Item: Apache CloudStack
Rating: 9
Author: Vinicius Lima

Overall Satisfaction with CloudStack

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use CloudStack to deliver IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) to a university community. Resources are applied on research, management and education across the whole University. Before that, there were a lot of local data centers spread across the university's several campuses. Using cloud computing with CloudStack, the operational and management costs were significantly decreasead.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Low-cost solution
Open-source
Engaged community
Solid documentation
Is a very reliable tool for orchestration with good usability

Cons

Maintenance tools
Less command line interventions
Server logs not so friendly
Upgrades are not so straightforward
The graphical interface performance in big environments can get a little bit slow

Return on Investment

Low-cost solution (free and open-source)
More than 2000 users using it simultaneously
Stable and reliable
Up and running since 2012

Alternatives Considered

CloudStack stacks up by keeping it simple for end users through its UI. Admins may take some time to get familiar with everything and to learn how to manage it efficiently. The main advantages of CloudStack are that is free, open-source (written in Java) and has an engaged community for support and troubleshooting. Finally, it can be less appropriate in scenarios where admins are not familiar with Linux operating systems and command line interventions.

Likelihood to Recommend

CloudStack is well suited if you want to keep the costs low and still need a reliable and robust tool to cloud virtualization orchestration. The end user interface is friendly so users can find and use functionalities quickly. Also, the newer version allows you to integrate CloudStack with external authentication using SAML for single sign-on. It can be less appropriate for an administrator that does not want to do a lot of interventions using a command line or that does not use the Linux operating system.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

Reliable, stable and powerful orchestration tool for infrastructure as a service provider