OpenStack
OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform that provides infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) by pooling compute, storage, and networking resources into a set of interoperable services.
Definition
OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform that provides infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) by pooling compute, storage, and networking resources into a set of interoperable services.
Overview
OpenStack was launched in 2010 as a joint project between Rackspace and NASA, and is now governed by the OpenInfra Foundation. Rather than being a single monolithic product, it is a collection of loosely coupled services that together provide the equivalent of public-cloud-style infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) on private or hosted hardware: Nova handles compute (virtual machine provisioning), Neutron handles software-defined networking, Cinder provides block storage, Swift provides object storage, and Keystone provides identity and access management, among many other components. Because OpenStack runs on commodity hardware and exposes APIs modeled closely on those used by public clouds like AWS, organizations use it to build private or hybrid clouds that give internal teams a self-service provisioning experience without relying on a public-cloud vendor — a common requirement for telecoms, government, and regulated industries with data-residency or sovereignty constraints. It typically runs beneath a hypervisor such as KVM, and cluster operators interact with it through a web dashboard (Horizon), a CLI, or its REST APIs. OpenStack's flexibility comes at the cost of operational complexity: deploying and maintaining a production OpenStack cloud requires significant expertise, which has led many organizations toward managed OpenStack distributions or toward simpler alternatives depending on scale.
Key Features
- Modular architecture of independent services (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Swift, Keystone, and more)
- Compute provisioning (Nova) with support for multiple hypervisors including KVM
- Software-defined networking via Neutron for tenant isolation and virtual networks
- Block storage (Cinder) and object storage (Swift) services
- Keystone identity service for unified authentication and authorization
- Public-cloud-style REST APIs enabling private and hybrid cloud deployments
- Web dashboard (Horizon) for self-service resource provisioning