OpenStack

OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform for cloud computing, mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), whereby virtual servers and other resources are made available to customers. The software platform consists of interrelated components that control diverse, multi-vendor hardware pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center. Users either manage it through a web-based dashboard, through command-line tools, or through RESTful web services.

Curriculum

Main wikipage: CNM Cloud requirements

OpenStack development

The OpenStack community collaborates around a six-month, time-based release cycle with frequent development milestones. During the planning phase of each release, the community gathers for an OpenStack Design Summit to facilitate developer working sessions and to assemble plans.

Components

OpenStack has a modular architecture with various code names for its components.

Computer (Nova)

is a cloud computing fabric controller, which is the main part of an IaaS system. It is designed to manage and automate pools of computer resources and can work with widely available virtualization technologies, as well as bare metal and high-performance computing (HPC) configurations.

Networking (Neutron)

is a system for managing networks and IP addresses. OpenStack Networking ensures the network is not a bottleneck or limiting factor in a cloud deployment, and gives users self-service ability, even over network configurations.

Block storage (Cinder)

provides persistent block-level storage devices for use with OpenStack compute instances. The block storage system manages the creation, attaching and detaching of the block devices to servers. Block storage volumes are fully integrated into OpenStack Compute and the Dashboard allowing for cloud users to manage their own storage needs. Block storage is appropriate for performance sensitive scenarios such as database storage, expandable file systems, or providing a server with access to raw block level storage.

Identity (Keystone)

provides a central directory of users mapped to the OpenStack services they can access. It acts as a common authentication system across the cloud operating system and can integrate with existing backend directory services like LDAP. Additionally, the catalog provides a queryable list of all of the services deployed in an OpenStack cloud in a single registry. Users and third-party tools can programmatically determine which resources they can access.

Image (Glance)

provides discovery, registration, and delivery services for disk and server images. Stored images can be used as a template. It can also be used to store and catalog an unlimited number of backups. Glance adds many enhancements to existing legacy infrastructures.

Object storage (Swift)

is a scalable redundant storage system. Objects and files are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout servers in the data center, with the OpenStack software responsible for ensuring data replication and integrity across the cluster. Storage clusters scale horizontally simply by adding new servers. Should a server or hard drive fail, OpenStack replicates its content from other active nodes to new locations in the cluster. Because OpenStack uses software logic to ensure data replication and distribution across different devices, inexpensive commodity hard drives and servers can be used.

Dashboard (Horizon)

provides administrators and users with a graphical interface to access, provision, and automate deployment of cloud-based resources. The design accommodates third party products and services, such as billing, monitoring, and additional management tools. The dashboard is also brand-able for service providers and other commercial vendors who want to make use of it. The dashboard is one of several ways users can interact with OpenStack resources.

Orchestration (Heat)

is a service to orchestrate multiple composite cloud applications using templates.

Workflow (Mistral)

is a service that manages workflows. Then user can start this workflow manually via the same API or configure a trigger to start the workflow on some event.

Telemetry (Ceilometer)

provides a Single Point Of Contact for billing systems, providing all the counters they need to establish customer billing, across all current and future OpenStack components.

Search (Searchlight)

provides advanced and consistent search capabilities across various OpenStack cloud services.

Users

• AT&T
• BBC
• NASA
• eBay
• Intel
• Yahoo!