open source cloud computing software

It is a known fact that almost all enterprises have adopted cloud technology to some extent. It offers infrastructural and services facilities to the consumers. At the same time, they manage the huge infrastructure of a cloud platform. Not to mention, this is a real bottleneck and a costly affair, too, in many cases. Though the cloud vendors support infrastructure management, open-source cloud computing software is another popular way nowadays.

Not to mention, open-source technology has always been a significant influence in business since its inception. The main reasons are it is free of cost facility, larger community support, and no proprietary software requirement. There are many open-source cloud computing software available in the market, and each of them has its own unique features. However, we can name a few prominent ones here and take an insight into the same. So, let’s have an overview of them!


Market leading Open Source Cloud computing software


1.OneOps


Founded by: Walmart Labs

Description: Walmart describes this as an open-source cloud computing software for “cloud management and application lifecycle management platform.” It is ideal for moving applications from one cloud to another cloud in a multi-cloud architecture.

Key features:

  • -Works with all types of cloud infrastructure – public, private, and hybrid

  • -Portable

  • -Cloud-agnostic design

  • -High availability

  • -Auto-healing capability

  • -Auto-scaling capability

  • -Highly scalable

  • -Assures continuous delivery

Pros:

  • All the features mentioned above are the benefits of using OneOps.

Cons:

  • Not any specific.


2. Kubernetes


Founded by: Google

Description: An open-source framework for managing containerized services in cloud computing. It is one of the open-source cloud computing software for managing the cloud. Kubernetes offers a cloud-agnostic design. Besides, it supports and facilitates automation and DevOps process and enables seamless deployment.

Key features:

  • -Open source, portable and extensible cloud platform

  • -Container-centric

  • -Supports Microservices

  • -Supports stateless, stateful, and data processing applications

  • -Offers load balancing

  • -Automates service discovery

  • -Automatically restarts containers which fail

  • -Facilitates horizontal scaling

Pros:

  • -Open-source hence free

  • -Highly scalable

  • -Cloud-agnostic design thus supports almost all cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, Google computes engine, AWS, Red Hat Atomic, etc.

  • -Easy to learn.

  • -Fault-tolerant and auto start the services if it fails during execution.

  • -Eliminates the risk of infrastructure lock-in

  • -Auto-scaling capability

  • -Support of large open source community

  • -High-velocity cloud project designed and developed by experienced people.

  • It-Easy to integrate for monitoring, logging, or to generate alerts.

  • -Easy-rolling updates

  • -Less downtime

  • -Immutable infrastructure

  • -Provides declarative configuration

Cons:

  • -Installation is difficult

  • -The initial start of the process may take time


Related post – Top 5 Free Open source cloud computing platform for file sharing

3. Mesos

Founded by: Apache.org

Description: This is an ideal open-source cloud computing software for cloud management. It supports any type of cloud – public, private, or hybrid. Mesos's underlying architecture is often described as a distributed systems kernel and used to manage thousands of servers. Mesos kernel provides scheduling for applications in a cloud environment.

Key features:

  • -Offers linear scalability across a large number of nodes.

  • -High availability and fault-tolerant

  • -Ideal for resource management for large databases like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, etc.

  • -Native support for containers

  • -Cross-platform support for the cloud.

  • -Abstracts computer resources like CPU, storage, the memory from the machine

Pros:

  • -Mesos supports non containerized processes

  • -Mesos can handle runtime customer scheduler

  • -Does not emulate lower level abstract and use a new layer.

  • -Mesos does not need workloads to use container images.

Cons:

  • Not any specific


4.Cloud Foundry


Founded by: Primarily developed by VMWare and later transferred to Cloud Foundry Foundation

Description: Cloud Foundry works as an open-source multi-cloud platform as a service (PaaS) and promotes continuous delivery. It is a container-based architecture and is responsible for application availability without manual intervention.

Here are some more facts on Cloud Foundry – Know some Facts on Cloud Foundry

Key features:

  • -Auto-scaling capability

  • -Centralized logging facility

  • -Leverages dynamic routing

  • -Portable

  • -Application Life cycle management

  • -Supports multiple programming languages for development like Java, Ruby, Python, and JavaScript, etc.

  • -Supports multiple cloud deployment models like a public, private

  • -Provides robust infrastructure security

Pros:

  • -The multi-cloud platform is a great way to leverage application-specific workloads to the target cloud platform.

  • -Reduces application development time

  • -Since it is portable, users can easily avoid vendor lock-in.

  • -Saves the budget.

Cons:

  • Suitable for new application development whereas for existing application and services there is a need for architecture revamp.


5.Docker


Founded by: Docker, Inc

Description: Docker is an open-source project in cloud computing that provides the containerization that is operating system-level virtualization. Enterprises will adopt this container platform to manage, build, and secure applications from traditional ones to Microservices.

Key features:

  • -Supports any applications from monoliths to microservice

  • -Supports any operating systems

  • -Supports any cloud infrastructure, whether it is a public or on-premises private cloud.

  • -It can run any orchestrator like Swarm or Kubernetes

  • -Provides integrated container security

  • -Promotes agile operations

  • -Easy to integrate

  • -Provides application isolation.

Pros:

  • -Since Dockers provide application isolation, it is easy to debug the applications.

  • -It is more accessible to provision processes using Dockers

  • -Large community support

Cons:

  • -Docker is Linux container based. Hence, running it on a non-native container is difficult.

  • -Since Docker containers share the same kernel, a single bug in the kernel can affect all the containers.


6.OpenStack


Founded by: OpenStack Foundation

Description: This open-source cloud computing software targets to single cloud type, either public or private cloud. This is a set of software tools for cloud management and is considered one of the best open-source cloud management tools. It works as an Infrastructure as a Service that helps to add new instances easily. OpenStack is an open-source tool for cloud management and deployment purpose. The types of deployment can support big data, web hosting, or containers. 

Key features:

  • -A cloud operating system

  • -Provides administrative control through its dashboard to a large pool of computing, storage, and networking resources of a datacentre.

  • -OpenStack landscape is broken into three main projects – OpenStack components, SDKs, and Deployment tool.

  • -Provides fault management and service management.

  • -Ideal for horizontal scaling

  • -Being an open-source tool, it has free access to the code, a large community of developers to support the product.

Pros:

  • -Being an open sour tool, it is free to use.

  • -As divided into three modular projects, the user can choose the components as per their need.

  • -Avoids vendor-lock-in as any specific organization does not acquire it.

Cons:

  • -Being a large project and a large number of components, deploying or working with OpenStack requires additional knowledge. Hence, organizations may need to involve appropriate skillsets and resources, which is sometimes a costly measure.


7. Eucalyptus


Founded by: Developed by Eucalyptus Systems, Inc

Description: The name Eucalyptus stands for Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems. This is one of the powerful open-source cloud computing software for managing cloud infrastructure specifically for AWS private clouds

Key features:

  • -Open Source

  • -Provides IaaS based solutions for private and hybrid cloud

  • -The architecture is based on modular and extensible web services.

  • -Supports auto-scaling and load balancing

  • Compatible with EC2 and S3

Pros:

  • -Facilitates data center optimization

  • -Automates self-service provisioning

  • -Dynamic scaling of application workloads

Cons:

  • Not any specific


Final Words

So, from the above mentioned open-source cloud computing software, we can say that there is no one-size-fits-all solution in the market. It is all requirement based, and the appropriate tool must be selected after considering fit-to-purpose.


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