OpenStack – a private cloud platform

Finally, OpenStack provides the software modules necessary to build an automated private cloud platform. Although OpenStack has traditionally been focused on providing IaaS capabilities in the style of Amazon Web Services, new projects have been introduced lately, which begin to provide capabilities that might be associated more with Platform as a Service. This book will focus on implementing the core set of OpenStack components described as follows.

The most important aspect of OpenStack pertaining to its usage as a private cloud platform is the tenant model. The authentication and authorization services that provide this model are implemented in the identity service, Keystone. Every virtual or physical object governed by the OpenStack system exists within a private space referred to as a tenant or project. The latest version of the Keystone API has differentiated itself further to include a higher level construct named a domain. Regardless of the terminology, the innate ability to securely segregate compute, network, and storage resources is the most fundamental capability of the platform. This is what differentiates it from traditional data center virtualization and makes it a private cloud platform.