Previous article: OpenStack Introduction

OpenStack is a collection of open source technologies delivering a massively scalable cloud operating system.

OpenStack cloud operating system controls large pools of compute, storage and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.

We can think of it as software to power our own Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering, like the one behind Amazon Web Services.

 

OpenStack is an umbrella project that can be divided into many sub-components:

ProjectCode Name
DashboardHorizon
ComputeNova
IdentityKeystone
NetworkNeutron
Image ServiceGlance
Block StorageCinder
Object StorageSwift
TelemetryCeilometer
OrchestrationHeat
DatabaseTrove
DNS serviceDesignate
Bare MetalIronic
Queue ServiceZaqar
 

OpenStack logical architecture
There are currently seven core components of OpenStack, how they conceptually interact with each other is shown below:

openstack logical architecture1


All these components and how they relate each other are shown in the simplest way in the below OpenStack logical architecture :

openstack logical architecture2

Next article: Horizon & Keystone

About the Author

Giuseppe Paternò

Giuseppe Paternò

IT Architect and highly skilled in IT Security, he has a broad background in the Open Source world. He has worked as a consultant for companies such as Red Hat, Canonical, Sun and IBM, in addition to being Managing Director of the Swiss multinational GARL. He also deals with technologies about CloudStack and OpenStack, for which he has written a reference manual.