Tag Archive for: CloudStack Container Service

CloudStack European User Group roundup – London, December 2018

There was a definite feel of Christmas in the air in London as we made our way to last Thursday’s (December 13) winter meetup of the Cloudstack European User Group (CSEUG), and that only increased as we arrived at the BT Centre near St. Paul’s and saw the big Christmas tree in reception!

A great turnout for this, the last meetup of 2018, and a great representation of the CloudStack community in Europe with people travelling from Germany, Serbia, Glasgow, Switzerland and Latvia to name but a few. After a quick lunch we took our seats, and Giles Sirett (chairman of the user group) welcomed everyone and got the event started with introductions and CloudStack news.

Firstly, Giles spoke about software updates and new releases. CloudStack 4.11 is an LTS (long term support) release and included more than 250 new capabilities and a big step towards zero downtime upgrades, 4.11.2 has just been released (including 71 fixes), 4.11.3 is coming soon and 4.12 is in planning. Giles then mentioned CloudStack events starting with the recent CloudStack Collaboration Conference in September (Montreal), and events for 2019 – the next CSEUG in March (London), and the next Collaboration Conference in September (Las Vegas). During Giles’ presentation, Maurice Nettisheim (Head of Cloud Compute for BT) took to the stage to say a few words about BT’s ongoing use of CloudStack in their IaaS platform and their continued support and involvement in the CloudStack community.

Giles slides contain much more information:

After Giles, Paul Angus gave us an update on ShapeBlue’s CloudStack Container Service (CCS), giving us a walkthrough of the recently released update.This update brings CCS bang up-to-date by running the latest version of Kubernetes (v1.11.3) on the latest version of Container Linux. CCS also now makes use of CloudStack’s new CA framework to automatically secure the Kubernetes environments it creates. Paul’s talks and slides are always packed with detail:

Olivier Lambert of XCP-ng & Xen Orchestra took the floor next to tell us about the current state of the project. For those that are not familiar, XCP-ng is an opensource, community powered hypervisor based on Xen. It is easy to upgrade from XenServer (keeping all VMs, settings etc.), 100% API compatible, requires no license and has no feature restrictions.

Please take a look through Olivier’s slides for much more on this fascinating subject:

After a short break, we welcomed Ingo Jochim and Andre Walter (itelligence) with their talk entitled ‘How our cloud works’. They talked through full automation with Ansible for all infrastructure components of the cloud with CloudStack, check_mk, LDAP and more, with all functionality available through a customer portal, also covering how the setup is fully scalable for larger landscapes.
Ingo and Andre’s slides right here:

Next up was Adam Dagnall (Cloudian) with ‘Advanced S3 compatible storage integration in CloudStack’. To provide tighter integration between the S3 compatible object store and CloudStack, Cloudian has developed a connector to allow users and their applications to utilize the object store directly from within the CloudStack platform in a single sign-on manner with self-service provisioning. Additionally, CloudStack templates and snapshots are centrally stored within the object store and managed through the CloudStack service. The object store offers protection of these templates and snapshots across data centres using replication or erasure coding. Adam went into the feature-set in great detail, and his slides provide much more information:

Last talk of the day, and the honours fell to Andrija Panic (Hiag Data) with ‘CloudStack – 5 years in production’. Andrija shared real world experience of designing, deploying and managing a CloudStack public cloud, explaining how high availability for the CloudStack management components was implemented and discussing different storage technologies and networking models used, as well as the challenges faced. Andrija also presented alternate methods for deploying CloudStack as regards to regions / zones / pods, and also touched on physical networking, finally looking at the different CloudStack guest networking models available (from Basic Zone / Shared Networks to all the Advanced Zone’s networking models) and when to use each of them.
Andrija went into a lot of detail and I encourage you to look through his slides:

After Andrija had finished answering questions, Giles wrapped things up and we moved to a local pub, where I am pleased to say that conversation and collaboration continued into the night, with what rapidly became the unofficial ‘CloudStack Christmas Party’! Huge thanks to BT for providing a first-rate venue and lunch, and to all our speakers, who make these events so interesting and such a success.

The next CloudStack User Group meetup will be on Thursday, March 14, and will be hosted by our friends at Ticketmaster here in London. Please register here!

All the talks were recorded and will be made available shortly on the ShapeBlue YouTube channel.

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ShapeBlue contributes native support for Kubernetes and Docker to Apache CloudStack

Offers seamless Container-as-a-Service without disruption to user experience or business process

Sevilla, Spain — 17 November 2016 — ShapeBlue, the largest independent integrator of CloudStack technologies worldwide, today announced at ApacheCon Europe that it will be donating its CloudStack Container Service software to the Apache CloudStack project. The technology integrates CloudStack with Kubernetes and Docker to provide a seamless Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering within existing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments with no disruption to user experience or business process.

“We are really excited to be handing over the code and IP of CloudStack Container Service to the CloudStack project as part of our ongoing commitment to open source,” said Giles Sirett, CEO of ShapeBlue. “The CloudStack project is the best environment for others to build on the work we’ve done to date.

CloudStack Container Service is a plug-in for Apache CloudStack that enables users to create container clusters within an existing multi-tenant environment, provided by CloudStack. The user experience is seamless: users can both manage container clusters and deploy/manage cloud native applications in the same user-interface that they use to manage their existing compute, network, and storage. Service providers running dedicated or custom UIs benefit from a number of simple API calls that have been added to the CloudStack API to allow simple integration.

“We have focused on creating a seamless experience between CloudStack orchestrated infrastructure and Kubernetes orchestrated container environments to meet demand from our customers,” explained Sirett.

The project began as a collaboration between ShapeBlue and Skippbox, providers of platforms and tools that ease the deployment and lifecycle management of cloud-native applications. It has been available for download since May 2016 under the Apache 2.0 license and, ultimately, will be moved under the governance of the Apache CloudStack project.

“The Kubernetes CloudStack plug-in has been used by a number of cloud service providers for some time, and we are now confident about its potential to be utilised for a number of other use-cases by the open source community,” said Skippbox founder and CEO, Sebastien Goasguen. “Open sourcing it is the right thing to do, to help the community transition to a container world.”

The software gives end-users the ability to use multiple container engines such as Docker or rkt from CoreOS, hosted container registries like Docker hub, Quay or Google Container Registry (GCE), as well as their own private registries. It provides this whilst overcoming the biggest challenge for existing IaaS providers: how to quickly offer their users a robust CaaS offering, but with a seamless user experience and no disruption of their existing IaaS business processes and commercial models.

Ian Rae, CEO of Cloudops, said “ShapeBlue’s contribution allows service providers to offer “Containers-as-a-service” for their customers (similar to AWS ECS) based on Apache Cloudstack.  Their customers can now provision and manage containers on top of their cloud resources. CloudOps works with many open source cloud computing projects and we believe this contribution represents an important advancement in the capabilities of Apache CloudStack”.

“The underlying framework that we have created can be easily used as a basis for integrating Docker swarm, Apache Mesos, Apache Hadoop, or any other cluster orientated platform,” explained Sirett. “Adoption can be greatly accelerated by making this part of CloudStack itself, where the community can collaborate on further development.”

“Supporting containers is a great step forward for our users given the current cloud computing landscape,” said Will Stevens, Vice President of Apache CloudStack. “We appreciate ShapeBlue contributing this integration to the CloudStack community.”

Further information on CloudStack Container Service is available at https://www.shapeblue.com/cloudstack-container-service/

About ShapeBlue

ShapeBlue are the largest independent integrator of CloudStack technologies globally and are specialists in the design and implementation of IaaS cloud infrastructures for both private and public cloud implementations. Services include IaaS cloud design, software engineering, CloudStack consulting, and training. The company has a global customer base with offices in London (UK), Mountain View (CA), Bangalore (India), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Cape Town (South Africa). For more information, visit https://www.shapeblue.com/.

 

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CloudStack Container Service –Available for download

Today we are delighted to announce General Availability of CloudStack Container Service (CCS): software that gives Cloud Service Providers a Container as a Service (CaaS) offering within their existing IaaS environments..  The software is immediately available for trial or commercial license.

After the first release of the CloudStack Container Service in May, we have had the software in private preview with a small number of customers. We have worked with those customers, gathering feedback to ensure that CloudStack Container Service meets to needs of organisations wishing to deliver solid CaaS services.

CloudStack Container Service is easy to deploy and easily bolts on to your existing VM based IaaS offerings.    It gives end-users the ability to build container clusters and then manage them using Kubernetes. Users can be deploying containerised applications within minutes.

It allows this whilst overcoming  the  biggest challenge for existing IaaS providers: how do they quickly offer their users a robust CaaS offering and, at the same time, do so with a seamless user experience and no disruption of  their existing IaaS  business processes  and commercial models.

CloudStack Container Service is a plug-in for Apache Cloudstack

The CloudStack Container Service is open source.  Download it on Github: https://github.com/shapeblue/ccs

Documentation & Information

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Webinars: Delivering Containers as a Service with CloudStack Container Service | CloudStack Feature Deep Dive

The CloudStack Container Service allows service providers and enterprises  to create a Container as a Service offering quickly and easily in their existing IaaS environments. ShapeBlue in conjunction with Skippbox are delighted to announce a series of educational webinars to explore this new technology and introduce the tools and techniques used to allow your users to deploy containerised applications.

Webinar 1: Introduction to the CloudStack Container Service

This webinar will give a users-eye view on the simple deployment & management of cloud native applications on cluster containers using Cloudstack Container Service, Kubernetes and Docker. The webinar will explain the architecture of the Cloudstack Container Service and, through demonstrations show how your users could be deploying containerised applications in minutes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shapeblue harness the power of Kubernetes and CloudStack to give Cloud Service providers a seamless Container as a Service offering

container serviceShapeblue, The CloudStack Company, and Skippbox today announced the first release of the CloudStack Container Service: software that gives Cloud Service Providers a Container as a Service (CaaS) offering within their existing IaaS environments.

The software gives end-users the ability to use multiple container engines such as Docker and rkt, and hosted container registries like Docker hub, Quay or Google Container Registry (GCE) as well as their own private registries.  It allows this whilst overcoming  the  biggest challenge for existing IaaS providers: how do they quickly offer their users a robust CaaS offering and, at the same time, do so with a seamless user experience and no disruption of  their existing IaaS  business processes  and commercial models.

main cluster view

Giles Sirett, CEO of ShapeBlue  explained the drivers behind the product: “for some time, many of our customers have been experimenting with different tools and platforms in order to be able to offer Containers as a Service. There are many competing offerings  in the containers space but none of them have overcome  the main  challenges faced by existing IaaS providers. These challenges are, first, giving a seamless user experience alongside  their traditional  virtual machine offerings and, second, providing  a service  that allows the service provider to fit these new offerings into their existing commercial models.  Most of the new products being developed to manage container environments assume a green field environment and require a completely separate overlay of functionality, with a different user experience and extensive integration required around business processes”.

Sirett continued “CloudStack Container Service can be installed in hours and the service provider can immediately offer container and cluster management services to their users with zero changes to their  existing user experience or business processes. End users can be immediately deploying cloud native applications in their own container clusters.”

new dialog

CloudStack Container Service is developed  as a plug-in to Apache CloudStack, the cloud orchestration platform in widespread use by many large service providers. It gives users the ability to create container clusters within an existing multi-tenant environment provided by CloudStack. The user experience is seamless: users can now create container clusters and  deploy &  manage cloud native applications  all  in the same user-interface that they use to manage their existing  compute, network and storage. For service providers running dedicated or bespoke UI’s, a number of simple API calls have been added to the CloudStack API to allow simple integration.

In a similar fashion to Amazon’s EC2 Container Service and Google’s Container Engine, users simply pay for the resources that they consume to underpin their container clusters.  This gives the advantage of requiring no changes to business or commercial models by the service provider.

CloudStack k8s daashboardcontainer service exploits Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration platform developed by Google. Kubernetes provides the underlying platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of cloud native applications across clusters of hosts in the service provider environment. It  defines a set of building blocks (“primitives”) which collectively provide mechanisms for deploying, maintaining, and scaling applications.

On the choice of this technology to underpin CloudStack Container Service, Sebastien Goasguen, founder of Skippbox commented “Kubernetes is emerging as the standard for container orchestration. Enterprises are demanding platforms such as Kubernetes in order to be able to deploy  cloud native applications into production environments.   We see Kubernetes becoming the dominant technology across the enterprise and the service provider space.”

The CloudStack container service is a collaboration between Shapeblue and Skippbox, a company specialising in bringing software development tooling and application lifecycle solutions for the cloud native era.

CloudStack Container Service is available for immediate preview to service providers. An open source version of the software is due to be released shortly. A series of webinars are available for organisations interested in the technology.

About ShapeBlue

ShapeBlue are the largest independent integrator of CloudStack technologies  globally and are specialists in the design and implementation of IaaS cloud infrastructures for both private and public cloud implementations. Services include IaaS Cloud Design, Software Engineering,  CloudStack Consulting & training.

The company has a global customer base with offices in London (UK), Mountain View (CA) and Bangalore (India), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Cape Town (South Africa). For further information, visit: www.shapeblue.com

About Skippbox

SkippBox is company that specialises in bringing software development tooling and application lifecycle solutions for the cloud native era. For further information, visit: www.skippbox.com

 

 

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