Platform9 has released the Community Edition of Private Cloud Director. This free version gives virtualization professionals access to the full functionality of environments in a single region. Users can get acquainted with what the company describes as ‘the simplest private cloud experience in the industry’.
The launch was announced during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, which is currently taking place. With the Community Edition, system administrators who work with virtualization can test a private cloud solution at their own pace without worrying about sudden costs or expiration dates.
Familiar environment with enterprise functions
Platform9’s Private Cloud Director offers virtualization administrators a familiar private cloud experience with enterprise-grade features. Users have access to VM High Availability, Dynamic Resource Rebalancing, VM Live Migration, Distributed Virtual Switches, and Software-Defined Networking.
“Private Cloud Director Community Edition gives virtualization practitioners a way to test drive the easiest private cloud experience in the industry, at their own pace. We can’t wait to see what they build with Community Edition,” said Madhura Maskasky, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Platform9
Easy installation
An important advantage of the Community Edition is its simple implementation. The software can be installed on existing x86 server hardware or a VM with at least 32GB RAM and 12 CPUs, connecting to existing storage and infrastructure. The technology behind the scenes is based on the open source k3s project, which provides a lightweight installation experience on a single node.
Users can install the Community Edition on a single Ubuntu machine, which makes it ideal for small-scale applications such as homelabs, test/dev environments, and proof-of-concept labs. For users who want to move to production, Platform9 recommends switching to the enterprise version, which comes with 24/7 customer support.