The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today the availability of Apache™ CloudStack™ v4.6, the turnkey Open Source cloud computing software platform used for creating private-, public-, and hybrid cloud environments.

Apache CloudStack clouds enable billions of dollars' worth of business transactions annually across their clouds, and its maturity and stability has led it to has become the Open Source platform for many service providers to set up on-demand, elastic public cloud computing services, as well as enterprises and others to set up a private or hybrid cloud for use by their own employees.

"This 4.6 release of Apache CloudStack marks a significant shift in how we release CloudStack," said Sebastien Goasguen, Vice President of Apache CloudStack. "With a focus on quality and speed of releasing software, we implemented a new release workflow which allows us to have a production-ready release branch all the time, and allows us to quickly release new features. From now on, CloudStack will be released much faster without regression and with increased quality in each version."

Recognized as the Cloud orchestration platform that "just works", CloudStack includes an intuitive user interface and rich APIs for managing the compute, networking, software, and storage infrastructure resources.

Under the Hood

CloudStack v4.6 reflects dozens of new features and improvements, including:

  • NuageVsp Network Plugin
  • Bind integration with Globo DNSAPI
  • SAML 2.0 Plugin
  • Managed storage for KVM
  • Improved CloudByte Storage Plugin
  • Use SSH for commands sent to Virtual-Router
  • Baremetal Advanced Networking Support
  • Instance Password Generation length can now be changed

A complete overview of all new enhancements are detailed in the project release notes

CloudStack v4.6 reflects more than 200 bug fixes from previous releases.

Apache CloudStack is in use/production at thousands of organizations worldwide that includes BIT.Group GmbH, BT Cloud, China Telecom, CloudOps, DATACENTER Services, DataCentrix, Datapipe, EVRY, Exaserve, Exoscale, IDC Frontier, iKoula, Imperial College, INRIA, KDDI, Korea Telecom, LeaseWeb, M5 Hosting Inc., Melbourne University, Reliable Networks, Redbridge, SafeSwiss Cloud, Schuberg Philis, ShapeBlue, Tranquil Hosting, Trader Media Group, University of Cologne, and the University of Sao Paulo, among others.

"With the 4.6 release the Apache CloudStack continues to mature adding important new functionality that will benefit CloudCentral's customers," said Kristoffer Sheather, Founder & Chief of Australian cloud services provider CloudCentral, who have been using Apache CloudStack since 2010. "The new Redundant Routers for Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks feature will ensure continuous availability of customer VPC networks, and Browser Based Template & Volume Upload will make it easier for our customers to import and use their choice of operating system ISO images and import VM templates from other cloud systems."

"CloudOps is very excited about the release of Apache CloudStack 4.6, which represents significant improvements in feature set and quality," said Ian Rae, CEO of CloudOps. "We are proud of our involvement in this landmark release and look forward to supporting our customers achieve operational success in upgrading to and operating clouds based on this release. Apache
CloudStack is the best kept secret in open source cloud computing and has a global user base of cloud operators many of whom contribute to the project."

"The 4.6 release of Apache CloudStack brings new features and fixes bugs which are critical for our Aurora cloud offering at PCextreme," said Wido den Hollander, CEO of PCextreme. "We've worked hard with the community to get 4.6 released. The committers working at PCextreme resolved multiple issues and also introduced new features in CloudStack including a new StatsCollector output to Graphite and better support for CEPH. This new release allows us to grow our cloud even further."

"I'm very excited with launch of the Apache CloudStack version 4.6," said Cyrano Rizzo, CIO of the University of Sao-Paulo. "This version brought many new features and benefits, such as the case in resilience with the new redundant router for VPC, the capability to rapid deployment, demo and test to run the Apache CloudStack inside Docker that will speed the growth, the possibility to manage the resources with Graphite, the ease of upload templates and volumes, among many others, this version also brought many improvements, I'm very happy with one in particular that makes SAML plugin to production grade, this functionality is helping me to build a huge project called interCloud that intend to federate many public universities across the Brazil with Single Sign On."

Get Involved!

Apache CloudStack welcomes contribution and community participation through mailing lists as well as attending face-to-face MeetUps, developer trainings, and user events. Catch Apache CloudStack in action at the next CloudStack European User Group on 3 March 2016 in London