OpenStack Cloud Computing Platform

OpenStack is a free and open-source cloud computing platform primarily deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) for both public and private clouds. Founded in 2010 as a joint project between NASA and Rackspace Hosting, OpenStack has grown into one of the largest open-source projects in the world, with the OpenInfra Foundation (formerly OpenStack Foundation, renamed in 2021) serving as the governing body. The foundation is headquartered in Austin, Texas and includes Platinum members like Red Hat, Canonical, Huawei, AT&T, and others. Key components (services): Nova (compute): provisions and manages virtual machine instances. Supports KVM, VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Xen, and container backends. Manages instance lifecycle, scheduling, and resource allocation across compute hosts. Neutron (networking): provides networking-as-a-service with support for VLANs, VXLAN, GRE overlays, SDN controllers (OpenDaylight, ONOS), security groups, floating IPs, routers, and load balancing. Cinder (block storage): persistent block storage volumes that can be attached to instances. Supports storage backends including Ceph, NetApp, Dell EMC, Pure Storage, and NFS. Swift (object storage): highly available, distributed object storage compatible with S3. Uses consistent hashing ring for data distribution and replication. Keystone (identity): authentication and authorization using tokens, with support for LDAP, OpenID Connect, and SAML federation. Role-based access control. Glance (image): stores and retrieves virtual machine disk images. Supports raw, QCOW2, VMDK, and VDI formats. Horizon (dashboard): web-based management interface for all OpenStack services. Heat (orchestration): infrastructure orchestration using HOT (Heat Orchestration Template) or AWS CloudFormation templates. Designate (DNS). Octavia (load balancer). Manila (file share). Magnum (containers). Trove (database). Python. Apache-2.0.