OpenStack#Release history

File:NASA.Nebula.cloud.container.JPG platform]]

In July 2010, Rackspace Hosting and NASA announced an open-source cloud-software initiative known as OpenStack.{{Cite web |last=Curry |first=Jim |date=19 July 2010 |title=Introducing OpenStack |url=https://www.openstack.org/blog/2010/07/introducing-openstack/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026111206/https://www.openstack.org/blog/2010/07/introducing-openstack/ |archive-date=26 October 2017 |access-date=22 January 2017 |website=The OpenStack Blog |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |title=Introduction a Bit of Openstack History |url=http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/introduction.html |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Docs Openstack |publisher=Openstack Foundation}} The mission statement was "to produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively scalable".{{Cite web |title=Open Stack Wiki Main Page Mission |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Main_Page |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=24 May 2010 |publisher=Openstack Foundation}}

The project intended to help organizations offer cloud-computing services running on standard hardware. The community's first official release, code-named Austin, appeared three months later on {{start date|df=yes|2010|10|21}},{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Releases: OpenStack Releases |url=https://releases.openstack.org/ |website=releases.openstack.org}} with plans to release regular updates of the software every few months. The early code came from NASA's Nebula platform as well as from Rackspace's Cloud Files platform. The cloud stack and open stack modules were merged and released as open source by the NASA Nebula{{Cite web |date=9 May 2016 |title=Cloud Computing: Architecture, IT Security and Operational Perspectives |url=https://www.slideshare.net/meskey/cloud-computing-architecture-it-security-and-operational-perspectives |website=NASA Nebula Cloud Architecture |publisher=NASA}} team in concert with Rackspace.

In 2011, developers of the Ubuntu Linux distribution adopted OpenStack{{Cite web |last=Vaughan |first=Steven J. |date=10 May 2011 |title=Canonical switches to OpenStack for Ubuntu Linux cloud |url=http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-switches-to-openstack-for-ubuntu-linux-cloud/8875 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514010322/http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-switches-to-openstack-for-ubuntu-linux-cloud/8875 |url-status=dead |archive-date=14 May 2011 |access-date=23 October 2012 |publisher=ZDNet}} with an unsupported technology preview of the OpenStack "Bexar" release for Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal".{{Cite web |last=Vaughan |first=Steven J. |date=3 February 2011 |title=Canonical brings Ubuntu to the OpenStack Cloud |url=http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-brings-ubuntu-to-the-openstack-cloud/8204 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110205171726/http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/canonical-brings-ubuntu-to-the-openstack-cloud/8204 |url-status=dead |archive-date=5 February 2011 |access-date=11 January 2014 |publisher=ZDNet}} Ubuntu's sponsor Canonical then introduced full support for OpenStack clouds, starting with OpenStack's Cactus release.{{citation needed|date=January 2018}}

OpenStack became available in Debian Sid from the Openstack "Cactus" release in 2011, and the first release of Debian including OpenStack was Debian 7.0 (code name "Wheezy"), including OpenStack 2012.1 (code name: "Essex").{{Cite web |date=6 February 2013 |title=Openstack Folsom fully uploaded to Experimental |url=http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=39 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20190920053738/http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=39 |archive-date=20 September 2019 |access-date=29 November 2013 |publisher=Thomas Goirand}}{{Cite web |date=17 October 2013 |title=OpenStack Havana 2013.2 Debian packages available |url=http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=141 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20190920053639/http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=141 |archive-date=20 September 2019 |access-date=29 November 2013 |publisher=Thomas Goirand}}

In October 2011, SUSE announced the public preview of the industry's first fully configured OpenStack powered appliance based on the "Diablo" OpenStack release.{{Cite web |date=26 October 2011 |title=SUSE Debuts OpenStack-Powered Cloud Infrastructure Solution |url=https://www.suse.com/company/press/2011/10/suse-debuts-openstack-powered-cloud-infrastructure-solution.html |access-date=9 August 2016 |publisher=SUSE press release}} In August 2012, SUSE announced its commercially supported enterprise OpenStack distribution based on the "Essex" release.{{Cite web |date=29 August 2012 |title=SUSE Releases First OpenStack-Based Enterprise Private Cloud Solution |url=https://www.suse.com/company/press/2012/8/suse-releases-first-openstack-based-enterprise-private-cloud-solution.html |access-date=9 August 2016 |publisher=SUSE press release}}

File:CiscoOpenStack.JPG

In 2012, Red Hat announced a preview of their OpenStack distribution,{{Cite web |date=15 August 2012 |title=Red Hat Announces Preview Version of Enterprise-Ready OpenStack Distribution |url=https://lwn.net/Articles/511428/ |access-date=26 August 2013 |publisher=Linux Weekly News}} beginning with the "Essex" release. After another preview release, Red Hat introduced commercial support for OpenStack with the "Grizzly" release, in July 2013.{{Cite web |date=12 June 2013 |title=Red Hat Announces OpenStack-powered Product Offerings to Deliver on Open Hybrid Cloud Vision |url=http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2013/6/red-hat-announces-openstack-powered-product-offerings-to-deliver-on-open-hybrid-cloud-vision |access-date=11 January 2014 |publisher=Red Hat Press Release}}

The OpenStack organization has grown rapidly and is supported by more than 540 companies.{{Cite web |title=Openstack Organisation Foundation Companies |url=https://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Openstack Organisation |publisher=Openstack Foundation}}

In 2012 NASA withdrew from OpenStack as an active contributor, and instead made the strategic decision to use Amazon Web Services for cloud-based services.{{Cite web |last=Babcock |first=Chris |date=18 June 2012 |title=NASA Drops OpenStack For Amazon Cloud |url=http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/nasa-drops-openstack-for-amazon-cloud/d/d-id/1104911? |access-date=17 September 2012 |website=InformationWeek |publisher=UBM Tech}} In July 2013, NASA released an internal audit citing lack of technical progress and other factors as the agency's primary reason for dropping out as an active developer of the project and instead focus on the use of public clouds.{{Cite web |date=29 July 2013 |title=NASA's Progress in Adopting Cloud Computing Technologies |url=http://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY13/IG-13-021.pdf |access-date=14 March 2014 |publisher=NASA}} This report is contradicted in part by remarks made by Ames Research Center CIO, Ray O'Brien.{{Cite web |date=4 June 2012 |title=Nebula, NASA, and OpenStack |url=https://open.nasa.gov/blog/2012/06/04/nebula-nasa-and-openstack/ |access-date=18 June 2015 |publisher=open.NASA}} As of Nov 2021, NASA continues to utilize OpenStack in IAAS and PAAS support of the Discover supercomputer cluster. The OpenStack environment is called "Explore" and operates in the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard Space Flight Center.{{Cite web |date=11 November 2021 |title=NCCS—On the Open Road to OpenStack|url=https://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC21/research/project35.html|access-date=2023-06-06 |publisher=nas.nasa.gov}}

In November 2012, The UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) launched Inside Government{{Cite web |title=Inside Government |url=https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-site-to-take-you-inside-government |publisher=UK GDS}} based on the OpenNASA v2.0 Government as a Platform (GaaP) model.

In December 2013, Oracle announced it had joined OpenStack as a Sponsor and planned to bring OpenStack to Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and many of its products.{{Cite web |date=10 December 2013 |title=Oracle Sponsors OpenStack Foundation; Offers Customers Ability to Use OpenStack to Manage Oracle Cloud Products and Services |url=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2079843 |publisher=Oracle}} It followed by announcing Oracle OpenStack distributions for Oracle Solaris{{Cite web |date=29 April 2014 |title=Oracle Introduces Oracle Solaris 11.2—Engineered for Cloud |url=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pressrelease/solaris-11-2-042914 |publisher=Oracle}}{{Cite web |date=31 July 2014 |title=Oracle Solaris 11.2 Now Generally Available |url=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2254736 |publisher=Oracle}} and for Oracle Linux using Icehouse on 24 September 2014.{{Cite web |date=24 September 2014 |title=Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux Now Generally Available |url=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2298602 |publisher=Oracle}}

In May 2014, HP announced HP Helion and released a preview of HP Helion OpenStack Community, beginning with the IceHouse release. HP has operated HP Helion Public Cloud on OpenStack since 2012.{{Cite web |date=7 May 2014 |title=HP Launches HP Helion Portfolio of Cloud Products and Services |url=http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-news/press-release.html?id=1668354#.U-0sMmN7RpQ |access-date=7 May 2014 |type=Press release}}

At the 2014 Interop and Tech Field Day, software-defined networking was demonstrated by Avaya using Shortest path bridging and OpenStack as an automated campus, extending automation from the data center to the end device, and removing manual provisioning from service delivery.{{Cite web |date=26 March 2014 |title=Interop 2014: Avaya to showcase Automated Campus part of SDN initiative |publisher=Info Tech Lead}}{{Cite web |date=Feb 2014 |title=Avaya Software Defined Data Center |url=http://techfieldday.com/video/avaya-software-defined-data-center/ |access-date=25 June 2014 |publisher=Tech Field Day}}

{{As of|2021|11}}, NASA hosts the Explore OpenStack private cloud in support of the Discover HPC.

{{As of|2022|09}}, China Mobile uses OpenStack as the foundation of its 5G network. Red Hat claims that its platform is deployed on over 30 percent of production LTE networks.{{Cite web |last=Robinson |first=Dan |date=30 September 2022 |title=Red Hat targets networks with OpenStack Platform 17 release |url=https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/30/red_hat_openstack_platform_17/ |access-date=9 October 2022 |website=The Register |language=en}}

The OpenStack cloud at CERN requires over 300,000 cores to meet the needs of the Large Hadron Collider.

Several OpenStack projects changed names due to trademark issues.

• Neutron was formerly known as Quantum.{{Cite web |last=McClain |first=Mark |date=19 June 2013 |title=Quantum's new name is.... |url=http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2013-June/010628.html |access-date=16 July 2013 |website=openstack-dev mailing list |publisher=OpenStack.org}}
• Sahara used to be called Savanna.{{Cite web |last=Lukjanov |first=Sergey |date=7 March 2014 |title=Sahara (ex. Savanna) project renaming process |url=http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-March/029414.html |access-date=8 May 2016 |website=openstack-dev mailing list |publisher=OpenStack.org}}
• Designate was previously known as Moniker.{{Cite web |last=Innes |first=Kiall |date=9 March 2013 |title=Moniker renamed to Designate, and applies for Incubation. |url=http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2013-June/010140.html |access-date=8 May 2016 |website=openstack-dev mailing list |publisher=OpenStack.org}}
• Trove was formerly known as RedDwarf.{{Cite web |last=Blair |first=James |date=12 June 2013 |title=Gerrit Downtime Friday June 14 at 20:00 UTC |url=http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2013-June/010306.html |access-date=8 May 2016 |website=openstack-dev mailing list |publisher=OpenStack.org}}
• Zaqar was formerly known as Marconi.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Zaqar's developer documentation! |url=http://docs.openstack.org/developer/zaqar/ |access-date=24 September 2014 |publisher=docs.openstack.org}}{{Cite web |title=Zaqar |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Zaqar |access-date=24 September 2014 |publisher=wiki.openstack.org}}

The OpenStack community collaborates around a six-month, time-based release cycle with frequent development milestones.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Release Cycle |url=http://wiki.openstack.org/ReleaseCycle |access-date=7 January 2013 |publisher=OpenStack Foundation}}

During the planning phase of each release, the community would gather for an OpenStack Design Summit to facilitate developer working sessions and to assemble plans.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Design Summit |url=http://wiki.openstack.org/Summit |access-date=7 January 2013 |publisher=OpenStack Foundation}} These Design Summits would coincide with the OpenStack Summit conference.

Starting with the Pike development cycle the design meetup activity has been separated out into a separate Project Teams Gathering (PTG) event.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack PTG - Developers, Operators, and End Users |url=https://www.openstack.org/ptg |access-date=11 May 2018 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} This was done to avoid the developer distractions caused by presentations and customer meetings that were happening at the OpenStack Summit and to allow the design discussions to happen ahead of the start of the next cycle.

Recent OpenStack Summits have taken place in Shanghai on 4–6 November 2019,{{Cite web |title=Shanghai 2019: OpenStack Summit |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/shanghai-2019/ |access-date=4 November 2019 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Denver on 29 April-1 May 2019,{{Cite web |title=Denver 2019: OpenStack Summit |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/denver-2019/ |access-date=29 April 2019 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Berlin on 13–19 November 2018,{{Cite web |title=Berlin 2018: OpenStack Summit |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/berlin-2018/ |access-date=13 November 2018 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Vancouver on 21–25 May 2018,{{Cite web |title=Vancouver 2018: OpenStack Summit |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/vancouver-2018/ |access-date=11 May 2018 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Sydney on 6–8 November 2017,{{Cite web |title=Join us November 6-8, 2017 for the OpenStack Summit Sydney! |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/sydney-2017/ |access-date=24 September 2018 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Boston on 8–11 May 2017,{{Cite web |title=Boston 2017 - OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/boston-2017/ |access-date=12 September 2017 |website=OpenStack |language=en-US}} Austin on 25–29 April 2016,{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Austin Summit 2016 |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/austin-2016/}} and Barcelona on 25–28 October 2016.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Barcelona Summit 2016 |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/barcelona-2016/}} Earlier OpenStack Summits have taken place also in Tokyo in October 2015,{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Tokyo Summit 2015 |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/tokyo-2015/}} Vancouver in May 2015,{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Vancouver Summit 2015 |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/vancouver-2015/}} and Paris in November 2014.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Paris Summit 2014 |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/openstack-paris-summit-2014/}} The summit in May 2014 in Atlanta drew 4,500 attendees – a 50% increase from the Hong Kong summit six months earlier.{{Cite web |title=The OpenStack Blog | Open Source Cloud Computing Software |url=https://www.openstack.org/blog/2014/05/taking-stock-of-openstacks-rapid-growth/ |website=openstack.org}}{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Summit Hong Kong 2013 - OpenStack is open source software for creating private and public clouds. |url=https://www.openstack.org/summit/openstack-summit-hong-kong-2013/ |website=openstack.org}}

{{how-to|date=February 2022}}

File:Openstack-map-v20221001.jpg

OpenStack has a modular architecture with various code names for its components.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Roadmap " OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software |url=http://www.openstack.org/software/roadmap/ |access-date=17 April 2014 |publisher=Openstack.org}}

Nova is the OpenStack project that provides a way to provision compute instances as virtual machines, real hardware servers (through the use of ironic), and has limited support for system containers. Nova runs as a set of daemons on top of existing Linux servers to provide that service.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Compute (nova) |url=https://docs.openstack.org/nova/latest/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack}}

{{Cite web |title=HypervisorSupportMatrix |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/HypervisorSupportMatrix |access-date=29 November 2013}}

Nova is written in Python. It uses many external Python libraries such as Eventlet (concurrent networking library), Kombu (AMQP messaging framework), and SQLAlchemy (SQL toolkit and Object Relational Mapper).{{Cite web |title=OpenStack – more than just software |url=http://tech.yandex.ru/events/yac/2013/talks/1083/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106200022/http://tech.yandex.ru/events/yac/2013/talks/1083/ |archive-date=6 November 2013 |access-date=29 November 2013}} Nova is designed to be horizontally scalable. Rather than switching to larger servers, you procure more servers and simply install identically configured services.{{Cite web |title=Capacity planning and scaling |url=https://docs.openstack.org/operations-guide/ops-capacity-planning-scaling.html |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack.org}}

Due to its widespread integration into enterprise-level infrastructures, monitoring OpenStack performance in general, and Nova performance in particular, scaling became an increasingly important issue. Monitoring end-to-end performance requires tracking metrics from Nova, Keystone, Neutron, Cinder, Swift and other services, in addition to monitoring RabbitMQ which is used by OpenStack services for message passing.{{Cite web |title=Monitoring OpenStack Nova |date=14 December 2015 |url=https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/openstack-monitoring-nova/#toc-key-nova-metrics-and-events3 |access-date=17 October 2016}}{{Cite web |title=Monitoring OpenStack Nova: Monitoring RabbitMQ |date=14 December 2015 |url=https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/openstack-monitoring-nova/#toc-rabbitmq-metrics7 |access-date=17 October 2016}} All these services generate their own log files, which, especially in enterprise-level infrastructures, also should be monitored.{{Cite news |date=5 July 2017 |title=OpenStack monitoring beyond the Elastic (ELK) Stack - Part 3: Monitoring with Dynatrace |language=en-US |work=Dynatrace blog |url=https://www.dynatrace.com/news/blog/openstack-monitoring-beyond-the-elastic-stack-part-3-monitoring-openstack-with-dynatrace/ |access-date=19 March 2023}}

Neutron is an OpenStack project to provide "network connectivity as a service" between interface devices (e.g., vNICs) managed by other OpenStack services (e.g., nova). It implements the OpenStack Networking API.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Neutron's documentation! |url=https://docs.openstack.org/neutron/latest/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack.org}}

It manages all networking facets for the Virtual Networking Infrastructure (VNI) and the access layer aspects of the Physical Networking Infrastructure (PNI) in the OpenStack environment. OpenStack Networking enables projects to create advanced virtual network topologies which may include services such as a firewall, and a virtual private network (VPN).

Neutron allows dedicated static IP addresses or DHCP. It also allows Floating IP addresses to let traffic be dynamically rerouted.

Users can use software-defined networking (SDN) technologies like OpenFlow to support multi-tenancy and scale. OpenStack networking can deploy and manage additional network services—such as intrusion detection systems (IDS), load balancing, firewalls, and virtual private networks (VPN).{{Cite web |title=Everything you need to know to get started with Neutron |url=https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-to-get-started-with-neutron-f90e2797-26b7-4d1c-84d8-effef03f11d2/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=superuser.openstack.org |date=27 May 2016 |publisher=openstack.org}}

Cinder is the OpenStack Block Storage service for providing volumes to Nova virtual machines, Ironic bare metal hosts, containers and more. Some of the goals of Cinder are to be/have:

• Component based architecture: Quickly add new behaviors
• Highly available: Scale to very serious workloads
• Fault-Tolerant: Isolated processes avoid cascading failures
• Recoverable: Failures should be easy to diagnose, debug, and rectify
• Open Standards: Be a reference implementation for a community-driven api{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder) documentation |url=https://docs.openstack.org/cinder/latest/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack.org}}

Cinder volumes provide persistent storage to guest virtual machines - known as instances, that are managed by OpenStack Compute software. Cinder can also be used independent of other OpenStack services as stand-alone software-defined storage. The block storage system manages the creation, replication, snapshot management, attaching and detaching of the block devices to servers.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder) |url=https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Cinder-OpenStack-Block-Storage |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=techtarget.com }}

Keystone is an OpenStack service that provides API client authentication, service discovery, and distributed multi-tenant authorization by implementing OpenStack's Identity API.{{Cite web |title=Keystone, the OpenStack Identity Service |url=https://docs.openstack.org/keystone/latest/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack.org}} It is the common authentication system across the cloud operating system. Keystone can integrate with directory services like LDAP. It supports standard username and password credentials, token-based systems and AWS-style (i.e. Amazon Web Services) logins. The OpenStack keystone service catalog allows API clients to dynamically discover and navigate to cloud services.{{Cite web |title=Service Catalog Overview |url=https://docs.openstack.org/keystone/latest/contributor/service-catalog.html |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=Flux7.com }}

{{Cite web |title=What is Keystone - Installing Keystone in Openstack |url=https://blog.flux7.com/blogs/openstack/tutorial-what-is-keystone-and-how-to-install-keystone-in-openstack |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=docs.openstack.org |publisher=Flux7 |archive-date=7 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200207011542/https://blog.flux7.com/blogs/openstack/tutorial-what-is-keystone-and-how-to-install-keystone-in-openstack |url-status=dead }}

The Image service (glance) project provides a service where users can upload and discover data assets that are meant to be used with other services. This currently includes images and metadata definitions.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Glance's documentation! |url=https://docs.openstack.org/glance/latest/ |access-date=7 February 2020 |publisher=OpenStack.org}}

Glance image services include discovering, registering, and retrieving virtual machine (VM) images. Glance has a RESTful API that allows querying of VM image metadata as well as retrieval of the actual image. VM images made available through Glance can be stored in a variety of locations from simple filesystems to object-storage systems like the OpenStack Swift project.

Glance hosts a metadefs catalog. This provides the OpenStack community with a way to programmatically determine various metadata key names and valid values that can be applied to OpenStack resources.

Swift is a distributed, eventually consistent object/blob store. The OpenStack Object Store project, known as Swift, offers cloud storage software so that you can store and retrieve lots of data with a simple API. 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.{{Cite web |title=Swift |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Swift |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=wiki.openstack.org |publisher=openstack.org}}

In August 2009, Rackspace started the development of the precursor to OpenStack Object Storage, as a complete replacement for the Cloud Files product. The initial development team consisted of nine developers.{{YouTube|id=Dd7wmJCDh4w|title=Cloud Files (Swift) Origin}} SwiftStack, an object storage software company, is currently the leading developer for Swift with significant contributions from Intel, Red Hat, NTT, HP, IBM, and more.{{Cite web |title=Contributions by commits to OpenStack Swift |url=http://stackalytics.io/?release=all&module=swift-group&metric=commits |website=Stackalytics}}

Horizon is the canonical implementation of OpenStack's Dashboard, which provides a web based user interface to OpenStack services including Nova, Swift, Keystone, etc.{{Cite web |title=Horizon: The OpenStack Dashboard Project |url=https://docs.openstack.org/horizon/latest/contributor/intro.html#contributor-intro |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=docs.openstack.org |publisher=OpenStack.org}}

Horizon ships with three central dashboards, a "User Dashboard", a "System Dashboard", and a "Settings" dashboard. Between these three they cover the core OpenStack applications and deliver on Core Support.

The Horizon application also ships with a set of API abstractions for the core OpenStack projects in order to provide a consistent, stable set of reusable methods for developers. Using these abstractions, developers working on Horizon don't need to be intimately familiar with the APIs of each OpenStack project.{{Cite web |title=Horizon Basics |url=https://docs.openstack.org/horizon/latest/contributor/intro.html#contributor-intro |access-date=7 February 2020 |website=docs.openstack.org |publisher=openstack.org}}

Heat is a service to orchestrate multiple composite cloud applications using templates, through both an OpenStack-native REST API and a CloudFormation-compatible Query API.{{Cite web |title=Heat – OpenStack |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Heat |access-date=6 May 2014 |publisher=Wiki.openstack.org}}

Mistral is a service that manages workflows. User typically writes a workflow using workflow language based on YAML and uploads the workflow definition to Mistral via its REST API. Then user can start this workflow manually via the same API or configure a trigger to start the workflow on some event.{{Cite web |title=Mistral – OpenStack |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Mistral |access-date=28 June 2016 |publisher=Wiki.openstack.org}}

OpenStack Telemetry (Ceilometer) provides a Single Point Of Contact for billing systems, providing all the counters they need to establish customer billing, across all current and future OpenStack components. The delivery of counters is traceable and auditable, the counters must be easily extensible to support new projects, and agents doing data collection should be independent of the overall system.

Trove is a database-as-a-service provisioning relational and a non-relational database engine.{{Cite web |title=Trove – OpenStack |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Trove |access-date=6 May 2014 |publisher=Wiki.openstack.org}}

Sahara is a component to easily and rapidly provision Hadoop clusters. Users will specify several parameters like the Hadoop version number, the cluster topology type, node flavor details (defining disk space, CPU and RAM settings), and others. After a user provides all of the parameters, Sahara deploys the cluster in a few minutes. Sahara also provides means to scale a preexisting Hadoop cluster by adding and removing worker nodes on demand.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Sahara's developer documentation! |url=http://docs.openstack.org/developer/sahara/ |access-date=24 September 2014 |publisher=docs.openstack.org}}{{Cite web |title=Sahara |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Sahara |access-date=24 September 2014 |publisher=wiki.openstack.org}}

Ironic is an OpenStack project that provisions bare metal machines instead of virtual machines. It was initially forked from the Nova Baremetal driver and has evolved into a separate project. It is best thought of as a bare-metal hypervisor API and a set of plugins that interact with the bare-metal machines managed by Ironic. By default, it will use PXE and IPMI or Redfish{{Cite web |title=Redfish driver – ironic 18.0.1.dev13 documentation |url=https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/admin/drivers/redfish.html |access-date=15 June 2021 |website=docs.openstack.org}} in concert to provision and manage physical machines, but Ironic supports and can be extended with vendor-specific plugins to implement additional functionality.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Ironic's documentation! |url=https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/ |access-date=14 June 2021 |publisher=docs.openstack.org}}{{Cite web |title=Ironic |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Ironic |access-date=24 September 2014 |publisher=wiki.openstack.org}}

Since the inception of Ironic, it has spawned several sub-projects{{Cite web |title=Ironic (Bare Metal service) – OpenStack Technical Committee Governance Documents |url=https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/projects/ironic.html |access-date=17 June 2021 |website=governance.openstack.org}} to help support additional use cases and capabilities. Some of the more commonly leveraged of these projects include Ironic-Inspector, Bifrost, Sushy, and networking-generic-switch. Ironic-inspector supplies hardware information collection and hardware discovery.{{Cite web |title=Hardware introspection for OpenStack Bare Metal – ironic-inspector 10.7.0.dev9 documentation |url=https://docs.openstack.org/ironic-inspector/latest/ |access-date=17 June 2021 |website=docs.openstack.org}} Bifrost focuses on the use case of operating without other OpenStack components,{{Cite web |title=Welcome to bifrost's documentation! – bifrost 11.0.1.dev4 documentation |url=https://docs.openstack.org/bifrost/latest/ |access-date=17 June 2021 |website=docs.openstack.org}} and is highlighted on the website ironicbaremetal.org. Sushy is a lightweight Redfish API client library.{{Cite web |title=Welcome to Sushy's documentation! – sushy 3.9.1.dev2 documentation |url=https://docs.openstack.org/sushy/latest/ |access-date=17 June 2021 |website=docs.openstack.org}} Networking-generic-switch is a plugin which supports managing switchport configuration for bare metal machines.{{Cite web |title=networking-generic-switch |url=https://opendev.org/openstack/networking-generic-switch |access-date=17 June 2021 |website=OpenDev: Free Software Needs Free Tools |language=en-US}}

Zaqar is a multi-tenant cloud messaging service for Web developers. The service features a fully RESTful API, which developers can use to send messages between various components of their SaaS and mobile applications by using a variety of communication patterns. Underlying this API is an efficient messaging engine designed with scalability and security in mind. Other OpenStack components can integrate with Zaqar to surface events to end users and to communicate with guest agents that run in the "over-cloud" layer.

OpenStack Shared File System (Manila) provides an open API to manage shares in a vendor agnostic framework. Standard primitives include the ability to create, delete, and give/deny access to a share and can be used standalone or in a variety of different network environments. Commercial storage appliances from EMC, NetApp, HP, IBM, Oracle, Quobyte, INFINIDAT and Hitachi Data Systems are supported as well as filesystem technologies such as Red Hat GlusterFS{{Cite web |title=Manila |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Manila |access-date=1 June 2015 |publisher=OpenStack Wiki}} or Ceph.

Designate is a multi-tenant REST API for managing DNS. This component provides DNS as a Service and is compatible with many backend technologies, including PowerDNS and BIND. It doesn't provide a DNS service as such as its purpose is to interface with existing DNS servers to manage DNS zones on a per tenant basis.{{Cite web |title=Designate |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Designate |access-date=1 June 2015 |publisher=OpenStack Wiki}}

The project is no longer actively maintained.

Searchlight provides advanced and consistent search capabilities across various OpenStack cloud services. It accomplishes this by offloading user search queries from other OpenStack API servers by indexing their data into Elasticsearch.{{Cite web |title=Searchlight – OpenStack |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Searchlight |access-date=20 February 2016 |website=wiki.openstack.org}} Searchlight is being integrated into Horizon{{Cite web |title=Searchlight Search Panel : Blueprints : OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon) |url=https://blueprints.launchpad.net/horizon/+spec/searchlight-search-panel |access-date=20 February 2016 |website=blueprints.launchpad.net|date=23 September 2015 }} and also provides a Command-line interface.{{Cite web |title=openstack/python-searchlightclient |url=https://github.com/openstack/python-searchlightclient |access-date=20 February 2016 |website=GitHub}}

Barbican is a REST API designed for the secure storage, provisioning and management of secrets. It is aimed at being useful for all environments, including large ephemeral Clouds.{{Cite web |title=Barbican |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Barbican |access-date=1 June 2015 |publisher=OpenStack Wiki}}

Magnum is an OpenStack API service developed by the OpenStack Containers Team making container orchestration engines such as Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and Apache Mesos available as first class resources in OpenStack. Magnum uses Heat to orchestrate an OS image which contains Docker and Kubernetes and runs that image in either virtual machines or bare metal in a cluster configuration.{{Cite web |title=Magnum |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Magnum |access-date=3 October 2017 |publisher=OpenStack Wiki}}

Vitrage is the OpenStack RCA (Root Cause Analysis) service for organizing, analyzing and expanding OpenStack alarms & events, yielding insights regarding the root cause of problems and deducing their existence before they are directly detected.{{Cite web |title=Vitrage - OpenStack |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Vitrage |website=wiki.openstack.org}}

This alarming service enables the ability to trigger actions based on defined rules against metric or event data collected by Ceilometer or Gnocchi.{{Cite web |title=Aodh |url=https://docs.openstack.org/aodh/latest/ |access-date=3 October 2017 |publisher=OpenStack Documentation}}

OpenStack does not strive for compatibility with other clouds' APIs.{{Cite web |title=OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software " Message: [openstack-dev] EC2 API - users wanted |url=http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2015-July/068417.html}} However, there is some amount of compatibility driven by various members of the OpenStack community for whom such things are important.

• The EC2 API project aims to provide compatibility with Amazon EC2{{GitHub|openstack/ec2-api}}
• The GCE API project aims to provide compatibility with Google Compute Engine{{GitHub|openstack/gce-api}}

OpenStack is governed by the OpenInfra foundation and its board of directors. The board of directors is made up of Platinum sponsors, members of the Gold sponsors and members elected by the Foundation individual members.{{Cite web |title=Foundation |url=http://www.openstack.org/foundation/ |access-date=15 January 2013 |publisher=OpenStack Foundation}} The OpenStack Technical Committee is the governing body of the OpenStack open source project. It is an elected group that represents the contributors to the project, and has oversight on all technical matters. This includes developers, operators and end users of the software.

An OpenStack Appliance{{Cite web |title=Openstack Organisation |url=https://www.openstack.org/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Openstack.org |publisher=Openstack Foundation}} is the name given to software that can support the OpenStack cloud computing platform on either physical devices such as servers or virtual machines or a combination of the two. Typically a software appliance{{Cite web |title=Definition of a Software Appliance |url=https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/58661/software-appliance |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=PC Magazine |publisher=Ziff Davis}} is a set of software capabilities that can

function without an operating system. Thus, they must contain enough of the essential underlying operating system components to work. Therefore, a strict definition might be: an application that is designed to offer OpenStack capability without the necessity of an underlying operating system. However, applying this strict definition may not be helpful, as there is not really a clear distinction between an appliance and a distribution.{{Cite web |last=Datta |first=Alana |date=1 September 2009 |title=A (SUSE) Studio to Edit and Roll Out Your Appliance |url=http://opensourceforu.efytimes.com/2009/09/a-suse-studio-to-edit-and-roll-out-your-appliance/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=OpenSourceForYou |publisher=EFYIIndia}} It could be argued that the term appliance is something of a misnomer because OpenStack itself is referred to as a cloud operating system{{Cite web |title=OpenStack: The Open Source Cloud Operating System |url=http://www.openstack.org/software/ |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=openstack.org |publisher=OpenStack Foundation}} so using the term OpenStack appliance could be a misnomer if one is being pedantic.

If we look at the range of Appliances and Distributions one could make the distinction that distributions are those toolsets which attempt to provide a wide coverage of the OpenStack project scope, whereas an Appliance will have a more narrow focus, concentrating on fewer projects. Vendors have been heavily involved in OpenStack since its inception, and have since developed and are marketing a wide range of appliances, applications and distributions.

A large number of vendors offer OpenStack solutions, meaning that an organization wishing to deploy the technology has a complex task in

selecting the vendor offer that best matches its business requirements.{{Cite web |last=Allen |first=Scott |date=19 May 2015 |title=5 Questions You Should Ask a Potential OpenStack Vendor |url=https://communities.intel.com/community/itpeernetwork/verified-expert/blog/2015/05/19/5-questions-you-should-ask-a-potential-openstack-vendor |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Intel Communities |publisher=Intel}} Barb Darrow offered this overview in Fortune on 27 May 2015,{{Cite web |last=Darrow |first=Barb |date=7 May 2015 |title=Is there such a thing as too many clouds? |url=http://fortune.com/2015/05/07/too-much-open-stack/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Fortune}} pointing out that there may be some consolidation in the market that will clarify those decisions.

There are other aspects that users need to consider, for example, the real costs involved.{{Cite web |last=Finnegan |first=Matthew |date=1 May 2015 |title=OpenStack 'more costly' than VMware and Microsoft for private clouds |url=http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/infrastructure/openstack-more-costly-than-vmware-microsoft-for-private-clouds-3610362/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Computerworlduk.com}} Some vendors will make an offer which encompasses most of the OpenStack projects; others will only offer certain components. Other considerations include the extent of proprietary code used to manage a lack of maturity in an OpenStack component, and to what extent that encourages vendor lock-in.{{Cite web |last=Clark |first=Jack |date=13 May 2014 |title=HP: OpenStack's networking nightmare Neutron 'was everyone's fault |url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/13/openstack_neutron_explainer/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=The Register}}{{Cite web |last=Donnelly |first=Caroline |date=3 March 2015 |title=HP updates Helion OpenStack in latest hybrid cloud push |url=http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240241589/HP-updates-Helion-OpenStack-in-latest-hybrid-cloud-push |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Computer Weekly |publisher=TechTarget}}

The most authoritative information on vendor products is at the Open Infrastructure Foundation website.{{Cite web |title=Distro's and appliances |url=https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/distros/ |website=Openstack.org |publisher=Open Infrastructure Foundation}}

OpenStack is a complex entity, and adopters face a range of challenges when trying to implement OpenStack in an organisation. For many organisations trying to implement their own projects, a key issue is the lack of skills available.{{Cite web |last=Tsidulko |first=Joseph |date=6 August 2015 |title=OpenStack Community Challenged By Dearth Of Talent, Complexity |url=http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300073620/openstack-community-challenged-by-dearth-of-talent-complexity.htm/pgno/0/1 |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=CRN |publisher=The Channel Company}} In an article on The New Stack, Atul Jha identifies five challenges any organization wishing to deploy OpenStack will face.{{Cite web |last=Jha |first=Atul |date=December 2011 |title=OpenStack Has Its Issues but it's Worth a Fortune |url=http://thenewstack.io/openstack-has-its-issues-but-its-worth-a-fortune/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Thenewstack.io |publisher=The New Stack}}

OpenStack is a suite of projects rather than a single product, and because each of the various applications needs to be configured to

suit the user's requirements, installation is complex and requires a range of complementary skill-sets{{Cite web |last=Laube |first=David |date=12 January 2015 |title=Why We Threw 4 Months of Work in the Trash; or How we Failed at OpenStack |url=https://www.packet.net/blog/how-we-failed-at-openstack/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Packet.net |publisher=Packet}} for an optimum set-up. One obvious solution would be to take a complete vendor supplied package containing hardware and software, although due diligence is essential.{{Cite web |last=SVERDLIK |first=Yevgeniy |date=1 April 2015 |title=Private OpenStack Startup Nebula Goes Out of Business |url=http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/04/01/private-openstack-startup-nebula-goes-out-of-business/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Data Center Knowledge |publisher=Penton}}

This is more a function of the nature of documentation with open source products than OpenStack per se, but with more than 25 projects, managing document quality is always going to be challenging.{{Cite web |last=Lester |first=Andy |date=10 January 2013 |title=13 Things People Hate about Your Open Source Docs |url=http://blog.smartbear.com/careers/13-things-people-hate-about-your-open-source-docs/ |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=Smart Bear |publisher=SmartBear Software}}

One of the main objectives of using cloud type infrastructure is to offer users not only high reliability but also high availability,{{Cite web |title=Increased Availability and Reliability |url=http://whatiscloud.com/goals_and_benefits/increased_availability_and_reliability |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=WhatIsCloud.com |publisher=Arcitura Education Inc}} something that public cloud suppliers will offer in service-level agreements.{{Cite web |last=Baset |first=Salman |title=Cloud SLAs: Present and Future |url=https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~salman/presentations/slas-baset-pres-open.pdf |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=cs.columbia.edu}}

Due to OpenStack's multi-project development approach, the complexity involved in synchronising the different projects during an upgrade may mean that downtime is unavoidable.{{Cite web |last=Darrow |first=Barb |date=20 December 2013 |title="Backbreaking" OpenStack migrations hinder enterprise upgrades |url=https://gigaom.com/2013/12/20/backbreaking-openstack-migrations-hinder-enterprise-upgrades/ |access-date=21 September 2015 |website=gigaom.com |publisher=Knowingly Inc}}

It's quite common for a business to keep using an earlier release of software for some time after it has been upgraded. However, there is little incentive for developers in an open source project to provide support for superseded code. In addition, OpenStack itself has formally discontinued support for some old releases.{{Cite web |title=Releases |url=https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Releases |access-date=17 September 2015 |website=wikiOpenStack.otg |publisher=Openstack Foundation}}

Given the above challenges the most appropriate route for an organization wishing to implement OpenStack would be to go with a vendor, and source an OpenStack appliance or distribution.

As the OpenStack project has matured, vendors have pioneered multiple ways for customers to deploy OpenStack:

; OpenStack-based Public Cloud : A vendor provides a public cloud computing system based on the OpenStack project.

; On-premises distribution : In this model, a customer downloads and installs an OpenStack distribution in their internal network. See Distributions.

; Hosted OpenStack Private Cloud : A vendor hosts an OpenStack-based private cloud: including the underlying hardware and the OpenStack software.

; OpenStack-as-a-Service : A vendor hosts OpenStack management software (without any hardware) as a service. Customers sign up for the service and pair it with their internal servers, storage and networks to get a fully operational private cloud.

; Appliance based OpenStack : Nebula was a vendor that sold appliances that could be plugged into a network which spawned an OpenStack deployment. {{Citation needed|date=November 2015}}

• Bright Computing{{Cite web |last=Bruekner |first=Rich |date=13 May 2014 |title=Bright Computing Simplifies OpenStack Deployment |url=http://insidehpc.com/2014/05/bright-computing-simplifies-openstack-deployment/ |access-date=10 March 2016 |website=insideHPC}}
• Canonical (Ubuntu)
• Debian{{Cite web |date=20 September 2019 |title=Commercial Distributions and Hardware Appliances of OpenStack Private Cloud |url=https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/distros/distribution/debian/debian |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20190920053003/https://www.openstack.org/marketplace/distros/distribution/debian/debian |archive-date=20 September 2019 |access-date=20 September 2019 |website=OpenStack.org |publisher=OpenStack |language=en}}
• HPE (which was spin-merged to Micro Focus/Suse)
• IBM
• Mirantis
• Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux, or O3L{{Cite web |last=Chase |first=Nick |date=29 September 2014 |title=Oracle announces Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux— and cooperation deal with Canonical seen as poking Red Hat |url=https://www.mirantis.com/openstack-portal/external-news/oracle-announces-oracle-openstack-oracle-linux-cooperation-deal-canonical-seen-poking-red-hat/ |access-date=26 February 2016 |publisher=Mirantis, Inc. |quote=Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux, or O3L, is now available, enabling customers to control both Oracle Linux and Oracle VM using OpenStack. It also, however, comes with the announcement of a 'mutual cooperation and support' agreement with Canonical, seen as a direct shot at Red Hat.}}
• Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Solaris
• Red Hat
• Stratoscale
• VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO){{Cite web |title=VMware Integrated OpenStack |url=https://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-infrastructure/openstack |access-date=29 June 2016 |publisher=VMware, Inc.}}

{{Portal|Free and open-source software}}

• Cloud Foundry
• Cloud-computing comparison
• OpenShift
• Private cloud computing infrastructure

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category}}

• {{Official website|https://www.openstack.org/}}

{{Cloud computing}}

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