Eucalyptus eases way to bring Amazon cloud deployments in-house

Eucalyptus has updated its namesake software to make it easier for organizations to set up their own, in-house versions of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud, letting users run Amazon workloads in private cloud deployments.

Eucalyptus 3.4, available now, also comes with a number of new tools to ease system administration management in the enterprise.

The open source Eucalyptus platform allows an organization to set up cloud services that duplicate all of the AWS application programming interfaces (APIs), guaranteeing that any workload running on AWS can also run on a Eucalyptus platform. The point is that users who like using AWS but who are afraid of getting locked into the service can deploy Eucalyptus as an in-house alternative

The new version of the software provides greater compatibility with AWS. Eucalyptus has been revamped to make it easier to convert Amazon Machine Images to Eucalyptus Machine Images. A new user console provides administrators with the ability to manage internal Eucalyptus instances and those VMs running on AWS from the same location.

Administration has been made easier in other ways as well.  Eucalyptus now can be upgraded without shutting down the software first. It also now supports AWS' Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, providing a way to ensure that only those people with appropriate work credentials can access Eucalyptus workloads.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com