Release: CloudSwitch Enterprise 1.0

Last week the US startup CloudSwitch released version 1.0 of its Enterprise product.

CloudSwitch Enterprise is a management solution for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platforms that converts, migrates and manages on-premises VMware and Xen virtual machines inside public clouds like Amazon EC2 and Terremark vCloud Express (by leveraging the VMware vCloud APIs).

The product acts as a sort of network bridge and management proxy in the hybrid architecture.
It establishes AES-256 encrypted channel to transfer the VMs. The it uses network fencing (which CloudSwitch calls Cloud Isolation Technology) to allow the remote management of VMs with the on-premises virtual infrastructure management tools.
The whole thing is then protected by a role-based access control (RBAC) layer for setting user/group permissions and controls.

CloudSwitchGUI

When the product joins a new public cloud, it first replicates its virtual appliance on that cloud, using the new instance as an endpoint for the encryption channel as well as a remote point of control and monitoring.

CloudSwitch_Architecture

The support for guest operating systems is still limited, but this depends on the support offered by the public cloud providers that CloudSwitch selected: Windows 2003 and 2008 (x86 only) as well as Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5, CentOS 5 and Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.
The product can be further controlled by an API.

Pricing begins at $25,000 for an annual license including basic support and up to 20 virtual machines under management in the cloud.