CloudStack is open-source cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services. It uses existing hypervisor platforms for virtualization, such as KVM, VMware vSphere, including ESXi and vCenter, and XenServer/XCP. In addition to its own API, CloudStack also supports the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API[2] and the Open Cloud Computing Interface from the Open Grid Forum.[3]
CloudStack was originally developed by Cloud.com, formerly known as VMOps.[4]
VMOps was founded by Sheng Liang, Shannon Williams, Alex Huang, Will Chan, and Chiradeep Vittal in 2008.[5][6] The company raised a total of $17.6M in venture funding[7] from Redpoint Ventures, Nexus Ventures and Index Ventures (Redpoint and Nexus led the initial Series A funding round). The company changed its name from VMOps to Cloud.com on May 4, 2010, when it emerged from stealth mode by announcing its product.[8][4][9] Cloud.com was based in Cupertino, California.
In May 2010, Cloud.com released most of CloudStack as free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPLv3).[10] They kept about 5% proprietary.[11] Cloud.com and Citrix both supported OpenStack, another Apache-licensed cloud computing program, at its announcement in July 2010.[12][13][14]
In October 2010, Cloud.com announced a partnership with Microsoft to develop the code to provide integration and support of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to the OpenStack project.[15]
Citrix Systems purchased Cloud.com on July 12, 2011, for approximately $200 million.[16][17][18] In August 2011, Citrix released the remaining code under the Apache Software License with further development governed by the Apache Foundation.[11] In February 2012, Citrix released CloudStack 3.0. Among other features, this added support for Swift, OpenStack's S3-like object storage solution.[19] In April 2012, Citrix donated CloudStack to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), where it was accepted into the Apache Incubator; Citrix changed the license to the Apache License version 2. As part of this change, Citrix also ceased their involvement in OpenStack.[20] On November 6, 2012, CloudStack 4.0.0-incubating was announced,[21] the first stable release after joining ASF. On March 20, 2013, CloudStack graduated from Apache Incubator and became a Top-Level Project (TLP) of ASF.[22] The first stable (maintenance) release after graduation is CloudStack 4.0.2.[23]
Hypervisor[25] | Version | EOL (End Of Life) |
VMware vSphere | 6.5 | 15/10/2022[26] |
VMware vSphere | 6.7 | 15/10/2022[26] |
VMware vSphere | 7.0 | 02/04/2025[26] |
Citrix Hypervisor | 7.1 | 12/12/2023[27] |
Citrix Hypervisor | 7.2 | 12/12/2023[27] |
Citrix Hypervisor | 7.4 | 12/12/2023[27] |
Citrix Hypervisor | 7.5 | 12/12/2023[27] |
Citrix Hypervisor | 8.0 | 25/07/2025[28] |
XCP-ng | 7.4 | 31/12/2018[28] |
XCP-ng | 7.6 | 30/03/2020[28] |
XCP-ng | 8.0 | 13/11/2020[28] |
XCP-ng | 8.1 | 31/03/2021[28] |
XCP-ng | 8.2 | 25/06/2025[28] |
Centos / Red Hat KVM | 7 | 30/08/2021[29] |
Centos / Red Hat KVM | 8 | 31/05/2029[29] |
Ubuntu / KVM | 18 | 2028[30] |
Ubuntu / KVM | 20 | 2030[30] |
Opensuse Leap / KVM | 15 | 04/01/2022[31] |
Suse Linux Enterprise Server | 15 | 31/07/2028[32] |
Rocky Linux | 8 | 2029[33] |
Red Hat / LXC | 7 | 30/08/2021[34] |
Microsoft Hyper-V | 2012 R2 | 10/10/2023[35] |
The minimum production installation consists of one machine running the CloudStack Management Server and another machine to act as the cloud infrastructure (in this case, a very simple infrastructure consisting of one host running hypervisor software). In its smallest deployment, a single machine can act as both the Management Server and the hypervisor host (using the KVM hypervisor).[36]
Multiple management servers can be configured for redundancy and load balancing, all pointing to a common MySQL database.
In July 2012 it was reported that Datapipe launched the largest international public cloud to be built on CloudStack, which included 6 data centers in the US, Britain, and Asia.[37]