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)
  

Announcing the Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean

We’re pleased to announce the Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean, which furthers our mission of making deploying applications to the cloud seamless. This new option provides developers with over 100 fully configured applications and development stacks that are ready-to-run on the DigitalOceancloud platform in minutes.

The Bitnami Launchpad is free for DigitalOcean users. You will be charged solely for the infrastructure resources you consume, with no additional cost for the Bitnami solutions built on top of that infrastructure. Bonus: New users can claim up to 2 months of free service credit to use when signing up. Use promo code BITNAMI.

Get started now: 

• Create a free Bitnami account or sign in to select an application or development stack 
• Sign up for a DigitalOcean account 
• Launch images directly from Bitnami Launchpad for DigitalOcean

Bitnami is Now on Google Cloud Platform

After working closely with the Google team, we’re thrilled to announce that Bitnami now supports Google Cloud Platform! As of today, all Bitnami apps may now be deployed with the one-click simplicity you’re used to on the Bitnami Launchpad for Google Cloud Platform. The Launchpad provides a simple interface for launching any of the over 100 applications now available on Bitnami - for free!

The video below shows just how easy it is to launch a Bitnami app on Google Compute Engine. Select from one of our developer environments, such as Rails, Node, Django or LAMP, or our huge range of apps - from WordPress and Drupal to Redmine and Jenkins to Discourse and eXo, and many others. Just visit the Launchpad to view the complete list of apps, click on the one you’d like to launch and we walk you through the simple process from there.

Get Started

Try this out today with the Google Cloud Platform free trial --you can check out just how quickly you can spin up apps with Bitnami on Google Cloud Platform free of charge.

Azure Japan is available now through the Bitnami Launchpad

Microsoft recently added two new regions to Windows Azure — Japan East and Japan West — and we're pleased to announced that users can now launch images in the new regions through the Bitnami Launchpad for Azure.

The Launchpad is the easiest way for an individual or organization to get up and running in the Azure cloud. It allows you to very quickly select an application (WordPress, Redmine, Drupal, PrestaShop, etc.), size a server, and pick a region. Best of all, Bitnami application packages are completely free to use. Windows Azure offers $200 credit to anyone who wants to try hosting on Azure.

Launch Cloud Applications on Windows Azure with Bitnami

Bitnami users have been able to install one-click application packages into the Windows Azure cloud for a while now. But today we're excited to announce expanded support for Azure. Starting today, you can deploy Bitnami apps in just a few clicks with the new Bitnami Launchpad for Windows Azure. From the new console, you can...

• Choose from any of the 90 open source applications and dev stacks in the Bitnami library,
• Select your server size and preferred geographic region from any of those supported in Windows Azure,
• And click the launch button and you will have your server up and running in minutes!

We have also launched an online Azure resource center that includes a step by step guide for using Bitnami in Azure. Of course, all of the Bitnami apps are also available through the VM Depot, so you can still launch them from there as well.

With 80+ apps, Bitnami cloud images and installers have become incredibly popular with millions of users around the world. Bitnami makes it possible for anyone, regardless of their background, to install applications such as WordPress, Redmine, CraftBukkit Minecraft, DreamFactory, Alfresco, SugarCRM, WAMP stack, Drupal and more with the click of a button. Our pre-configured application packages make it a snap to install applications either locally or in the cloud, and save users hours of time trying to get software to work.

We created a video to show just how easy it is:

Ready? Try the Launchpad for Azure yourself and install applications in the cloud with just one click.

Introducing BitNami Cloud Launchpad: Demo Your Favorite Apps in the Cloud for Free

We started BitNami with the goal of making open source server software easier to discover and install. Many BitNami users come to our website to test and compare different projects: wikis, content management systems, bug trackers and so on. We help them select the best one for them because our stacks make it easy to install and run multiple applications side by side. For others, BitNami is a great way to test the very latest release of their favorite application or language framework . Our stacks are self-contained, so they can be installed and removed without interfering with their existing setups.

Today, we are happy to announce the BitNami Cloud Launchpad, a service that allows you to test BitNami applications in the Cloud, for free.

To launch a server, just select an application from our library and click on the 'launch server now' button, as shown below:

After logging in to BitNami, you will be able to launch up to 10 apps with the click of a button. After you click to launch an app, it takes just a couple of minutes to get your server up and running. When the process is complete, you will receive an email with information on how to access the application. Each server will stay up for one hour so you have plenty of time to experiment and play with it.

We have been beta-testing this functionality for the past week and the feedback has been extremely positive. We hope that you will find the BitNami Cloud Launchpad useful for quickly testing new versions of your favorite apps or for exploring new applications.

We have plans to extend and improve this new service, so stay tuned! In the mean time, if you are looking to host your BitNami applications in the cloud, consider BitNami Cloud Hosting.  It provides the same ease of deployment as the Cloud Launchpad but adds monitoring, automatic backups and the ability to resize servers as needed.