The Best Open Source Cloud Management Tools

Here's an overview of the top open source tools organisations can choose from to manage their cloud infrastructure.

- Dr Magesh Kasthuri and Dr Anand Nayyar

Open source tools have become a popular choice for managing cloud environments due to their cloud-agnostic nature, customisation, cost-effectiveness, and community support. Here are some of the top open source tools that can help organisations manage their cloud infrastructure with ease and efficiency.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes, often abbreviated as K8s, is an open source container orchestration platform initially developed by Google. It has become the de-facto standard for container management, enabling organisations to automate the deployment, scaling, and operation of containerised applications. Kubernetes simplifies the management of complex applications by grouping containers into logical units, making it easier to manage and scale them across a cluster of machines. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) are examples of localised adoption of Kubernetes by hyperscalers. Its key features are:

Automated rollouts and rollbacks: Kubernetes can automatically deploy and roll back updates to applications without downtime.

Self-healing: It can automatically restart failed containers, replace them, and reschedule them when nodes die.

Horizontal scaling: Kubernetes provides easy horizontal scaling (horizontal autoscaling) of applications through simple commands or autoscaling based on resource usage.

Service discovery and load balancing: It offers built-in service discovery and load balancing, ensuring that microservices can easily find and communicate with each other.