OpenStack is a platform that enables potential cloud providers to create, manage and bill their custom-made VMs to their future customers. OpenStack is free and open, which essentially means that everyone can have access to its source code and can suggest or make changes to it and share it with the OpenStack community.
OpenStack is an open-source and freely available cloud computing platform that enables its users to create, manage and deploy virtual machines and other instances. Technically, OpenStack provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to its users to enable them to manage virtual private servers in their data centers.
OpenStack provides the required software tools and technologies to abstract the underlying infrastructure to a uniform consumption model.
The main objective of OpenStack is to provide a cloud computing platform that is :
Global
Open-source
Freely available
Easy to use
Highly and easily scalable
Easy to implement
Interoperable
OpenStack is for all. It satisfies the needs of users, administrators and operators of private clouds as well as public clouds. Some examples of open-source cloud platforms already available are Eucalyptus, Nimbus, and OpenStack, which are used for infrastructure control and are usually implemented in private clouds.
Features and Benefits of OpenStack
Compatibility : OpenStack supports both private and public clouds and is very easy to deploy and manage. OpenStack APIs are supported in Amazon Web Services.
The compatibility eliminates the need for rewriting applications for AWS, thus enabling easy portability between public and private clouds.
Security : OpenStack addresses the security concerns, by providing robust and reliable security systems.
Real-time Visibility : OpenStack provides real-time client visibility to administrators, including visibility of resources and instances, thus enabling administrators and providers to track what clients are requesting for.
Live Upgrades : This feature allows upgrading services without any downtime.
Earlier, for upgradations, that was a need for shutting-down complete systems,
which resulted in loss of performance. Now, OpenStack has enabled upgrading systems while they are running by requiring only individual components to shut-down.
Components of OpenStack:
Swift : Swift provides storage services for storing files and objects. Swift can be equated with Amazon’s Simple Storage System (S3).
Cinder : This component provides block storage to Nova Virtual Machines.
Glance : Glance is OpenStack’s image service component that provides virtual templates (images) of hard disks. These templates can be used for new VMs. Glance may use either Swift or flat files to store these templates.
Neutron (formerly known as Quantum) : This component of OpenStack provides Networking-as-a- Service, Load-Balancer-as-a-Service and Firewall- as-a-Service. It also ensures communication between other components.
Heat : It is the orchestration component of OpenStack. It allows users to manage infrastructural needs of applications by allowing the storage of requirements in files.
Keystone : This component provides identity management in OpenStack
Horizon : This is a dashboard of OpenStack, which provides a graphical interface.
meter : This component of OpenStack provisions meters and billing models for users of the cloud services. It also keeps an account of the resources used by each individual user of the OpenStack cloud. Let us also discuss some non-core components of OpenStack and their offerings.
Trove : Trove is a component of OpenStack that provides Database-as-a- service. It provisions relational databases and big data engines.
Sahara : This component provisions Hadoop to enable the management of data processors.
This component allows messaging between distributed application components.
Ironic : Ironic provisions bare-metals, which can be used as a substitute to VMs.
The optional services of OpenStack are also known as Big Tent services, and OpenStack can be used without these components they can be used as per requirement.
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