Comparison between openstack and cloudstack Huzefa Husain huzefaaa@gmail.com

1. 1
Comparison: CloudStack vs OpenStack
Comparison based on :
Architecture
Installation
Administration
Security
High Availability
What do we need in a cloud :
Ease of use
Low-cost of entry/maintenance
Performance
Ease of expansion
Compatibility with different platforms
Agility / Fast provisioning
Objective: Needs to build a cloud environment to ….
 Meet departmental resource needs & timelines
 Control & monitor the entire environment
 Stage development, testing and production in a consistent way
Huzefa Husain
huzefaaa@gmail.com

2. 2
Architecture - CloudStack
Zone
Pod
Cluster
Host
Primary storage
Secondary storage

3. 3
Architecture - OpenStack
nova-api
rabbit-mq
nova-compute
nova-volume
nova-network
nova-scheduler
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
hypervisor swift-account
swift-container
swift-object
swift-proxy
glance-control
glance-registry
horizon
keystone: identity, token, catalog, policy
rdbms
Image
Service
Object
Storage

4. 4
Comparison
CloudStack OpenStack
Architecture Monolithic controller.
Datacenter model, not object
storage.
Fragmented into lots of pieces
Installation Easy: Few parts to install,
provide their own repos,
excellent install guide
Difficult: many choices, not
enough automation, lots of
configuration required. Get a
packaged stack from RedHat or
HP
Administration Very Good Web U, script CLI Web UI, euca2ools, native CLI,
CLI has to be used for core
infrastructure
Security Baseline vlan/firewall vm
protection
Baseline + Keystone
High
Availability
Load-balanced multi-node
controller
Swift Ring, otherwise manual
effort

5. 5
Other factors
CloudStack OpenStack
Codebase Java Python
History - Originally developed by
Cloud.com
- Open Sourced in May 2010
(GPLv3)
- Citrix purchased Cloud.com
in Aug 2011
- Donated to ASF in Feb 2012
- Being used by many
production clouds and service
providers (GoDaddy, Tata,
Wipro)
- Joint Project with Rackspace and
NASA
- Launched in June 2010
- It is also backed by IBM, HP and
Dell.
Hypervisor
Support
Vmware, Xen, KVM,
Citrix XenServer, Oracle
Hyper-V 2012
Vmware, Xen, KVM, UML,LXC,
Hyper-V 2012
Bare Metal
Support
Yes (limited for hypervisor and
linux)
Yes (limited for hypervisor and linux)

6. 6
Component Comparison
Storage
Comparison
Cloud Stack OpenStack
Disk Images yes yes
Block devices yes [1] yes [2]
Fault
Tolerance
yes [3] yes [4]
1. iSCSI, OCFS2, CLVM (depends on hypervisor)
2. Via an elastic block storage service
3. Parts are built-in, Storage is on your own
4. Uses rsync in the backend
Image Service Cloud Stack OpenStack
Image Service yes yes
Self Service [1] Yes yes
1. Ability for users to create and manage their own VM images.

7. 7
Component Comparison
Self Service Cloud Stack OpenStack
Web Interface yes yes
Users & Quotas yes yes
Console access yes yes
User Management yes yes
Networking
Comparison
Cloud Stack OpenStack
Auto-allocation yes yes
Floating IPs yes yes
User defined yes yes
Layer 2 yes yes

8. 8
Conclusion (my point of view….)
Cloud Stack OpenStack
Mature and more refined product Young product
No Complexity to Setup Very complex to setup.
GUI: Simple and very user friendly GUI: Not so friendly
Monolithic / simple component
architecture
Lot of components to configure and manage
Used by several large hosting
providers. It can be readily used by
enterprises.
Backed up by corporates, HP/Dell
(corporates) has customized it and selling to
other corporates.
Very good documentation Limited documentation
No or very little development effort is
required to customize
Good amount of development effort is
required
• CloudStack is better packaged for enterprise adoption, especially in environments
like ours.
Its installation packaging and customizable admin/end-user portal are designed for
quick, scalable adoption of the private cloud.
• OpenStack, needs time. It can be best described as a foundation or framework
for cloud computing, not nearly as polished. That being said, OpenStack currently
has a deeper pool of open source contributors actively participating.