Textbook of Linux

← Software

OpenStack

A free and open-source cloud computing platform.

OpenStack is a collection of services that together form a private or public cloud platform: Nova for compute, Neutron for networking, Cinder for block storage, Swift for object storage, Keystone for identity, Glance for images, Heat for orchestration, and many more (40+ official projects in total). Together they provide an AWS-style API for users to provision virtual machines, networks, storage volumes, and other resources.

NASA and Rackspace started OpenStack in 2010, donating their respective Nebula and Cloud Files codebases as the seed. Governance moved to the OpenStack Foundation (now the OpenInfra Foundation) in 2012. Releases happen every six months with a long alphabetical sequence of names (most recent: "Caracal", "Bobcat", "Antelope").

OpenStack's adoption is concentrated in telecommunications, research institutions, and government clouds where private cloud sovereignty matters more than the convenience of public cloud. CERN, OVH, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and many others run substantial OpenStack deployments. Day-to-day operation typically uses tools like Kolla-Ansible, OpenStack-Ansible, or a vendor distribution (Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Mirantis, Canonical).

Devstack (development): https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/
Production deployments are typically multi-node and use
tools like Kolla-Ansible, OpenStack-Ansible, or vendor
distributions.