Apache CloudStack 4.3 Supports Microsoft's Hyper-V Virtualization

The Apache Software Foundation has announced the arrival of version 4.3 of the CloudStack cloud computing platform, which offers a lot of new features and includes support for Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization hypervisor.  This release is the first big update to CloudStack since the 4.2 release debuted in October. CloudStack is an open source project that Citrix donated to the Apache Software Foundation, and Citrix also sells and supports a commercial arm of the platform.

The new version of CloudStack also supports Dynamic Compute, which facilitates tenants when creating instances. Notably, according to eWeek, CloudStack project leaders are also looking into supporting Docker container virtualization technology.

The commercial arm of CloudStack that Citrix focuses on has also won the support of major vendors including Cisco, CA and NetApp, all of whom have announced significant investments in the platform. While CloudStack doesn't draw as many headlines as OpenStack, Citrix officials regularly point out that it is highly popular, as seen in this post:

"CloudStack continues to gain rapid adoption with large scale deployments around the world, both with major service provider and enterprise customers. While you might not realize it from reading the press releases, CloudStack is far and away the most widely deployed open source platform in the cloud. It’s not even a close race. While other platforms have lots of 'PR wins,' very few have been successful in real deployments."

It's good to see a powerful and experienced open source steward like the Apache Software Foundation moving the open source CloudStack platform along. Apache, of course, has a sterling reputation for creating and scaling mature, dependable open source applications and platforms. 

With its new support for Hyper-V, CloudStack currently supports most of the popular hypervisors. VMware, KVM, XenServer, and Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) are all supported as well.