ManageIQ
| Company type | Open source project |
|---|---|
| Industry | Cloud computing, Virtualization management |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder | Oleg Barenboim, Joseph Fitzgerald, Albion Fitzgerald |
| Fate | Acquired by Red Hat in 2012; open sourced in 2014 |
| Headquarters | Mahwah , United States |
| Products | ManageIQ cloud management platform (foundation for Red Hat CloudForms) |
| Owner | Red Hat (since 2012) |
| Website | manageiq |
ManageIQ is an open source cloud management platform initiated by Red Hat in 2014 as a collaborative community effort. It serves as the foundation for Red Hat's CloudForms solution, facilitating unified administration of virtualization, private and public cloud environments, container technologies, and software-defined networking.
History
The origins of ManageIQ's code trace back to ManageIQ, Inc., established in 2006, which introduced the Enterprise Virtualization Manager (EVM) Suite in 2007. The company was spearheaded by co-founders Oleg Barenboim (CTO) and Joseph Fitzgerald (CTO), both with previous experience at Novadigm, alongside CEO Albion Fitzgerald. By 2012, ManageIQ had positioned itself as a provider of enterprise cloud management tools, delivering capabilities to deploy and streamline private, public, and hybrid cloud infrastructures. Operating from Mahwah, New Jersey, the firm specialized in virtualization and cloud management solutions and was honored as a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2008.
In December 2012, Red Hat acquired ManageIQ, Inc. for $104 million. At that time, the name ManageIQ referred to both the organization and its proprietary cloud management software. Following the acquisition, Red Hat rebranded the software as CloudForms, supplanting earlier versions built on Deltacloud and Aeolus. The public release of CloudForms 3.0 occurred in late 2013.
By June 2014, Red Hat transitioned the codebase to an open source project under the ManageIQ name to guide ongoing development. The platform encompassed cloud management capabilities such as tag-based policy enforcement, orchestration workflows, capacity oversight, and financial chargeback mechanisms. It provided support for OpenStack clouds alongside VMware, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services platforms.
Software and features
ManageIQ offers software that includes:
- Self-service portals through which IT teams can present catalogs for automated provisioning services like virtual machine creation.
- Compliance enforcement mechanisms designed to maintain adherence to IT governance policies.
- Optimization tools aimed at enhancing resource usage efficiency via right-sizing and capacity forecasting.
Supported platforms
ManageIQ is compatible with managing:
| Platform category | Compatible platforms |
|---|---|
| Virtualization | VMware vSphere, oVirt/Red Hat Virtualization, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, IBM Power HMC, KubeVirt/OpenShift Virtualization |
| Private Cloud | OpenStack, VMware vCloud, Azure Stack, IBM PowerVC, IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center |
| Public Cloud | Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud VPC and Power Virtual Servers |
| Physical Infrastructure | Lenovo XClarity, Redfish, Cisco Intersight |
| Software defined networking | OpenStack Neutron, Nuage Networks, VMware NSX-T |
| Software defined storage | OpenStack Cinder, OpenStack Swift |
| Containers | Kubernetes, OpenShift, Amazon EKS, Microsoft AKS, Google GKE, IBM IKS, Oracle OKE, VMware Tanzu TKG |
| Automation/Configuration | Ansible Tower/AWX, Terraform, Foreman, IBM Terraform (via IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps) |
Theory of operation
ManageIQ functions as a manager of managers by interfacing with various management platforms known as providers through their respective APIs.
It perpetually gathers inventory data from each connected provider—such as virtual machines and hypervisors within VMware vSphere—and establishes the interconnections among these components. The system monitors events that prompt either full or partial refreshes of the inventory, thereby maintaining a near real-time representation of the provider’s environment.
When activated, ManageIQ also captures performance metrics including CPU usage and memory consumption.
All collected information is housed within the Virtual Management Database (VMDB), which, as of 2016, encompasses models for more than 200 entities and their relationships.
Architecture
Developed using the Ruby programming language alongside the Ruby on Rails framework, ManageIQ is distributed as a pre-configured virtual appliance (~1GB in size) built upon CentOS and incorporating an embedded PostgreSQL database. Starting with the Darga release, a containerized version became available, while the Jansa release introduced builds compatible with Kubernetes and OpenShift environments.
This appliance can function independently or be deployed within a distributed system, where administrators define zones, regions, and a global region. Appliances are assigned specific roles within these zones or regions to facilitate coordinated task distribution, primarily through multiserver queue processing, with some unique singleton roles such as database management. Configurable failover mechanisms enable high availability by ensuring role redundancy.
Releases
ManageIQ adheres to a time-driven release strategy, issuing new versions approximately every six months. Each release is named sequentially after chess grandmasters, following alphabetical order. Notable releases include:
| Release name | Release date | Key features introduced | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anand | 2 September 2014 | Initial open source launch of the ManageIQ, Inc. codebase | |
| Botvinnik | 12 June 2015 | Added support for OpenStack undercloud and Foreman; enhanced AWS integration; replaced SOAP API with REST API | |
| Capablanca | 5 December 2015 | Introduced support for Azure, Kubernetes, and OpenShift; unveiled a new self-service user interface | |
| Darga | 7 June 2016 | Included Google Cloud Platform and Ansible Tower support; implemented software-defined networking for Neutron and public cloud providers | |
| Euwe | 20 December 2016 | Added new Storage and Middleware providers; improved management of containers and public clouds | |
| Fine | 17 May 2017 | Integrated Ansible automation; enhanced AWS storage capabilities; introduced Physical Infrastructure provider | |
| Gaprindashvili | 30 January 2018 | Launched Generic Objects, Lenovo XClarity provider, and Alerts Management features | |
| Hammer | 15 January 2019 | Supported Ansible Tower Workflows; added network providers Nuage and Redfish; enabled virtual-to-virtual transformations | |
| Ivanchuk | 18 September 2019 | Enhanced user experience; integrated ansible-runner; improved OpenStack tenant support | |
| Jansa | 22 September 2020 | Delivered podified build; introduced RPM packages; supported OpenShift 4.x for Kubernetes deployments | |
| Kasparov | 4 February 2021 | Added IBM Cloud VPC and Power Virtual Servers support; integrated IBM Terraform and Kyndryl AutoSDE; enhanced VMware NSX-T and Content Library features; improved UI along with backup and restore functions | |
| Lasker | 21 July 2021 | Enabled Amazon EKS support, physical storage hosts management; container chargeback functionality; Kubernetes operator introduction; podified builds received performance and security enhancements; accessibility improvements implemented | |
| Morphy | 14 February 2022 | Incorporated IBM PowerVC, Oracle Cloud, multiple cloud Kubernetes services (AKS, GKE, IKS, OKE), plus cloud database services including Amazon RDS, Azure Databases, Google Cloud SQL, IBM Cloud Databases, and Oracle Cloud Databases | |
| Najdorf | 18 July 2022 | Integrated IBM Power HMC, IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, Cisco Intersight, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid; enabled cross-cloud image imports; supported standalone object storage managers | |
| Oparin | 6 Jan 2023 | Added independent oVirt and AWX providers; upgraded to Rails 6.1, PostgreSQL 13, Ruby 3; incorporated security patches and maintenance updates | |
| Petrosian | 14 Sept 2023 | Introduced Embedded Workflows prototype; updated service catalog, Storage Services, and Cloud Object Store Objects | |
| Quinteros | 29 May 2024 | Rolled out phase one of Embedded Workflows; implemented non-Rails provider workers; delivered multiple provider enhancements |