openstack Architecture and components overview

Let’s talk about Openstack  architecture and Components . In the last article ,we have seen the history of private cloud softwares and Openstack. OpenStack is a cloud computing platform that controls large number of  compute nodes , storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard(Horizon) that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. Openstack provides an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution through a set of interrelated services.

 

Here is the list of openstack Services , project name and description.

Service	Project name	Description	Requirement
Dashboard	Horizon	Web-Based Dashboard	Mandatory
Compute	Nova	Create virtual Machine  & manage VM	Mandatory
Networking	Neutron	Software defined networking (Advanced Networking)	Optional
Object Storage	Swift	Store files & Directories	Optional
Block Storage	Cinder	Volume & Snapshot Management	Mandatory
Identity service	Keystone	Creating Projects/User/Roles/Token Management/Authentication	Mandatory
Image Service	Glance	To Manage OS Images	Optional
Telemetry	Ceilometer	Monitoring & Billing purpose	Optional
Orchestration	Heat	HOT(Heat Orchestration Template) based on YAML	Optional
Database Service	Trove	Database as a Service	Optional
Hadoop as Service	sahara	Hadoop as Service	Optional
Messaging	RabbitMQ	Messaging	Mandatory

Refer more at http://docs.openstack.org. 

 

Conceptual architecture

The below diagram shows how the openstack components are interconnected.

 

How Openstack works ?

Openstack can’t be directly installed on  hardware. It requires operating systems which supports virtualization in the back-end. At present , Ubuntu(kvm), Redhat enterprise Linux(kvm) , oracle Linux(xen) , Oracle Solaris(zones), Microfsoft Hyper-v, VMware ESXi  supports openstack cloud platform.  That’s why openstack is the strategic choice of many types of organizations from service providers looking to offer cloud computing services on standard hardware, to companies looking to deploy private cloud, to large enterprises deploying a global cloud solution across multiple continents. Rackspace and HP are offering public cloud via openstack cloud platform.

 

Hope this article is informative to you.  In the next article ,we will see the deployment of Openstack on Ubuntu.