Openstack Cloud: Benefits and Importance in Cloud Computing

Introduction

Openstack is a collection of software tools for managing and building cloud computing platforms for public and private clouds. Openstack cloud is supported by some of the largest and well-known software companies in software hosting and development. Openstack cloud is also supported by community members, many of whom believe that the future of cloud computing is open stack. Openstack Foundation, a non-profit organization, looking after community-building and project development, manages the OpenStack. 

In this article, let us look at

1. What is Openstack Cloud Computing?
2. Components of Openstack
3. Models of Openstack
4. Importance and Need of Openstack

1. What is Openstack Cloud Computing?

Openstack allows users to install virtual machines that take care of different tasks for managing a cloud environment on the go. Openstack cloud computing makes horizontal scaling easy, which means functions that have benefit from running in parallel can serve more users by spinning up occurrences. For example: if a mobile app wants to communicate with a remote server can share the work of communicating with each user across many circumstances, which scales up as the application gets more users. 

The most important aspect of the OpenStack is that it is open-source software, which means any user who wants to access the source code can make the needed changes to the code quickly and freely share with the community. This, in turn, is beneficial to thousands of developers who are working together to build the most secure, robust, and safe product they can. 

Is OpenStack Public or Private Cloud?

To understand if the OpenStack is a public or private cloud, the OpenStack is a free cloud computing platform, installed as a part of the infrastructure in both public and private cloud where all resources are available to users. 

2. Components of Openstack

Openstack is made up of various moving parts. Since its an open-source software, additional components can be added by anyone to suit their requirements. However, nine components have been maintained officially by the OpenStack community and are distributed as a part of the OpenStack system. Take a look at the components. 

• Nova 

Nova is the main computing engine for an OpenStack. It is used to install a large number of virtual machines for handling the task of computing. 

• Cinder 

Cinder is a block of storage component which refers to the system being able to access specific locations on the disk drive. This can come in handy in scenarios where data access speed is considered as most important. 

• Swift 

Swift acts as an OpenStack cloud storage for objects and files. Instead of the traditional idea of referring to the file location, developers can refer to a unique identifier referring to the file or information and allow OpenStack to decide where to store that information. This relieves the headache of the developer about the capacity of the system. The system’s responsibility is to back up the data in case of an error in the machine’s network connection or failure.

• Keystone 

Keystone provides services of identity for an OpenStack. It is primarily a list of all users who are mapped to OpenStack and the services offered by the cloud for which they have permission to use. This provides many means of access. So developers can conveniently map existing user access methods with Keystone. 

• Neutron

Neutron provides the capacity of networking for OpenStack. This ensures that all the components of OpenStack that are installed can communicate with one another quickly and efficiently. 

• Key Manager (Barbican) 

Barbican is a REST API made for the secure storage, managing, and provisioning of secrets. Its main aim is to be useful for all cloud environments, including large clouds. 

• Horizon 

Horizon is the dashboard of OpenStack, which is the only graphical interface. This is the only component that will be visible for those users who want to try OpenStack. Developers can individually access all the components of OpenStack through an API. Horizon allows the system admin to take a look at the happenings in the cloud and manage. 

• Heat 

The heat helps manage the infrastructure needed for a cloud service to run by allowing the developers to store the cloud application requirements in a file that defines the necessary resources for that application. 

• Ceilometer 

Ceilometer provides telemetry services, allowing the cloud to provide billing services to various users of the cloud. It also keeps track of the usage of the system by each user. Ceilometer also tracks the use of all the components of OpenStack.

• Glance 

Glance provides image services. These images refer to the hard disk. Glance lets you use the pictures as templates while installing new virtual machines.

3. Models of Openstack

There are different models developed by vendors for deploying Openstack for customers. Some of them are mentioned below.

• Openstack as a Service. 

In this model, the vendor hosts OpenStack management software as a service without the hardware. Customers have to sign up for the service and match with their internal network, storage, and server to get a fully functioning OpenStack private cloud. 

• Openstack based Public Cloud 

In this type of model, the vendor provides OpenStack public cloud computing system based on an open stack project.

• Openstack based Private Cloud 

The vendor provides OpenStack based private cloud, which includes hardware and OpenStack software in this model.

• On-Premises Distribution 

In this type of model, the customer downloads and installs OpenStack distribution within the internal network.

• Appliance based OpenStack 

A vendor called Nebula sold appliances that could be plugged into a network that generated an OpenStack deployment.

• Rule-based Alarm Actions 

This service can start actions based on rules against event or metric data collected by the ceilometer.

4. Importance and Need of Openstack

Openstack is an integral part of the OpenStack cloud platform because it allows communication between the cloud environment and provides a common standard through API. The distributed architecture of OpenStack enables next-generation services. Openstack focuses on both enterprises and service providers.

Conclusion

To conclude, OpenStack has multiple advantages. It has a vibrant ecosystem, and it is open source and free. Nowadays, more companies are beginning to adopt OpenStack as a part of their cloud tool kit. Another advantage is that a large number of people can check the source code. Openstack is being used in many industry sectors, and more are planning to adopt, considering its popularity and ease of use.

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