How to test Apache CloudStack 4.2 on your local machine

LeaseWeb released its Private Cloud powered by Apache CloudStack two months ago [1]. Apache CloudStack [2] is an open source software platform that pools computing resources to build public, private, and hybrid Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds.

In this post, I will give a short introduction of Apache CloudStackand introduce an easy way to test Apache CloudStack 4.2 on our local machine using DevCloud.

Apache CloudStack manages the network, storage, and compute nodes that make up a cloud infrastructure. Apache CloudStack provides a first-class user interface (UI), a command line tool named CloudMonkey[3], and a full-featured RESTful API. Apache CloudStack currently supports the most popular hypervisors: VMware, KVM, XenServer and XenCloud Platform (XCP).

For now, the latest stable version of Apache CloudStack is 4.2.0.However, if you want to change and test your change in Apache CloudStack, or test the new features of CloudStack, you can check out the Apache CloudStack source code, build RPM/DEB packages, and installthem on servers. However, Apache CloudStack also provides an easier way for testing.

DevCloud [4] is a virtual appliance shipped as an OVA image which runs on VirtualBox (an opensource type-2 or desktop hypervisor) and can be used for CloudStack’s development and testing. An NFS server is already configured in DevCloud, the System VM Template for Apache CloudStack 4.0/4.1 and a tty linux virtual machine template are already installed on it. Moreover, Xen hypervisor and Xen Cloud Platform (XCP)are already installed in DevCloud, so virtual machines can be deployed in it.

Now we can test Apache Cloudstack on our local machines using DevCloud:

1. Preparation

(1)  Install VirtualBox

(2) Create a “host-only” network in VirtualBox if not exists. Set the IPv4 to 192.168.56.1

(3) It is recommended that we install a Linux (such as CentOS,Ubuntu) virtual machine in VirtualBox as the working VM (WORK-VM) at first. There are two network adaptor attached to the VM (on is attached to NAT , another one is attached to the Host-Only Adaptor created inStep 2). Suppose it has a IP 192.168.56.2 .

Make sure the following programs have been installed: mysql-server,Python, Python-Dev (python-devel), mysql-connector-java, Java, tomcat6,python-paramiko, nfs-utils, Jsvc, maven, mysql-connector-python (pipinstall), requests (pip install)

(4) Get DevCloud2 [5] and import it to VirtualBox. Please do NOTselect “re-initialize the MAC address of all network cards”. Make sure‘Enable PAE/NX’ mode under VM settings -> System -> Processor Tabis checked. Change the network setting like Step 3. The networkconfiguration should like this: