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CloudStack API

The CloudStack API is a low level API that has been used to implement the CloudStack web UIs. It is also a good basis for implementing other popular APIs such as EC2/S3 and emerging DMTF standards.

Many CloudStack API calls are asynchronous. These will return a Job ID immediately when called. This Job ID can be used to query the status of the job later. Also, status calls on impacted resources will provide some indication of their state.

The API has a REST-like query basis and returns results in XML or JSON.

See the Developer’s Guide and the API Reference.

Provisioning and Authentication API

CloudStack expects that a customer will have their own user provisioning infrastructure. It provides APIs to integrate with these existing systems where the systems call out to CloudStack to add/remove users..

CloudStack supports pluggable authenticators. By default, CloudStack assumes it is provisioned with the user’s password, and as a result authentication is done locally. However, external authentication is possible as well. For example, see Using an LDAP Server for User Authentication.

User Data and Meta Data

CloudStack provides API access to attach up to 32KB of user data to a deployed VM. Deployed VMs also have access to instance metadata via the virtual router.

User data can be accessed once the IP address of the virtual router is known. Once the IP address is known, use the following steps to access the user data:

  1. Run the following command to find the virtual router.

    # cat /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient-eth0.leases | grep dhcp-server-identifier | tail -1
    
  2. Access user data by running the following command using the result of the above command

    # curl http://10.1.1.1/latest/user-data
    

Meta Data can be accessed similarly, using a URL of the form http://10.1.1.1/latest/meta-data/{metadata type}. (For backwards compatibility, the previous URL http://10.1.1.1/latest/{metadata type} is also supported.) For metadata type, use one of the following:

  • service-offering. A description of the VMs service offering
  • availability-zone. The Zone name
  • local-ipv4. The guest IP of the VM
  • local-hostname. The hostname of the VM
  • public-ipv4. The first public IP for the router. (E.g. the first IP of eth2)
  • public-hostname. This is the same as public-ipv4
  • instance-id. The instance name of the VM