Introduction to OpenStack

OpenStack is a collection of open source components that lets us build public or private cloud (Infrastructure as a Service -IaaS).

·       A massively scalable cloud operating system.

·       Born in 2010 from an idea of NASA(nova - one of the openstack component)  and RackSpace(swift - one of the openstack component)

·       Design to runs on commodity hardware.

·       Open Source under Apache license.

OpenStack Components:

=======================

1)Horizon: - A Dashboard,  It provides a modular web-based user interface for all the Open Stack components. With this web GUI, We can perform most operations like launching an instance,managing networking and setting access controls etc.

2)Nova:– A compute service, responsible for creating instances (VM's) and managing the hypervisor of choice. Most complicated openstack component.Nova compute uses libvirtd,qemu and kvm for the hypervisor.

3)Neutron:– A network service, responsible for creating network connectivity and network services. Capable of connecting with vendor network gear through plug-ins. Neutron comes with a set of default services implemented by common tools. Network vendors can create plug-ins to replace any one of the services with their own implementation, adding value to their users. Networks, subnets and routers ,advanced services such as firewalls or VPN can be implemented.

4)Cinder:- A block storage service, responsible for creating and managing external storage including block devices and NFS. Capable of connecting to vendor storage gear through plug-ins. Cinder has several generic plug-ins which can connect to NFS and iSCSI, for example. 

5)Keystone:- An identity management system, responsible for user and service authentication. Keystone is capable of integrating with third party directory services and LDAP.

6)Glance:– An image service, responsible for managing the images uploaded by the users. Glance is not a storage service but is responsible for saving image attributes.

7)Swift:- An Object storage service  allows you to store or retrieve files. It provides a fully distributed, API-accessible storage platform that can be integrated directly into applications or used for backup, archiving and data retention. Swift is ideal for storing unstructured data that can grow without bound.

8)Heat:-The OpenStack Orchestration Service (Heat) is a template-driven engine that allows automated infrastructure the deployment through both an OpenStack-native REST API and a CloudFormation-compatible Query API.

9)Celiometer:- A metering service: A centralized source for metering and monitoring data. This component provides the capability to meter and bill openstack user.