Virtkick: Hassle-free Access to the Cloud

For the past few years, the word ‘cloud’ has been making waves among techies. Previously, everyone faced the problem of limited space, a fixed location, software accessibility and resource constraints. Now, the ‘cloud’ is the one-word answer to all these limitations. It is cloud computing that gives us the ability to use a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data, instead of a local server or a personal computer. It can be used by multiple users and it can be dynamically reallocated to other business operations, which helps in maximising the use of shared resources.

Almost everyone—from individuals to top-notch tech companies like EMC, Amazon and Google—is now using the cloud. Even CERN, the famous European nuclear research laboratory, uses OpenStack to manage its IT infrastructure. With the widespread use of the cloud, many open source projects related to cloud computing have evolved, like OpenStack, ownCloud, etc.

Here are a few problems that people often face with the cloud: (1) Installation: Server administration knowledge is

needed (2) Usage: New resources need to be created (3) Data security: Concerns about privacy and integrity of data To address all these problems in one go, an open source enthusiast developed Virtkick, a new cloud infrastructure management tool, and launched it on October 29, 2014. But first let’s figure out how the cloud works, before exploring how useful Virtkick is. The cloud is a network of computers working together, but gives users the illusion that they are interacting with a single computer.

In the common man’s language, the cloud is made up of three layers: The hardware layer (the actual servers) The virtualisation layer (which creates the ‘illusion’) The software layer with the user interface Virtkick comes into play in the second layer and not only helps in virtualising the hardware but also serves as the panel for managing the different virtual machines created.