In our previous article, we briefly described the cloud architecture that will be showcased in this series. This article will introduce the IaaS layer being used: OpenStack. The current article begins with an overview, and subsequent articles will provide detailed descriptions of individual OpenStack components.
Table of Contents
Reference
This article series will extensively reference OpenStack's official documentation and use diagrams as sources.
To learn more about OpenStack, visit:Official DocumentationDirect Link
What is OpenStack?
To discuss what OpenStack is, we can examine it from three perspectives:
- software
- community
- group
Community
At its core, OpenStack is a software suite capable of delivering private and public cloud services, including various application scenarios such as general enterprises, telecom providers, and high-performance computing.
From a platform perspective, OpenStack is composed of multiple microservices, allowing users to assemble these services according to their specific use cases to meet their unique requirements. These services are primarily exposed via REST APIs, and additional software development kits (SDKs) are available in different programming languages to facilitate service integration.
The platform can be installed using official tarball packages, and most major Linux distributions also include OpenStack in their package management systems.
OpenStack Platform Diagram:
Social
Beyond the platform itself, OpenStack is in fact a large community, and the primary goal of this community is:
To create a seamless open-source cloud computing platform that is easy to use, easy to implement, interoperable across different vendors, applicable to any scale, and meets the needs of both public and private cloud users and operators.
OpenStack provides a living ecosystem for collaboration. Its foundational principles include:
- code review
- testing
- ci
- version control
- documentation
- A suite of collaborative tools, such as wiki, IRC channel, Etherpad, and Ethercalc.
The Four Opens
The core principles of the OpenStack community are fourfold.
- open source
- open design
- open development
- open community
Group
Additionally, many individuals have formed various subgroups within the community, each focusing on a specific area of interest and contributing to discussions and development. We refer to these groups as SIGs (Special Interest Groups).
Summary
This article introduces OpenStack from a non-technical perspective. The following articles will dive into technical aspects, covering what components OpenStack has, the functions these components provide, and how they work together.
Reference
Copyright Notice: All articles in this blog are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 unless otherwise stated.