Apache CloudStack vs ZStack
Apache CloudStack
cloudstack.apache.orgZStack
zstack.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache CloudStack | ZStack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Virtualization Management Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.1 (#7) |
| API | CloudStack exposes a documented, extensible REST-like API and supports Amazon EC2 and S3-compatible APIs. | The product provides a native RESTful API and documentation for development with HTTP-supported languages. |
| Deployment | Organizations use CloudStack to build public, private, and hybrid clouds. | The download page offers ZStack Cloud installation files, a high-availability suite, historical versions, images, and SDKs. |
| Founded | 2008 | 2015 |
| Integrations | The integrations page lists Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes, Prometheus, VMware NSX, Ceph, MinIO, and billing portal integrations. | ZCF can manage public-cloud resources and work with platforms such as Alibaba Cloud; its network virtualization is based on OVN/OVS. |
| Storage | Storage capabilities include iSCSI, NFS, Ceph RBD with KVM, block volumes, encryption, snapshots, templates and ISO management. | ZStone provides block, file, and object storage, with optional replication or erasure coding and support for existing SAN, NAS, and shared block storage. |
| Support | Users can seek community help through the project mailing list, and the project says some companies offer commercial support. | The company says it provides product and service support and lists sales and contact email addresses on its site. |
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.
ZStack
ZStack Cloud is self-hosted infrastructure software for managing compute, networking, and storage in data centers. The product range spans private cloud, virtualization, AI infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, networking, container cloud, and multi-cloud management. ZCF combines compute, storage, networking, containers, and security in a software-defined private-cloud platform with a unified portal, operations, and identity management. It manages hosts, disks, images, and snapshots, and supports scheduling and elastic scaling. ZStone provides block, file, and object storage; Zaku manages Kubernetes clusters and containers alongside virtual machines. ZStack Cloud Enterprise integrates with Alibaba Cloud and offers a RESTful API, backup and recovery options, high-availability policies, and a UI migration service for mainstream Windows and Linux cloud hosts. Listed free plans provide full features for three months for ZStack ZSphere or one year for ZStack Cloud. ZStack describes its products as enterprise infrastructure, including for private clouds in organizations' own data centers. ZLR enterprise disaster recovery is marked as coming soon.