Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack, is the industry’s only future-proofed, application-centric cloud solution proven to reliably orchestrate both existing enterprise workloads and cloud-native workloads within a single unified cloud management platform. CloudPlatform combines the best private cloud foundation for enterprise workloads like CRM and ERP with true Amazon-style scale, elasticity and operational efficiency for cloud-era workloads like social applications, Big Data and HPC. The mature, turn-key solution is based on open source Apache CloudStack and lets you use leverage existing hypervisor, storage and network investments. CloudPlatform delivers the fastest time-to-value, powers the world’s leading clouds and is recognized as a market leader by industry experts.

CloudPlatform 4.2.1 includes the following new features.

Optional XenServer 64-Bit Template Support

CloudPlatform now provides XenServer 64-bit templates for System VMs. With this support, you will be able to upgrade virtual routers in a zone. The following parameters have been introduced for the same purpose:

·         XenServer: router.template.xen

·         KVM: router.template.kvm

XenServer VM Snapshots

VM Snapshots are now supported on both VMware and XenServer hosts. Previously, they were suported only on VMware.

In addition to the existing CloudPlatform ability to snapshot individual VM volumes, you can now take a VM snapshot to preserve all the VM’s data volumes as well as (optionally) its CPU/memory state. This is useful for quick restore of a VM. For example, you can snapshot a VM, then make changes such as software upgrades. If anything goes wrong, simply restore the VM to its previous state using the previously saved VM snapshot. The VM snapshot includes not only the data volumes, but optionally also whether the VM is running or turned off (CPU state) and the memory contents. The snapshot is stored in CloudPlatform’s primary storage.

VM snapshots can have a parent/child relationship. Each successive snapshot of the same VM is the child of the snapshot that came before it. Each time you take an additional snapshot of the same  VM, it saves only the differences between the current state of the VM and the state stored in the most recent previous snapshot. The previous snapshot becomes a parent, and the new snapshot is its child. It is possible to create a long chain of these parent/child snapshots, which amount to a “redo” record leading from the current state of the VM back to the original.

Cisco UCS Enhancements

Several modifications have been made to improve the user experience when working with Cisco UCS blades and the UCS Manager. The internal procedure for associating a profile to a blade has been modified. When a user wants to associate a profile to a blade in CloudPlatform 4.2.1, the user chooses a profile template.

CloudPlatform instantiates a profile from that template. In the previous version, CloudPlatform would instead create a clone of a profile chosen by the user.

·         As a consequence of this change, the user now views a list of profile templates rather than a list of profiles when associating a blade.

·         A new mechanism is provided for making CloudPlatform aware of any changes that are made manually on the Cisco UCS Manager. For example, at any time, CloudPlatform users might directly associate or dissociate blades on the UCS Manager, and CloudPlatform would not be aware of these changes. In order to synchronize the state of CloudPlatform with UCS Manager, the user can click a new Refresh Blades button in the CloudPlatform UI. This button is located in the Blades tab, above the list of associated blades

Choose Single-part or Multi-part Upload to Object

Storage CloudPlatform 4.2.1 supports both multi-part and single-part upload for registering templates, uploading volumes, and backing up snapshots to object storage in secondary storage. Previously, only multi-part upload was supported for registering templates and uploading volumes, and only single-part upload was supported for backing up snapshots.

Management Server Support on CentOS 6.4

CloudPlatform Management Server is now certified on CentOS 6.4.

Device ID Changes for XenServer

In XenServer 6.1 version and above, a new parameter, device_id: 0002, is introduced for Windows VM with PV drivers. Due to this change, Windows VMs deployed with PV drivers on XenServer 6.0.2 or earlier hosts are not able to successfully boot after stopping and starting once the hosts have been upgraded to XenServer version 6.1 or 6.2. In order to address this issue, a new Global Parameter, xen.pvdriver.version, is introduced to reflect the default PV driver version that is used when registering templates as regular users. Default value for this Global parameter on fresh install will be set to xenserver61, which implies that the new deployments will have only XenServer 6.1 or XenServer 6.2 hosts. Default value for this Global parameter on upgrades would be set to xenserver61 only if all the hosts in the deployment are XenServer 6.1 or above. Even if a host is below XenServer 6.1 version, this value will be set to xenserver56. The administrators are provided with following abilities with respect to setting or altering PV driver version:

·         Ability to set the PV driver version 6.1+ option for a template when registering templates. Regular and Domain admin users will not have the ability to set the PV driver version when registering templates. In this case the PV driver version is defaulted to the Global parameter, xen.pvdriver.version. The PV driver version of the template is stored in vm_template_details.

·         Ability to update the PV driver version 6.1 + option for an existing template.

·         Ability to update the PV driver version 6.1 + option for a VM when it is in stopped state.

Acquiring IP Without Enabling SourceNAT Service 

The SourceNAT dependency for acquiring IPs has been removed. Therefore, an IP can now be acquired and LB rules can be created on it without enabling the SourceNAT service in a network. In both shared and isolated networks, DNS, DHCP and LB services provided by CloudPlatform is a valid service combination. In this case gateway is defined externally on the configured LB device and CloudPlatform does not provide any NAT service.