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I am trying to setup an environment which will allow our development team to centrally manage all our cloud-based resources/services available.

I have already looked at a variety of tools, but I am interested in a feature that will allow me specifically to manage multi-cloud setups.

Is it possible to interact with different providers using one technology?

Is there an industry standard?

dawud
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Desolate Planet
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  • Can you please provide a reason for why this was downvoted? At the very least, if I was going to downvote a question I'd point the author to some constructive outcome... – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 14:09
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    We have the same rule as [so] against asking for a tool, library or favorite off-site resource. – Michael Hampton Jul 13 '14 at 15:17
  • @MichaelHampton fair enough, I was more interested in a feature rather than a tool itself and was curious if it existed. Thankfully, spinus's answer led me to server density, which gives me a multi-cloud dashboard. I agree about closing questions asking for favorite tools/books/processes etc, but if someone is unaware of a feature and needs some guidance in the right direction when Google hasn't provided any obvious answers, I don't see what the problem is. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 15:48
  • @MichaelHampton - I've tried my best to reword the question and some of it's content to place less emphasis on biased opinions. That is the best I can do for the moment based on the input I've been given. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 15:54
  • @dawud - Thanks for tidying up the question. Nice to know there are still decent folk in stack exchange. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 18:33
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    @DesolatePlanet, if your question doesn't get reopened you might want to try on the [Software Recommendations](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/) Stack Exchange. – Cristian Ciupitu Jul 13 '14 at 18:38
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    There are quite a bunch of amazing systems administrators in here. Don't take it personal if a question gets closed. Just hang around, I'm sure you'll spend most of the time _learning_. – dawud Jul 13 '14 at 18:40
  • @DesolatePlanet, you should also mention the cloud providers e.g. Rackspace and Memset like in the initial version. Otherwise it sounds like asking for a program that runs on *all* operating systems, even if you're running only Windows and Linux. – Cristian Ciupitu Jul 13 '14 at 18:45
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    @CristianCiupitu I think the OP wants to know how to interact with the different providers' APIs, not to install some software on the managed hosts. – dawud Jul 13 '14 at 18:47
  • I was only trying to make an analogy with another "bad" question. – Cristian Ciupitu Jul 13 '14 at 18:48
  • @CristianCiupitu - Thanks for pointing me at the "Software Recommendations" site. I've not seen this yet. I'm not surprised it exists given the number of closed questions regarding top 10 books/processes/software products etc. If it keeps happening, then it's obvious there is a forum required. In this case, this isn't what I'm looking for. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 20:14

3 Answers3

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I'm not exactly sure this can meet your needs, but look at coreos and docker.

CoreOS can manage systemd tasks in a cluster (and systemd tasks in coreos basically are wrappers for docker containers). Each container can be run on machine with specific metadata which gives you ability to build pretty complex solutions.

spinus
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  • Thanks for pointing me at both technologies. While they don't have the feature I was looking for. The coreos link pointed me at server density, which does have a feature that allows me to manage rackspace and amazon cloud images via a centralized dashboard, which is the exact feature I was looking for. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 15:56
  • It's a pity they only support 2 cloud providers at the moment, but the feature was only introduced at the start of 2014 and I can't see any rivals, so it must be still in its infancy. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 15:56
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There are several projects that aim to provide the functionality you ask for, you'll need to actually test them to check to what extent they fulfill your expectations.

I don't know of an established standard, but the libcloud project seems to be near to that.

It is based in python, and basically it works providing an abstraction layer to interact with the public APIs of the different service providers.

An example from their website shows how to create a node in Rackspace:

from libcloud.compute.types import Provider
from libcloud.compute.providers import get_driver

cls = get_driver(Provider.RACKSPACE)
driver = cls('username', 'api key', region='iad')

sizes = driver.list_sizes()
images = driver.list_images()

size = [s for s in sizes if s.id == 'performance1-1'][0]
image = [i for i in images if 'Ubuntu 12.04' in i.name][0]

node = driver.create_node(name='libcloud', size=size, image=image)
print(node)

You don't give specifics of what providers you need to interact to, but you can check this list to see if they are amongst the suppported.

You can find more info in the online documentation.

Other similar project, based in Java is jclouds.

dawud
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  • Good answer. At the moment, by company is using Rackspace and Amazon, but that may change, which is why I was looking for the above functionality. JClouds looks really good, but would be really cool is if there was a dashboard, which is what I suspect the systems admin would like. However at a code level, what you have shown me 1. Proves it is possible and 2. There are solutions out there to do it. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 20:53
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Wow, this is a problem where the jargon is still being created. "Cloud Portfolio Management" and "Multi-Cloud Management" seem pretty popular as product categories. And "Single pane of glass" seems a meme.

Googling around I found ostrato, ecmanaged and rightscale. A lot of these seem to be for enterprises who have both private and public cloud assets. I think your question is concerned with just public PaaS clouds for devs. Another interesting provider is Cloudify, which seems oriented to devs and to orchestration.

And to the last question, not sure you you knew that OpenStack is trying to be the standard.

charles ross
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  • You hit the nail on the head with the jargon, which isn't helping me out much. Even if someone answered my question with the correct technical term to search for, that would have been invaluable for me. I am aware of the OpenStack standard and the solution I'd like is one that accommodates both public and private cloud environments, effectively giving an administrator the ability to rule the server estate with an iron fist. I don't believe OpenStack as a dashboard for tapping into all cloud environments. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 21:22
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    OpenStack and libcloud are lower level standards. You are probly looking for a $$$ervice offering. ostrato, ecmanaged and rightscale all claim to do your thing, I think. – charles ross Jul 13 '14 at 21:32
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    It's amazing what you find when you search with the right jargon. "Cloud Portfolio" pretty much coughed up the 3 products you mentioned on Google. The price is steep for them, but that's not my problem :) The technology is certainly there. – Desolate Planet Jul 13 '14 at 21:54