STUDY ABOUT OPENSTACK

Documents explains about Openstack and its components

Jai Krishna Pyneni

[email protected]
About OpenStack
OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and
networking resources throughout a datacenter, through a dashboard that gives administrators
control while empowering their users with required resources through a web interface.
Openstack aims to provide open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds
everywhere. Predominantly acting as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform, it is free and
open-source software released under the terms of the Apache License

Different Components of Openstack:

1. Compute (Nova)
2. Object Storage (Swift)
3. Block Storage (Cinder)
4. Networking (Neutron)
5. Dashboard (Horizon)
6. Identity Service (Keystone)
7. Image Service (Glance)
8. Telemetry (Ceilometer)
9. Orchestration (Heat)

Compute (Nova): The OpenStack cloud operating system enables service providers to offer
on-demand computing resources, by provisioning and managing large networks of virtual
machines. Resources for compute are accessible via APIs for developers building cloud
applications and via web interfaces for administrators and users. It is written in Python and uses
many external libraries such as Eventlet (for concurrent programming), Kombu (for Advanced
Message Queuing Protocol communication), and SQLAlchemy (for database access).
OpenStack’s Compute is architected to provide flexibility as you design your cloud. The
compute architecture is designed to scale horizontally on standard hardware with no
proprietary hardware or software requirements and provide the ability to integrate with legacy
systems and third-party technologies. It is designed to manage and automate pools of compute
resources and can work with widely available virtualization technologies, as well as bare metal
and high-performance computing (HPC) configurations.
Features & Benefits of Compute
Feature Benefit
Manage virtualized commodity server Racks of commodity servers as pools of computing
resources Improved utilization and automation of resources for
CPU, memory, disk, and network greater cost efficiencies
interfaces
Manage Local Area Networks (LAN) Programmatically allocate IPs and VLANs  
Flat, Flat DHCP, VLAN DHCP, IPv6 (for rapid provisioning of network capabilities and
security features)
Flexible networking models to suit needs of each
application  and/or user group
API with rate limiting and authentication Designed for automation and security 
(to make it easy for you to manage who has access to
compute resources and prevent users from impacting
each other with excessive API utilization)
Distributed and asynchronous Massively scalable and highly available system
architecture (for increased assurance of system uptime)
Virtual Machine (VM) image Easily store, import, share, and query images
management (to make it easy for you to spin up new standardized
VMs)
Live VM management Increase productivity with lifecycle management
Run, reboot, suspend, resize, terminate (from a single user interface and using the APIs)
instances
Floating IP addresses Ability to assign (and re-assign) IP addresses to VMs

Security Groups Flexibility to assign and control access to VM instances by

creating separation between resource pools 

Role Based Access Control (RBAC) Ensure security by user, role and project

Projects & Quotas Ability to allocate, track and limit resource utilization

VNC Proxy through web browser Quick and easy CLI administration

Store and Manage files Automates resource management/provisioning

programmatically via API
Least privileged access design Root access separation for management & services
Dashboard with fully integrated support Learn more about the OpenStack Dashboard
for self-service provisioning
VM Image Caching on compute nodes Faster provisioning of VMs
OpenStack Storage: Openstack uses two types of storages Object and Block storage for use
with servers and applications

Object Storage (Swift): Object Storage is a cost effective, scale-out storage. It provides a
fully distributed, API-accessible storage platform that can be integrated directly into
applications or used for backup, archiving and data retention. It's built for scale and optimized
for durability, availability, and concurrency across the entire data set. Swift is ideal for storing
unstructured data that can grow without bound.

Object Storage Capabilities

1. OpenStack provides redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized

servers capable of storing petabytes of data
2. Object Storage is not a traditional file system, but rather a distributed storage system
for static data such as virtual machine images, photo storage, email storage, backups
and archives. Having no central "brain" or master point of control provides greater
scalability, redundancy and durability.
3. Objects and files are written to multiple disk drives spread throughout servers in the
data center, with the OpenStack software responsible for ensuring data replication and
integrity across the cluster.
4. Storage clusters scale horizontally simply by adding new servers. Should a server or hard
drive fail, OpenStack replicates its content from other active nodes to new locations in
the cluster. Because OpenStack uses software logic to ensure data replication and
distribution across different devices, inexpensive commodity hard drives and servers can
be used in lieu of more expensive equipment.

Block Storage (Cinder): Block Storage allows block of storages to be exposed and
connected to compute instances for expanded storage, better performance and integration
with enterprise storage platforms, such as NetApp, Nexenta and SolidFire. Cinder provides
an infrastructure for managing volumes in OpenStack. It was originally a Nova component
called nova-volume, but has become an independent project since the Folsom release.

Block Storage Capabilities

1. OpenStack provides persistent block level storage devices for use with OpenStack
compute instances.
2. The block storage system manages the creation, attaching and detaching of the
block devices to servers. Block storage volumes are fully integrated into OpenStack
Compute and the Dashboard allowing for cloud users to manage their own storage
needs.
3. In addition to using simple Linux server storage, it has unified storage support for
numerous storage platforms including Ceph, NetApp, Nexenta, SolidFire, and Zadara.
 4. Block storage is appropriate for performance sensitive scenarios such as database
storage, expandable file systems, or providing a server with access to raw block level
storage.
5. Snapshot management provides powerful functionality for backing up data stored
on block storage volumes. Snapshots can be restored or used to create a new block
storage volume.

Networking(Neuron): Neutron is an OpenStack project to provide "networking as a service"

between interface devices (e.g., vNICs) managed by other Openstack services. OpenStack
Networking ensures that network will not be the bottleneck or limiting factor in a cloud
deployment and gives users real self-service, even over their network configurations. Neuron is
a pluggable, scalable and API-driven system for managing networks and IP addresses.

Networking Capabilities

1. OpenStack provides flexible networking models to suit the needs of different

applications or user groups. Standard models include flat networks or VLANs for
separation of servers and traffic.
2. OpenStack Networking manages IP addresses, allowing for dedicated static IPs or DHCP.
Floating IPs allow traffic to be dynamically rerouted to any of your compute resources,
which allows you to redirect traffic during maintenance or in the case of failure.
3. Users can create their own networks, control traffic and connect servers and devices to
one or more networks.
4. The pluggable backend architecture lets users take advantage of commodity gear or
advanced networking services from supported vendors.
5. Administrators can take advantage of software-defined networking (SDN) technology
like OpenFlow to allow for high levels of multi-tenancy and massive scale.
6. OpenStack Networking has an extension framework allowing additional network
services, such as intrusion detection systems (IDS), load balancing, firewalls and virtual
private networks (VPN) to be deployed and managed.

Dashboard (Horizon): Horizon is the canonical implementation of Openstack’s Dashboard,

which provides a web based user interface to OpenStack services including Nova, Swift,
Keystone, etc. The OpenStack dashboard provides administrators and users a graphical
interface to access, provision and automate cloud-based resources. It is easy to plug in and
expose third party products and services, such as billing, monitoring and additional
management tools. Developers can automate access or build tools to manage their resources
using the native OpenStack API.

Dashboard Capabilities
 1. The dashboard is an extensible web app that allows cloud administrators and users to
control their compute, storage and networking resources.
2. As a cloud administrator, the dashboard provides an overall view of the size and state of
your cloud. You can create users and projects, assign users to projects and set limits on
the resources for those projects.
3. The dashboard provides users a self-service portal to provision their own resources
within the limits set by administrators.

OpenStack has several shared services those cover the three pillars of compute, storage
and networking, making it easier to implement and operate your cloud. They are

1. Identity Service (Keystone)

2. Image Service (Glance)
3. Telemetry Service (Ceilometer)
4. Orchestration Service (Heat)

Identity Service (Keystone): Keystone is the identity service used by OpenStack for
authentication (authN) and high-level authorization (authZ). It currently supports token-based
authN and user-service authorization. OpenStack Identity provides a central directory of users
mapped to the OpenStack services they can access. It acts as a common authentication system
across the cloud operating system and can integrate with existing backend directory services
like LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol). . Users and third-party tools can
programmatically determine which resources they can access.

As an administrator, OpenStack Identity enables you to:

1. Configure centralized policies across users and systems.

2. Create users and tenants and define permissions for compute, storage and networking
resources using role-based access control (RBAC) features.
3. Integrate with an existing directory like LDAP, allowing for a single source of identity
authentication across the enterprise.

As a user, OpenStack Identity enables you to:

1. Get a list of the services that you can access.

2. Make API requests or log into the web dashboard to create resources owned by your
account.

Image Service (Glance): The OpenStack Image Service provides discovery, registration and
delivery services for disk and server images. The ability to copy or snapshot a server image and
immediately store it away is a powerful capability of the OpenStack cloud operating system.
The Image Service can store disk and server images in a variety of back-ends, including
OpenStack Object Storage. A number of periodic processes run on the Image Service to support
caching. Replication services ensures consistency and availability through the cluster. Other
periodic processes include auditors, updaters, and reapers.

Capabilities of the Image Service include:

1. Administrators can create base templates from which their users can start new compute
instances
2. Users can choose from available images, or create their own from existing servers
3. Snapshots can also be stored in the Image Service so that virtual machines can be
backed up quickly

Telemetry Service (Ceilometer): The OpenStack Telemetry service aggregates usage and
performance data across the services deployed in an OpenStack cloud. This powerful capability
provides visibility and insight into the usage of the cloud across dozens of data points and
allows cloud operators to view metrics globally or by individual deployed resources. The
ceilometer aims to deliver a unique point of contact for billing systems to acquire all form of the
measurements that a provider need for customer billing, across all current OpenStack core
components

Ceilometer aims to achieve the following

1. Provide efficient collection of metering data, in terms of CPU and network costs.
2. Allow deployers to integrate with the metering system directly or by replacing
components.
3. Data may be collected by monitoring notifications sent from existing services or by
polling the infrastructure.
4. Allow deployers to configure the type of data collected to meet their operating
requirements.
5. The data collected by the metering system is made visible to some users through a REST
API.

Orchestration Service (Heat): OpenStack Orchestration is a template-driven engine that

allows application developers to describe and automate the deployment of infrastructure. The
flexible template language can specify compute, storage and networking configurations as well
as detailed post-deployment activity to automate the full provisioning of infrastructure for
services and applications. In Simple, OpenStack Heat program is to create a human- and
machine-accessible service for managing the entire lifecycle of infrastructure and applications
within OpenStack clouds.
Apart from above components Openstack is developing to implement some other components
like

OpenStack Common Libraries (Oslo): Oslo is to bring together the python libraries
containing code shared by OpenStack projects. The APIs provided by these libraries should be
high quality, stable, consistent, documented and generally applicable.

OpenStack Open Source Database (Trove): Trove is Database as a Service for

OpenStack. It's designed to run entirely on OpenStack, with the goal of allowing users to quickly
and easily utilize the features of a relational database without the burden of handling complex
administrative tasks. Cloud users and database administrators can provision and manage
multiple database instances as needed. Initially, the service will focus on providing resource
isolation at high performance while automating complex administrative tasks including
deployment, configuration, patching, backups, restores, and monitoring.

Release History of different components of Openstack

Release Release date Included Component code names

name

Austin 21 October 2010 Nova, Swift

Bexar 3 February 2011 Nova, Glance, Swift

Cactus 15 April 2011 Nova, Glance, Swift

Diablo 22 September Nova, Glance, Swift

2011

Essex 5 April 2012 Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone

Folsom 27 September Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone, Quantum, Cinder

2012
 Grizzly 4 April 2013 Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone, Quantum, Cinder

Havana 17 October 2013 Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone, Neutron, Cinder,
Heat, Ceilometer

Icehouse 17 April 2014 Nova, Glance, Swift, Horizon, Keystone, Neutron, Cinder,
Heat, Ceilometer, Trove

Architecture of Openstack

Amazon Web Services compatibility

OpenStack APIs are compatible with Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 and thus client applications
written for Amazon Web Services can be used with OpenStack with minimal porting effort.

Use Cases of Openstack:

1. Service providers offering an IaaS compute platform or services higher up the stack
2. IT departments acting as cloud service providers for business units and project teams
3. Processing big data with tools like Hadoop
 4. Scaling compute up and down to meet demand for web resources and applications
5. High-performance computing (HPC) environments processing diverse and intensive
workloads

Users: Different users of OpenStack are AT&T, HP cloud services, PayPal, Rackspace, Sony
online gaming systems, Yahoo, Wikimedia labs, Intel, NASA etc... .

Conceptual Architecture:

Launching a virtual machine or instance involves many interactions among several services. The
following diagram provides the conceptual architecture of a typical OpenStack environment.

Refernces:
http://docs.openstack.org/,

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Main_Page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack,