ec1

EC1: A CloudStack Alternative in Go

EC1 is a lightweight, Go-based alternative to Apache CloudStack – providing VM and network orchestration without the legacy bloat. It uses modern Go libraries, ConnectRPC (a gRPC + Protocol Buffers framework), and simple Go services for a lean cloud management experience.

Overview

This project is a proof-of-concept (POC) demonstrating that we can manage virtual machines (including nested VMs and networking) with minimal complexity using modern Go libraries.

Architecture:

• Management Server: Central orchestration component that manages VM lifecycle across hosts
• Agent: Runs on each host to execute VM operations using the local hypervisor
• Hypervisors: Support for Apple Virtualization.framework (macOS) and KVM (Linux)

Features

• Multi-host VM orchestration with nested virtualization
• Support for different hypervisors (macOS virtualization and KVM)
• Networking with port forwarding
• Simple API based on ConnectRPC (gRPC)
• Complete infrastructure as code, written in Go

Demo

The demo showcases a full end-to-end nested virtualization flow:

1. Start a Management Server on macOS
2. Start a local Agent on macOS
3. Create a QCOW2 image for a Linux VM
4. Start a Linux VM on macOS using Apple's Virtualization.framework
5. Set up an EC1 Agent inside the Linux VM
6. Use the Linux Agent to start a nested VM
7. Run a web server in the nested VM
8. Access the web server from the host

Running the Demo

Prerequisites:

• macOS (with support for Virtualization.framework)
• Go 1.21 or later
• QEMU and related tools (brew install qemu)

To run the full demo:

# Run the complete demo
./go run ./cmd/demo --action demo

# To clean up previous runs
./go run ./cmd/demo --action demo --clean

# To run individual steps
./go run ./cmd/demo --action start-mgt
./go run ./cmd/demo --action start-agent
./go run ./cmd/demo --action create-image
./go run ./cmd/demo --action start-linux-vm --disk images/alpine.qcow2
./go run ./cmd/demo --action start-nested-vm

Project Structure

• cmd/: Command line tools
  • demo/: Demo steps and entry point
  • mgt/: Management server
  • agent/: Agent implementation
• pkg/: Core packages
  • hypervisor/: Hypervisor implementations (Apple, KVM)
  • management/: Management server implementation
  • agent/: Agent service implementation
• proto/: Protocol Buffer definitions
• gen/: Generated code from Protocol Buffers

Development

This project is developed as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate cloud management capabilities with Go. It is not intended for production use at this stage but provides a foundation for a more complete implementation.

License

See LICENSE file.