Cloudstack 4.1 new features

Here is a list I have put together which discusses the Cloudstack 4.1. new features. I have put some comments down against some of the features. Some comments are missing, simply because I do not know much about them!

• AWS-Style Regions
  
  This is the biggest change which involves placing a new layer above Zones. This is so we can scale cloudstack better with the ability of having a cloudstack management server per availablity zone. This is great if you customers are geographically apart across continents. There are some big challenges around this change I suspect.

• F5 & SRX inline mode
  
  This is an improvement. Basically having a firewall in front of the F5 load balancer so your customer can have the advantage of IDP and IDS filtering.

• AutoScale in the Netscalers
  
  This has been in CloudPlatform and requires NS firmware 10+, but its cool and it works. You do need a netscaler, and the cheapest option is a VPX device.

 

• Advanced Search UI
  
  Required as the product is becoming so more powerful, with the ability to handle so many devices now. Tick!

 

• S3-backed Secondary Storage
  
  Well S3 has about 15% of the worlds entire storage, so why not :)

• EC2 Query API support
  
  Well EC2 has about 15% of the worlds entire compute force, so why not :)

 

• API Request Throttling
  
  This has been outstanding for a while. You can actually DDOS a CSM server if you wanted to. This will stop the potential.

 

• Enhanced baremetal servers support on Cisco UCS
  
  This is a good. Automating physical hosts with Cisco UCS platform, allowing Cloudstack to manage the lifecycle of the physical host.

 

• Events framework to publish/subscribe to CloudStack events
  
  Good for developers who want to hook in to events. Can be used for emailing when
  something happens which isn't really possible in CS 4 

• OVS support in KVM
  
  I would say this is a pit of plumbing for some future networking functionality coming our way with KVM. A step in the right direction.

 

• Reset SSH Key to access VM (similar to reset password)
  
  Great stuff. Easy and now usable.

 

• Security Groups Isolation in Advanced Zone
  
  I am sure this is only KVM using etables. We'll see though.

 

• Site-to-Site VPN: Monitoring of VPN Tunnels 

 

• Persistent Networks without running a VM
  
  This is actually fairly important if using cloudstack to burst or scale into. You have vlan dedicated to you so persistent config can now be applied to your external devices connecting in to cloudstack.

 

• Egress firewall rules for guest network
  
  I need to see this. This is in CloudPlatform but we need to have more control over outbound traffic, i.e., what we can allow through a back door. For example, if I wanted to connect to a kms server for licensing or a monitoring server for my customers.

 

• Additional VMX Settings
  
  _not_yet_sure_what_this_is_

 

• Resize volumes feature
  
  This is root and data volumes. Great if you have deployed a VM and want to resize it.

 

• Add/remove network on VM
  
  Yes - and finally. So you need a NIC? You can now add on.

 

• Limit API Queries
  
  1,2,3,4,5 that's all you can have Mr.

 

• Improve API Performance / Add Search Capabilities
  
  With so many APIs now in Cloudstack, we can get a bit lost with it all. This will help.

• Allow for same vlan on different physical nics
  
  Helpful if you want to define your networks a bit more over physical devices. For example, coming inbound via an MPLS link.

 

• BigSwitch network plugin
  I get lost with all of the SDNs coming our way. This one I don't know too much about, but someone else does http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/11/13/the-big-switch-to-sdn-and-cloudstack-guest-post-from-bigswitch/

 

• ApiDiscoverService: Implement a plugin mechanism that exposes the list of APIs through a discovery service on the management server
  
  Oh, this one again. So what was the other one then?
  
  
•  Implement L3 Router functionality in Nicira Nvp Plugin
  
  No more vlans.. no more vlans.. yeah.

 

• Mash up marvin into an interactive auto-completing API shell for CloudStack (aka Cloudmonkey CLI) 

 

• Baremetal kickstart
  
  Good for physical host deployments of say Windows :)

 

• Nicira NVP/KVM
  
  SDN not my game.. yet - I need it to settle down a bit more before I get a grip :)

 

• Netscaler plugin
  
  More netscaler intergration

• API changes for IPv6 Support
  
  IP6 stuff coming in to play more.

Lots of new features. Can't wait to have a play and will report back when I do. Leave a comment if you get the chance to muck around - be good to know feedback!