Alternatives to Apache CloudStack
An open-source infrastructure-as-a-service platform for deploying and managing large networks of virtual machines. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Apache CloudStack
An open-source infrastructure-as-a-service platform for deploying and managing large networks of virtual machines.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Apache CloudStack.
OpenStack
A set of open-source components for running cloud infrastructure with virtual machines, bare metal and containers.
OpenStack splits compute, storage and networking into many separate components with APIs and a dashboard, which adds deployment and upgrade complexity but brings a large partner ecosystem.
OpenNebula
An open-source platform for building private and hybrid clouds that manage virtual machines and Kubernetes.
OpenNebula manages virtual machines and Kubernetes in one platform with VMware migration tools, and it is freemium, with support and some integrations sold through paid subscriptions.
Harvester
Hyper-converged infrastructure that runs virtual machines on top of Kubernetes.
Harvester runs virtual machines and containers together on Kubernetes, installs on bare metal only, and expects at least three nodes for a production cluster.
oVirt
Centralised management platform for KVM virtual machines across a cluster.
oVirt focuses on central management of KVM clusters with live migration and high availability, but its development slowed after Red Hat Virtualization reached end of life.
Ganeti
An open-source cluster manager for running virtual machines on Xen or KVM across several servers.
Ganeti is a simpler cluster manager for Xen or KVM on about 3 to 100 nodes, without CloudStack's accounts, accounting and AWS-compatible API.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Foreman
An open-source lifecycle management tool for provisioning, configuring and monitoring physical and virtual servers.
libvirt
A toolkit, daemon and API for managing KVM, QEMU, Xen, LXC and other virtualization platforms.
KVM
The Linux kernel's built-in hypervisor for hardware-accelerated virtual machines.
Xen Project
An open source type-1 hypervisor that runs several isolated operating systems on the same hardware.
KubeVirt
A Kubernetes add-on that runs and manages traditional virtual machines alongside containers.
Proxmox VE
A bare-metal server platform that runs KVM virtual machines and LXC containers from one web interface.
