Citrix released version 3.0.3 of the ClouStack product. You can read here what’s new in 3.0.3 in this version.
Secure Console Access on XenServer
With the addition of Secure Console feature, users can now securely access the VM consoles on the XenServer hypervisor. You can either SSH or use the View Console option in the Management Server to securely connect to the VMs on the XenServer host. The Management Server uses the xapi API to stream the VM consoles. However, there is no change in the way you can access the console of a VM. This feature is supported on XenServer 5.6 and 6.0 versions.
Stopped VM
This release supports creating VMs without starting them on the backend. You can determine whether the VM needs to be started as part of the VM deployment. A VM can be deployed in two ways: create and start a VM (the default method); create a VM and leave it in the stopped state.
A new request parameter, startVM, is introduced in the deployVm API to support the stopped VM feature. The possible values are:
- true – The VM starts as a part of the VM deployment.
- false – The VM is left in stopped state at the end of the VM deployment.
The default value is true.
Uploading an Existing Volume to a Virtual Machine
Existing data can now be made accessible to a virtual machine. This is called uploading a volume to the VM. For example, this is useful to upload data from a local file system and attach it to a VM. Root administrators, domain administrators, and end users can all upload existing volumes to VMs. The upload is performed by using HTTP. The uploaded volume is placed in the zone’s secondary storage.
This functionality is supported for the following hypervisors:
- Hypervisor : Disk Image Format
- XenServer : VHD
- VMware : OVA
- KVM : QCOW2
- OVM : RAW
Dedicated High-Availability Hosts
One or more hosts can now be designated for use only by high-availability (HA) enabled VMs that are restarted due to a host failure. Setting up a pool of such dedicated HA hosts as the recovery destination for all HA-enabled VMs make it easier to determine which VMs are restarted as part of the high-availability function. You can designate a host as a dedicated-HA restart node only if the Dedicated HA Hosts feature is enabled by setting the appropriate global configuration parameter.
Support for Amazon Web Services API
This release supports Amazon Web Services APIs, including Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) API. Fidelity with the EC2 API and the installation experience for this functionality are both enhanced. In prior releases, users were required to install a separate component called CloudBridge, in addition to installing the Management Server. For new installations of CloudPlatform 3.0.3, this software is installed automatically along with CloudPlatform and runs in a more closely integrated fashion. The feature is disabled by default, but can be easily enabled by setting the appropriate global configuration parameter and performing a few setup steps.
Support for Cisco Nexus 1000v Virtual Switch
In addition to standard vSwitch, Cisco Nexus 1000v is now supported for virtual network configuration in VMware vSphere deployments. With this, guest traffic isolation through VLANs is possible in VMware environment. Using Nexus virtual switch simplifies configuring and monitoring virtual networks that span across a large number of hosts, and facilitates live migration in VMWare-based cloud deployment.
You can download this version of CloudStack here with a valid MyCitrix ID.