Problem

There are many ISVs, SaaS/PaaS vendors providing value-added products and services on IaaS clouds. Unlike public cloud hosting providers such as Amazon and Rackspace, CloudStack is not deployed by a single entity. There are multiple deployments of CloudStack by service providers, enterprises and individuals. It becomes a challenge for ISVs, SaaS/PaaS vendors to make their products visible and easily consumable by various CloudStack-based clouds. It also becomes a challenge for anyone who deploys CloudStack to know whose products and services work with CloudStack and how to get a hold of them.

Proposal

This proposal is to introduce a new component called CloudStack Marketplace. It enables ISVs and SaaS/PaaS vendors to list their product and service offerings which can be viewed and easily consumed by any CloudStack deployments. The functionalities are broken down into two parts: version 1.0 (minimum viable product) and future enhancements.

Version 1.0

The goal is to release version 1.0 with the subsequent release of CloudStack following v4.0. Below are core components of version 1.0:

1. Source code for the Marketplace client. Marketplace client is installed along with CloudStack management server and provides the Marketplace UI to the admins and users. The Marketplace client points to various listing repositories specified by the admin.
2. Listing repositories contain product listings. An Apache listing repository contains listings contributed by the vendors to Apache CloudStack. Any third party can set up its own private or public listing repositories. 

Use Cases

Version 1.0 will support vendor products and services distributed in the forms of image templates, bootable ISOs, non-bootable ISOs, and SaaS/PaaS offerings.

Vendors Make Listing Contribution

The listing repository contains a config.js file and vendor product folders. The config.js file contains an index of the listings, which will be read by the Marketplace UI to build the Marketplace Homepage. The Listing folders contain metadata and supporting files for each product listing, which will be read by the Marketplace UI to build the Details page for each product listing.

Vendors can contribute to the listing repository following these steps:

1. Create a listing folder for its product or service.
2. Create and place a listing.js file in the folder which includes metadata for the listing. This metadata file will be read by the Marketplace UI and present to the admins and users.  
3. (Optional) Place any supporting files including graphics and scripts into the listing folder.
4. (Optional) Place any UI or regular plugins in the CloudStac
5. Add an entry to the config.js file for its listing.

Admins Install and Configure CloudStack Marketplace

CloudStack Marketplace client is installed along with CloudStack management server. After installation, admins can see all listings in the listing repository URL. Admins can configure global settings for the Marketplace client:

• enable/disable – When Marketplace is enabled, users can access it. By default, listings that do not require admin intervention or set up (for example, templates and ISOs) are visible to the users immediately; and listings that require admin intervention (for example, some SaaS and PaaS applications) are not. When Marketplace is disabled, users cannot access it.
• URLs of listing repositories – Default URL points to Apache listing repository and is enabled for users. Admins can modify or add additional listing repositories by entering their URLs. Admins can also configure which URL is enabled for its users. When a URL is enabled, users can see listings in the corresponding repository. When a URL is disabled, only admin can see listings in the corresponding repository.

For listings require admin intervention, admins can follow the instructions provided by vendors in the listing files to set up the services. Admins will then make these listings available to their users. For templates and ISOs, admins can import them into CloudStack so that when users create VMs from them, launch time is shorter.

Users Consume Products and Services

For listings containing templates and ISOs only, users should be able to select the template or ISO, and create instance directly from the listing (or attach ISO to an existing VM). If the template or ISO is not yet imported by either the admins or the user, it will be imported first.

For SaaS and PaaS listings, the listing page should provide instructions or workflow for user to follow to use the service. Instruction/workflow could be in the form of text, URL or browser-compatible code.

Future Enhancement

The following are potential future enhancements:

• A web portal for vendors to publish listings
• Workflow for cloud admins to choose which listings are enabled for their users
• User review and ratings
• Listing versioning and update notification
• Usage tracking

Sample UI

User and admin access Marketplace - A link to the Marketplace UI from left navigation

User and admin access Marketplace - Directly from the Marketplace URL http://cloudstackmanagementserverIP/marketplace

A listing for image template (user view)

A listing for image template (admin view)

A listing for SaaS/PaaS application (user view)

A listing for SaaS/PaaS application (admin view)

Discussion Topics

1. Component name - I am calling it “Marketplace” tentatively in search for a final name. There is no intention for this component to handle transaction or billing. Some other names I found online are: app store, app library, app catalog. The name will likely be reflected in the UI. Ideally, the name should be most suitable for version 1.0 and is future proof. Any other ideas? What’s your preference and why?