Sunsetting Bitnami Launchpads

Authored by Alejandro Gómez, R&D Manager at VMware

The Bitnami Launchpad service was released at the beginning of 2013, when the major cloud service providers—AWS, Azure, and Google—were just developing and launching application marketplaces for their platforms. Bitnami Launchpad offered a simpler user experience to deploy applications in the cloud. Providing our own service also allowed us to give users access to the latest, most up-to-date version faster than was available through the cloud vendor marketplaces. Thousands of applications have been deployed through the Bitnami Launchpad.

However, since those early days, cloud service providers have shortened their validation and publishing timelines, and the user experience for deployment from their marketplaces has improved considerably. Through these cloud platform marketplaces, users not only get a simplified process for procuring software, but now they also get faster access to the most recent version of Bitnami solutions as well as a fully integrated deployment experience with the platform of their choice.

In this context, today we are announcing the deprecation of the Bitnami Launchpad service and recommend deploying our solutions directly through the cloud service providers’ marketplaces. Here are answers to a few questions you might have.

Where can I find Bitnami by VMware solutions?
We have worked with the major cloud service providers to make our software available to you:

• AWS LightSail and AWS Marketplace
• Azure Marketplace
• Google Cloud Marketplace

How does the Bitnami Launchpad deprecation affect my servers?
Your instances will not be stopped or removed because they are running in the platform of your choice under your cloud account. However, you will not be able to launch new servers or manage and access existing servers through the Bitnami Launchpad interface.

December 15, 2022: Launchpads will be accessible, but you will not be able to launch new instances or add new cloud credentials. However, you will still be able to manage your instances from our launchpads as well as from each cloud console.

February 15, 2023: Launchpads will no longer be accessible and you will have to manage your instances from each cloud console.

Which actions do I need to perform?
Option A (recommended): Upgrade your server. Launch a server for the most recent version of the application through one of our partners and migrate your data.

Option B: Ensure access to your existing server through the cloud service provider console. Download your SSH keys from the launchpads to ensure you will be able to access your instances after January 31, 2023. Find information about how to download them for each cloud provider:

• Download information for AWS
• Download information for Azure
• Download information for Google (Note: In Google you will be able to access them through SSH from the GCP console using the integrated Cloud Shell)
  

Bitnami Cloud Hosting Deprecation – Focus on Extending Bitnami Application Catalog and Services

Since 2011, Bitnami Cloud Hosting (BCH) has provided an easy way for users to deploy and manage Open Source applications on the Amazon EC2 Cloud.  

Thanks to this service, users new to the cloud had the chance to quickly deploy and manage applications on AWS servers through an intuitive and user-friendly interface.  

As new packaging formats and deployment platforms come up, the Bitnami Engineering team has concentrated its efforts in providing multi-cloud cross-platform applications and services to match emerging developers’ needs.  

In the past two years, since the VMware acquisition, we have extended the Bitnami Open Source Catalog for containers and Helm charts, released VMware Application Catalog, a curated and customizable selection of Open Source software from the Bitnami Application Catalog, and improved in number and quality of the templates delivered to the major cloud marketplaces: VMware Marketplace, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM.  

Continuing to focus on increasing the investment to help developers adopt Cloud Native solutions and considering that there are multiple products that offer a similar experience as BCH, Bitnami team will discontinue the service for Bitnami Cloud Hosting by February 15th, 2022.  

Can I still launch Bitnami applications on AWS servers? 

The answer is: of course, you can! 

Discover and deploy the Bitnami Application Catalog on AWS Cloud servers using the following platforms:  

• AWS Marketplace  
• AWS Lightsail 
• Bitnami for AWS Cloud Launchpad 
• Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS) 

We know that some of the concepts and terms used to manage your servers in Bitnami Cloud Hosting are different from the ones used by AWS Cloud services. For that reason, we have created a detailed tutorial on how to manage Bitnami Cloud Hosting servers from the AWS console.  

If you experience any issue migrating your BCH data to the AWS console or you want to provide your feedback please post to our Community forums. We will be happy to help you there! 

Spin up your Online Store in Minutes with Bitnami Prestashop and AWS Lightsail

Regardless of whether you are using a cloud provider for the first time or are an experienced user, Amazon Lightsail is a proven choice for running your websites and applications. 

If you are planning to initiate your own e-commerce website, chances are that you will select Prestashop as the solution for launching your online store. We are delighted to announce that Amazon Lightsail just expanded its catalog and included the Prestashop Certified by Bitnami image. 

Follow this guide to get Prestashop set up and running on Amazon Lightsail with just a few clicks.

Now you can get your business running on the cloud within minutes! 

Bitnami Prestashop and Amazon Lightsail: The easiest and most reliable way to build your e-commerce store

Prestashop is unquestionably one of the most popular open-source e-commerce solutions among both developers and merchants. It provides more than 2000 themes and 3500 free and paid modules for you to customise your site. Bitnami has pre-packaged a blueprint image for Amazon Lightsail that bundles the most up to date and secure version of Prestashop and its components. 

It takes just a few clicks to have your site go live online. First, you need to log in to your Amazon Lightsail account and click “Create instance”. Then choose Linux/Unix as a platform and pick Prestashop from the list of available blueprints. Name your instance and click “Create Instance”. 

This will spin up a server with the Bitnami Prestashop image running on it. Getting the application password and the IP address of your Prestashop website is super easy thanks to the intuitive user interface, and you’re done!

To get the best out of Prestashop on your Amazon Lightsail server, check out this get started guide and the documentation for managing your Bitnami Prestashop image on Amazon Lightsail.