Overview of OpenStack Components
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nissar.nitOverview of OpenStack Components
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nissar.nitNOVA (OpenStack Compute) :
One of the main component of cloud is virtual machines, that can scale without bounds. This
need of the cloud in openstack is fulfilled by something called as Nova. Nova is the name of the
software component in OpenStack cloud, that offers and manages virtual machines.
CYNDER (OpenStack Block Storage) :
Will work similar to attaching and detaching an external hard drive to your operating system, for
its local use. Block storage is useful for database storage, or raw storage for the server(like
format it, mount it and use it), or else you can combine several for distributed file system needs
(like you can make a large cluster volume, out of several block storage devices attached to a
virtual machine launched by Nova).
In simple terms we can say that cinder does the job of virtualizing pools of block storage(any
traditional storage device) and makes it available to end users via API. Users use those virtual
block storage volume inside their virtual machines, without knowing where the volume is
actually deployed in the architecture, or knowing details about the underlying device of the
storage.
SWIFT (OpenStack Object Storage) :
It is suitable for storing multimedia content like videos, images, virtual machine images,
backups, email storage, archives etc. This type of data needs to grow without any limitation, and
needs to be replicated. This is exactly what OpenStack swift is designed to do.
Unlike block storage, files are not organized in hierarchical name space. But they are organized
in a flat name space. Although it can give you an illusion of a folder with contents inside, all files
inside all folders are in a single name space, due to which scaling becomes much easier
compared to block storage.
NEUTRON / NOVA-NETWORKING (OpenStack Networking) :
Think of openstack networking as something that manages networking for all our virtual
hosts(instances), and provide IP address both private and public. You might be thinking that
networking in virtualization is quite easy by setting up a bridge adapter and routing all traffic
through it, similar to many virtual adapters. But here we are talking about an entire cloud, that
should have public ip's, that can be attached, detached from the instances that we launch
inside, there must be one fixed ip for each instance, and then there must never be a single point
of failure etc.
Networking in the cloud has become so matured that you can create your own private networks,
access control lists, create routes between them, interconnect different networks, connect to
remote network using VPN etc.
OpenStack Components Summary :
Libvert API is a dependency with Nova. Libvirt gives nova-compute, the functionality to send API
requests to KVM, Xen, LXC, OpenVZ, Virtualbox, Vmware, Parallels hypervisors. Other than
libvirt, nova-compute can send requests directly to Xen-Api, vSphere API