

Want to start or stop a VM (Virtual Machine), or delete an offering in CloudStack? No big deal. However – what if you need to delete 20 offerings, or stop 20 VMs? Having to perform the same operation on each individual item is time-consuming, laborious and can be frustrating. Bearing this in mind, we’ve come up with a nice little enhancement to improve the user experience by making it possible to perform bulk operations via the UI. Various views in the UI can already show checkboxes against items (such as VMs, events and alerts) making it easier for users to […]

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vSphere-Datastore-Cluster

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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Dell Logo - CloudStack

Storage Plugin for Dell EMC PowerFlex | CloudStack Feature First Look

For primary storage, CloudStack supports many managed storage solutions via storage plugins, such as SolidFire, Ceph, Datera, CloudByte and Nexenta. There are other managed storages which CloudStack does not support, one of which is Dell EMC PowerFlex (formerly known as VxFlexOS or ScaleIO). PowerFlex is a distributed shared block storage, like Ceph / RBD storage. This feature provides a new storage plugin that enables the use of a Dell EMC PowerFlex v3.5 storage pool as a managed Primary Storage for KVM hypervisor, either as a zone-wide or cluster-wide pool. This pool can be added either from the UI or API. […]

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CloudStack Support for XCP-ng

XCP-ng 8.2 LTS Support Added to CloudStack

The latest version of XCP-ng – the opensource hypervisor based on XenServer – XCP-ng 8.2 was released in November 2020, and is the first long term support (LTS) version. As such it will receive support and updates for the next 5 years compared to only a year for a standard XCP release. The hypervisor is getting more and more popular in the open-source world thanks to its modern and user-friendly UI, scalability, live migration capabilities and security level. XCP-ng 8.2 comes with a wide range of new capabilities including UEFI support, openflow controller access, native support for Gluster, ZFS, XFS, […]

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L2 Persistent Networks & enhancement of Isolated Persistent Networks

L2 Persistent Networks and enhancement of Isolated Persistent Networks | CloudStack Feature First Look

When a network is created in CloudStack, it is by default not provisioned until the first VM is deployed on that network, at which point a a VLAN ID is assigned. Until then, the network exists only as a database entry. If you wanted to create and provision a network without deploying any VMs, you would need to create a persistent network. With persistent networks, you can deploy physical devices like routers / switches, etc. without having to deploy VMs on it, as it provisions the network at the time of its creation. More information about persistent networks in CloudStack […]

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