CloudBolt Software Logo

CloudBolt Blog

CloudBolt v.5.1 Now Available

Posted by Rick Kilcoyne

7/15/15 3:17 PM

The heat of Summer has settled in, and we have a new release to help keep your end-users cool and comfortable. This release adds a plethora of new automation features starting with the ability to run remote scripts on any server regardless of cloud or OS. Yes, that includes Windows – we use winrm to work with our favorite OS from Redmond. You can also now wire up CloudBolt to your favorite internal tools using webhooks. Want to notify everyone in your project HipChat room when a server is ready? Create a webhook in CloudBolt!

We've all been been eagerly anticipating the ability to respond to user-defined thresholds on quotas. This release delivers this ability in the form of Admin > Event Automations. Speaking of Admin, checkout the new UI for the Admin section. This release includes several UI improvements and there are many more to come, so if you have suggestions – keep 'em coming!

There are many other new additions to CloudBolt with this release including initial support for Kubernetes/Docker, Service Catalog improvements, and API improvments. Also note, we've renamed CSCV to CIT (Continuous Infrastructure Testing). If you're not using this feature to test your CloudBolt environments, you're really missing out!

If you haven't yet tried CloudBolt, you have to see it to believe it – schedule a demo or request a download today.

Existing customers: start your upgrade process today by going to http://support.cloudbolt.io and downloading the latest upgrader. As always, if you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to drop us a support request at support@cloudbolt.io and we'll jump on it ASAP.

Check out the release notes.

Read More

Topics: News, Upgrade, Release Notes

CloudBolt Named to Red Herring Top 100 North America

Posted by Jon Mittelhauser

6/8/15 12:00 PM

N_America_WinnerCloudBolt Software today announced that the company has been selected as a Red Herring Top 100 North America winner. The Red Herring Top 100 North America recognizes leading private companies in North America, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

“CloudBolt is on a major growth trajectory—recording consistent year-over-year revenue growth since its founding in 2012. In the past year alone, CloudBolt saw 10x growth in annual recurring revenue and 3x growth in customer deployments,” said Jon Mittelhauser, CEO, CloudBolt. “This award is strong recognition of the benefits that CloudBolt’s cloud delivery platform provides to the enterprise, helping organizations manage their increasingly complex IT environments and bridge legacy, current and future technologies.”

Red Herring Top 100 America enlists outstanding entrepreneurs and promising companies. It selects the award winners from approximately 1,200 privately financed companies each year in the US and Canada. Since 1996, Red Herring has kept tabs on these up-and-comers. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, Palo Alto Networks and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“In 2015, selecting the top achievers was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “In fact, we had the toughest time in years because so many entrepreneurs had crossed significant milestones so early. But after much thought, rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across North America to the North America winners. We believe CloudBolt embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. CloudBolt should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was very strong.”

About Red Herring Top 100 North America 
Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technological innovation and intellectual property, DNA of the founders, business model, customer footprint and addressable market. A review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their sector peers, allowed Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in North America, complement this assessment of potential.

About CloudBolt Software 
CloudBolt Software transforms how IT interacts with business by significantly improving service to lines of business. CloudBolt is a powerful cloud delivery platform that doubles as an on-premise, unified IT manager and self-service IT portal that leverages existing IT resources and technologies to maximize the value of private and hybrid cloud environments in minutes. Enterprise IT organizations can be more agile with CloudBolt, automating the request, provisioning and ongoing management of systems and applications from an intuitive user interface or through a common API. For more information on CloudBolt visit http://www.cloudbolt.io.

Read More

Topics: Press Release, News, Corporate

CloudBolt Version 5.0 is here...

Posted by Jon Mittelhauser

5/27/15 5:30 AM

We are very happy to announce the immediate availability of CloudBolt version 5.0.  

The platform’s new features include:

  • powerful new service catalog functionality to facilitate complex, multi-tier app deployments

  • provisioning of service catalog blueprints available through both the CloudBolt web interface and a powerful REST API

  • deeper out-of-the box integration with technologies such as VMware, OpenStack, AWS, Azure, Infoblox, Puppet and Chef

  • ability to define arbitrary server actions so DevOps experts can provide simple buttons for users to perform complex operations on servers

  • ability to snapshot VMs from the CloudBolt user interface

  • increased control for administrators, including the ability to set rate-based limits and set limits on environments in addition to groups and handlers

  • significant UI improvements, including adding social aspects to the interface

  • even deeper extensibility - additional trigger points for hooks/actions

  • revamped docs, now made public: http://docs.cloudbolt.io/

  • new trigger points for power on/off, rebooting servers and post-order completion process have been introduced and currency units are no longer limited to USD 

The full press release (as well as all our others) can be viewed on our press release page

If you are an existing customer, you can immediately download the update through our support portal.  If you have any questions or desire hands on help with the update, please (as always!) feel free to contact us. 

If you are interested in downloading and evaluating CloudBolt, you can do so here

Read More

Topics: Press Release, News, Event, Upgrade

Why C2 is Important When Adopting OpenStack

Posted by Justin Nemmers

5/14/14 9:49 PM

“If I’m moving to OpenStack, why do I need a Cloud Manager like CloudBolt C2?”

As organizations look to extend their footprints beyond the traditional virtualization infrastructure providers (read: VMware), we hear questions like this both more frequently, and with more fervor. It’s a good question. At face value, many people see projects and products like OpenStack, and just assume that they compete directly with CloudBolt C2, but actually, when used together, the two products each provide distinct benefits that are absolutely game changing.

OpenStack Cloud Software

Despite the influx of added code and interest in Horizon, this still represents a rather significant, and complex barrier to full OpenStack adoption in the enterprise.  In my conversations with many large organizations that are implementing OpenStack, it’s become apparent that nearly every single one is either writing their own non Horizon-based front-end interface on top of OpenStack, or purchasing a commercially-available front-end (i.e. CloudBolt C2). Those organizations that are developing their own UIs are effectively signing up to maintain that code and project in-house for the life of their OpenStack environment.

Why C2?

We can look deeper into one example: updating a UI option for an instance order form. In Horizon, it requires advanced knowledge of Django and Python, and creates upgrade problems down the road. (Random aside: Want more info on UI and how difficult it is to make a good one? Read more here.) In C2, updating the order process takes a non-developer just a few clicks. Add to that C2’s built-in rates, quotas, ongoing server/application management, and software license management, and the potential value-add to the build vs. buy decision becomes quite real.

Beyond the configurability of the interface itself, there is the question of choice, and existing complexity. Chances are your IT environment contains a significant number of technologies—some of which will integrate well with OpenStack, and others that will not. And then, it apparently does matter which vendor’s OpenStack you decide to purchase, given Red Hat’s ominous announcement at the OpenStack Summit about their impending support policy changes.

Despite this concerning policy shift, OpenStack vendors will continue expanding support for proprietary tools and platforms, but are unlikely to solve the equation for every technology present in typical IT organizations’ legacy environments.  In the end, OpenStack-- from any vendor--  will force a choice: roll your own capability, or replace what you’ve got with something more OpenStack friendly. Using C2 can ease this transition by managing everything in the environment- OpenStack, legacy systems, public cloud providers, configuration management systems, etc.. End users will not know where their servers and applications are actually being deployed. IT again owns the decision of the best underlying environment for the workload.

Given these points, the difficulty of implementation and ongoing support of your existing infrastructure and environments means that the only real scenario when implementing OpenStack is to run two environments in parallel—one is your existing environment making continued use of existing integrations and technologies—and the second is the new OpenStack-based one, which will largely be a re-implementation and re-basing of both technology and process. The IT organization can then begin the task of migrating workloads from the legacy environment to OpenStack.

When run alongside existing IT, new environments absolutely benefit from a unified visualization, reporting, quotas, access, and management. This is another reason why C2 is still important in enterprises that are moving to OpenStack. Few organizations that are investing in OpenStack immediately replace their existing technology. Their environments are a mix of legacy and modern, and they need to find ways to effectively manage those stacks. Rapidly growing businesses also frequently need to ingest infrastructure and technology from acquired companies.

OpenStack is gaining significant momentum in IT, and for good reason. IT organizations looking for ways to further commoditize their technology stacks see OpenStack as a great way to build and maintain a standards-based private cloud environment, and they’re largely right. C2 is a critical component into easing the adoption of not just OpenStack, but also other disruptive technologies.

Ready to get started? Schedule a Demo

Read More

Topics: News, IT Challenges, OpenStack

CloudBolt C2 is the Cloud Manager for the Dell Cloud for Government

Posted by Justin Nemmers

6/11/13 10:57 AM

I’m thrilled to announce that CloudBolt C2 is the Cloud Manager Dell is using in their recently announced Dell Cloud for US Government. In this solution, CloudBolt C2 provides the automated workflows, provisioning, rapid scalability, and metered pricing customers need in order to become their own cloud provider.

Dell Cloud for US Government uses CloudBolt C2

The Dell solution enables organizations to take advantage of the cloud delivery model to provide a range of on-demand resources to end users in a predictable and reliable manner, all while using infrastructure that meets various US Government security criteria including:

  • NIST 800-53
  • FedRAMP
  • FISMA Low and Moderate
  • DIACAP
  • NIACAP
  • HIPAA 

This solution is being offered two ways:

  • Dedicated solution either hosted or installed in a customer environment
  • Hosted multi-tenant on-demand cloud

Either way, Dell has the ability to provide either solution in a manner that meets the broad range of security criteria Government Customers are faced with.

This solution required a powerful Cloud Manager that could not just offer an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, but also one that could just as easily support multi-tenant environments as it could single tenant ones. C2’s Section 508 compliance, robust orchestration layer and the ability to plug into nearly any required technology made it the natural and secure fit for the Dell Cloud for US Government solution.

Dell offers this solution with a flexible acquisition model: either can be purchased with enough capacity for as few as 100, and all the way up to 100,000 or more VMs. This Dell Cloud for US Government solution can be Dell hosted, installed in a customer environment, or offered as a hybrid model. No matter how you chose to consume it, the capabilities and certifications are the same. Dell has rolled in over 270 security controls to help customers attain and track any ATOs needed to run in their environments.

Dell’s FedRAMP Cloud builds on the capabilities of the NIST Dedicated Cloud solution and adds the required security controls to achieve FedRAMP certification. This Dell-hosted multi-tenant environment allows public cloud-like metered on-demand access to secure computing resources. Because this solution comes with FedRAMP certification, no additional ATOs are needed for those agencies able to run FedRAMP-approved solutions.

Dell Federal Services CTO Jeff Lush has a series of YouTube videos where he highlights the capabilities of this solution.

Customers will use CloudBolt C2 to request on-demand Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) resources, which will automatically be provisioned, tracked, and managed in an ongoing basis. Organizations that deploy the dedicated solution will get access to the full suite of C2 capabilities, including multi-cloud management, which will enable those customers to manage other Virtualization or Cloud environments as well.

CloudBolt C2’s power and flexibility were key reasons why Dell chose C2 for this solution. Interested in learning more? Give us a ring at 703.665.1060.

(FedRAMP stands for Federal Risk and Authorization Program. See more info about that here.)

(Dell is a registered trademark of Dell, Inc.)

 

 

Read More

Topics: News, Cloud, Private Cloud, Government, Vendors