The open-source license is transitioning to become a new standard in the field of information technology. The latest trends suggest that a large majority of new software applications introduced in the market are also based on the open-source projects. A huge number of free cloud services are already doing well in the marketplace.
The best cloud services on the internet include Google cloud services, Dropbox, OneDrive, and many others. Meanwhile, a large number of cloud backup services also use the open source cloud computing technologies for their services.
With the increasing popularity of open source cloud computing technologies, the cost of hiring developers is also soaring high. Meanwhile, both the cost and demand for the certified cloud security professionals CCSP have also increased very rapidly. To cope with the increasing cost of cloud developer jobs, numerous companies choose alternative ways for reducing the software development cost by using other models of hires. You can have more info here on how to reduce the software development cost and work with developers.
What are open-source cloud computing projects?
The open source cloud computing software projects are those cloud technologies and platforms, which can be used, modified and shared with the other people without paying any license fee. A large community of developers normally supports the project by improving the code quality and reducing the bugs and vulnerabilities.
The open source licensing standards are defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) organization. According to the Statista information, the open source services’ revenue is projected to cross $32.95 billion by 2022. The growth of the public cloud is amazingly high, especially in the enterprises. The new cloud computing project ideas are also emerging in the market consistently.
How to implement cloud computing services?
Many cloud computing services are appearing in the market on a regular basis. The implementation of those services depends on the nature of the cloud services. But in general, you need to take the following major steps for the implementation of cloud services.
Assess and define the project to be implemented as a cloud service
- Define security policy
- Choose the right open source platform
- Choose the right infrastructure provider
- Sign technical/commercial SLA
- Implement project phase-wise
- Keep the future planning in mind
Top 5 open-source cloud computing projects
Open source cloud projects have become a fundamental part of the cloud computing services. Many cloud computing operators are using open source cloud platforms. The Amazon cloud services company has also started using the power of open source cloud platforms. There are numerous open source cloud computing platforms available in the market; a few very important ones are listed below:
#1 OpenStack
OpenStack was one of the first open source cloud platforms. It was initiated by Rackspace and NASA in 2010. Now this project is supported by over 500 cloud computing companies and organizations. There are hundreds of organizations from diverse sectors like government, healthcare, IT, telecom and others that use the OpenStack cloud platform. The main features of this platform include:
- Provides robust cloud data security
- Supports both public and private cloud computing
- OpenStack API compatible with the Amazon web services
- Comprehensive documentation on how to use the cloud platform
- A large community of developers for support
- Supports numerous identification forms for a better security
- Supports erasure and replication features for better data integrity
- An automatic storage monitoring system to detect the failed nodes and drives
- Fast release cycle of about 4 to 6 months
- Addresses all cloud security challenges that the industries face
- Modular architecture makes it more flexible
#2 Apache CloudStack
The Apache CloudStack is one of the most popular open source cloud computing software platforms used for creating, deploying and managing the cloud infrastructure services. This platform is highly scalable, stable, and reliable powered by the Apache software foundation ASF. The CloudStack project was started in 2008. It was acquired by Citrix Inc in 2011. It was launched under Apache license in 2012.
The main features of Apache CloudStack include:
- Offers a powerful API, which also supports AWS
- Offers the capabilities of highly secure cloud deployments
- Offers a powerful control panel to manage services comprehensively
- Offers robust solutions to the major security issues in the cloud computing environment
- Offers multiple storage options like iSCSI, NFS and Ceph RBD, NAS and local disk options
- Supports clustered logic volume manager (LVM), MPX, SDX, and VPX
- Allows access to the secure AJAX console for a better security
- Supports the on-demand virtual data center hosting feature
- The hypervisor agnostic feature supports KVM, VMware, XenServer, XenCloud and other hypervisors
- Supports the LDAP integration
#3 Kernel-based virtual machine KVM
KVM is a popular open source virtualization infrastructure solution for the Linux OS platform. This platform is used to create virtual machines on the OS. It supports numerous cloud infrastructure platforms like OpenStack, bare metal, and Dockers. The first version of KVM was released in 2007 merged with the Linux kernel version 2.6.20. Originally, the KVM project was introduced for x86 hardware. KVM offers numerous great features as mentioned below:
- Supports numerous attractive GUI management tools
- Supports creation of RAM from 50 MB to 32 TB
- Supports up to 160 CPUs
- Supports kernel same page merging and CPU hotplugging
- Allows emulation of SCSI disks
#4 Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is a powerful container application framework. This platform is based on the Kubernetes and Docker containers. It is powered by the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS system. It was first released in 2007 under the Apache License. The latest stable version 3.9 was released in March 2018. This platform has the following major features.
- An easy and effective way to create, manage and deploy your containers in the cloud
- Based on both Docker and Kubernetes container technologies
- Supports almost all programming languages to create your application in the container environment
- Supports the integrated quick start app template capability
- Supports both NoSQL and traditional relational databases
- Integrated JBoss middleware service offers great flexibility to developers for app development in the hybrid cloud environment
- Port forwarding capability and much more
#5 Ansible
Ansible is a comprehensive IT automation engine that is able to automate numerous cloud processes such as cloud service provisioning, management, configuration, deployment, and others. It is an open source project available for all to use without any charges. Ansible was first released in 2012, and the latest version 2.7.0 was released on Oct 5, 2018. The main features of the Ansible automation engine are mentioned below:
- Available in both GNU and proprietary versions
- Supports multi-tier software infrastructure deployments
- It is simple and easy to use for even complex deployment
- Highly efficient architecture based on the Ansible modules
- Support for Node JS Online Test and similar applications
- Ansible modules can easily be written in numerous popular scripting languages like Ruby, Python, Perl, and others
- Supports efficient and secure connections through remote APIs, SSH, and PowerShell
- Supports numerous cloud technologies for integration like AWS, CloudStack, KVM, Google cloud, Docker, VMware, and many others
Final Takeaway
From the discussion of this article, we conclude that:
- The open source cloud computing market is expanding very rapidly
- Hundreds of open source projects are emerging in the marketplace
- The features and capabilities of top 5 open source projects are very useful for the cloud-based software world
- The stepwise procedure for open source cloud computing services described