Apache CloudStack vs Crossplane
Apache CloudStack
cloudstack.apache.org
Crossplane
crossplane.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache CloudStack | Crossplane |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Cloud Orchestration Software | 9.0 (#2) | 7.6 (#15) |
| Spec score · Multi-Cloud Management Software | 9.0 (#2) | 7.7 (#13) |
| Spec score · Cloud Management Software | 9.0 (#3) | 7.6 (#18) |
| CLI | CloudMonkey is the project’s command-line and shell environment for interacting with CloudStack clouds. | The Crossplane CLI is a standalone binary; most CLI commands work without access to a Crossplane pod, though some require a Docker-compatible container runtime. |
| Deployment | Organizations use CloudStack to build public, private, and hybrid clouds. | Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster using a Helm chart; the installation guide requires an actively supported Kubernetes version and Helm v3.2.0 or later. |
| Integrations | The integrations page lists Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, Prometheus, VMware NSX, Ceph, MinIO, and billing portal integrations. | The community extension list includes providers for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, Argo CD, and other services. |
| Purpose | Apache CloudStack deploys and manages large networks of virtual machines as a highly available, scalable IaaS cloud platform. | Crossplane is a control plane framework for platform engineering that lets teams build control planes to manage cloud native software. |
| Support | Users can seek community help through the project mailing list, and the project says some companies offer commercial support. | The commercial page lists Upbound as offering security, support, official providers, and a platform for managing infrastructure with Crossplane. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache CloudStack
Apache CloudStack is free, open-source software for deploying and managing networks of virtual machines as a highly available, scalable IaaS cloud platform. Organizations can use it to build public, private, or hybrid clouds. Its features include compute orchestration, network services, account management, resource accounting, a web interface, and an open API. Operators can manage clouds through a web UI, command-line tools, or REST API, with optional AWS EC2- and S3-compatible APIs. Supported hypervisors include XenServer or XCP, KVM, Hyper-V, and VMware ESXi with vSphere. Storage options include iSCSI, NFS, Ceph RBD with KVM, volume encryption, snapshots, and storage tiering. Authentication options include OAuth2 single sign-on, two-factor authentication, TOTP, SAML, and LDAP. The project says CloudStack can manage tens of thousands of physical servers across geographically distributed data centers. Long Term Support releases receive bug and security fixes for 18 months after the main release. Operators remain responsible for protections such as monitoring, host security, and defenses against DoS and brute-force attacks.
Crossplane
Crossplane is a free, open-source CNCF framework for building control planes that manage cloud-native software. Its Composition feature lets teams define custom APIs with pipelines of functions instead of maintaining controllers. Managed resources are Kubernetes custom resources that can represent external services such as AWS RDS instances. Community providers cover AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab and Argo CD, among others. A package manager installs managed resources and composition functions and can distribute configurations across control planes. Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster with a Helm chart; the guide requires an actively supported Kubernetes version and Helm v3.2.0 or later. Operations support one-time, scheduled and resource-change-triggered pipelines, but are marked alpha in Crossplane v2. The framework uses Kubernetes RBAC. Its default crossplane-admin ClusterRole has full access to secrets and namespaces and can bind roles to other entities. The project is Apache 2.0 licensed and identifies as vendor neutral.