AWS API Compatibility
Eucalyptus maintains high fidelity with AWS APIs, which means you can use or reuse many existing AWS-compatible tools, images (AMIs), and scripts to manage your own private cloud environment. We implement AWS APIs on top of Eucalyptus, so tools in the cloud ecosystem that can communicate with AWS can use the same API with Eucalyptus.
AWS Agreement
In 2012, AWS and Eucalyptus announced an agreement that enables customers to more efficiently migrate workloads between their existing data centers and AWS while using the same management tools and skills across both environments.
As part of this agreement, AWS will support Eucalyptus as they continue to extend compatibility with AWS APIs and customer use cases. Customers can run applications in their existing data centers that are compatible with popular Amazon Web Services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
AWS Feature Compatibility
Eucalyptus provides compatibility with these AWS features:
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
- Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
- Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Auto Scaling (v3.3)
- Elastic Load Balancing (v3.3)
- Amazon CloudWatch (v3.3)
The Eucalyptus components are open source and communicate with each other using well-defined web service definitions, with an additional communication layer that exposes the Amazon-compatible interface.
Benefits to Customers
- Develop and test AWS-compatible applications using Eucalyptus, then deploy them unchanged on AWS
- Access the same ecosystem of tools designed for AWS, including monitoring, cloud service management, and image management
- Leverage existing VMware or KVM virtualization investments by overlaying an AWS-compatible private cloud
- Use Eucalyptus as the open source reference implementation for AWS compatibility to support new developments, tools, and continuous innovation
- Take advantage of a common web services platform between AWS and Eucalyptus Web Services supporting EC2, EBS, S3, IAM, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, and CloudWatch
- Standardize application and usage policies using IAM for both Amazon and Eucalyptus
- Satisfy regulatory and compliance requirements by using AWS and Eucalyptus to keep private data in your own data center
What This Means to You
For AWS Users
If you already use AWS in your organization for applications, elastic computing, or storage, you can now use Eucalyptus to leverage the benefits of AWS within your on-premises IT environment. This can help you overcome regulatory and compliance roadblocks, increase performance, and add flexibility to your architecture.
For Non-AWS Users
If you are not an AWS user but are interested in building a flexible IT architecture, Eucalyptus is the easiest and most efficient way to get started. Eucalyptus is open source, compatible with multiple hypervisors including KVM, and VMware, and can be installed on any of the major Linux distributions.
How to Get Started
Download FastStart
Quickly deploy a Eucalyptus cloud with FastStart to evaluate an AWS-compatible private cloud using your existing compute, storage, and network resources.
