Canonical has released Microcloud 2.1, a cloud infrastructure management tool that enables rapid deployment of cloud systems and computing clusters with shared distributed data storage and a secure virtual network. This release is the first LTS version, meaning it will receive long-term support. Microcloud 2.1 comes in the form of a Snap package, containing necessary components for managing cluster operations. Developed in Go language, the toolkit is distributed under the AGPL 3.0 license.
Microcloud allows users to create clusters with 3 to 50 hosts for fault tolerance, or 1 host for non-critical environments. The cluster software leverages tools such as LXD for virtual networks, OVN for fault-tolerant storage, and Ceph for distributed storage. LXD, Ceph, and OVN configurations on all cluster nodes are automated. While preferred on Ubuntu Server, these tools are compatible with other distributions where Snap is supported (e.g., Arch Linux, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, openSUSE, RHEL).
To identify new servers on the network and connect them to the cluster, Microcloud utilizes MDNS. The entire cluster can be configured by executing a single command “Microcloud Init” on one node, followed by “sudo Microcloud Join” on the other nodes after installing Snap packages LXD, Microceph,