OpenStack is an open source software that is used for creating private and public clouds. It is intended to control resources in a datacenter and has a dashboard to be managed or it can be done through the OpenStack API.
With OpenStack users can create virtual machines and other instances that do do different things in the cloud environment. It is a platform that makes horizontal scaling easy, i.e. tasks that run at the same time can easily be available to different number of users instantly by just manipulating with the instances.
According to the the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the cloud can come in three different service models:
- Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS),
- Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS),
- Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS))
OpenStack allows users to quickly create new VM or instance upon which other cloud components can run, thus providing infrastructure. That puts OpenStack in the Cloud Infrastructure as a Service category. That infrastructure runs a “platform”, so the users can develop and deliver applications to the end users.
Source http://www.openstack.org/
What are the components of OpenStack?
As an open source software, it has a community that collaborates and it has defined nine components that are part of the “core” of OpenStack. The community maintains these components and they are distributed as a part of any OpenStack system.
Nova
This is the primary computing engine behind OpenStack. This allows deploying and managing virtual machines and other instances to handle computing tasks.
Swift
The storage system for objects and files is referred to as Swift. In the traditional storage systems, files are referred to a location on the disk drive, whereas in OpenStack Swift files are referred to by a unique identifier and the Swift is in charge where to store the files.
The scaling is therefore made easier because the developers don’t have the worry about the capacity on a single system behind the software. This makes the system in charge of the best way to make data backup in case of network or hardware problems.
Cinder
This is the respective component to the traditional computer access to specific disc locations. It is a block storage component that enables the cloud system to access data with higher speed in situations when it is an important feature.
Neutron
Neutron is the networking component of OpenStack. It makes all the components communicate with each other smoothly, quickly and efficiently.
Horizon
This is the OpenStack dashboard. It’s the graphical interface to OpenStack and the first component that users starting with OpenStack will see.
There is an OpenStack API that allows developers to access all the components individually, but the dashboard is the management platform for the system administrators to have a know what is going on in the cloud.
Keystone
This is the component that provides identity services for OpenStack. Basically, this is a centralized list of all the users and their permissions for the services they use in the OpenStack cloud.
Glance
It is a component that provides image services or virtual copies of the hard disks. Glance allows these images to be used as templates when deploying new virtual machine instances.
Ceilometer
Ceilometer provides data measurement services, thus enabling the cloud to offer billing services to individual users of the cloud. It measures system usage by each user for each of the components of the cloud and makes reporting available.
Heat
Heat is the orchestration component of OpenStack, which allows developers to store the requirements of a cloud application in a file that defines what resources are necessary for that application. In this way, it helps to manage the infrastructure needed for a cloud service to run.
This is the component which allows developers to keep the requirements of the cloud applications of the resources in a file. It improves the management of the infrastructure needed for a cloud service to run.
VapourApps Private Cloud uses OpenStack:
- Virtualization engine – OpenStack on KVM
- Predefined virtual servers based on Debian
- Orchestration and management web dashboard, a customized Horizon dashboard.
The owner of the tenant or the IT administrator, can manage his virtual servers, users, groups and monitor the status of the used application from a single dashboard.
Download and try VapourApps 1.0 Beta
