OpenStack-an open source cloud project

     Openstack is predominantly an open source cross platform cloud-computing project.It acts as an Infrastructure as a Service platform (IaaS), it is currently licensed under the terms of Apache License. OpenStack is completely managed and maintained by the Open Stack foundation. Open Stack serves like a tool kit that helps in building clouds, both private and public. There are currently about 200 Big- name Companies like NASA, Dell, Cisco, AMD, Oracle, Red hat, Yahoo, IBM, etc. involved with this project.

    The software consists of a collaboration of interrelated projects, where each of them controls various issues such as network resources, storage and processing of data that exist in a data center and perform various operations on them through an internet based dash board, command line tools or Representational State Transfer API.

There are various components of OpenStack that are commonly referred to in code names. The primary components of an OpenStack are:

Nova

    

     NOVA or more formally known as Compute s primary functionality is to automate computing Resources and work with all the available virtualization Technologies even with the likes of High-Performance computing configurations. The architecture of “Compute” is designed in such a way that, it provides Scalability and integrates with third party software and hardware platforms without any issues.

 Swift

    

     Stack's Swift or Object Storage is a scalable redundant storage system. Storage clusters scale horizontally simply by adding new servers. Incase a server or hard drive fail, OpenStack transmits its content from other active nodes to new locations in the cluster. OpenStack uses software logic to ensure data replication and distribution across different devices, this is the reason why the most inexpensive hard drives and a variety of commodity servers can be used.

Cinder

     Open Stack Block Storage (Cinder) provides block-level storage devices for use with instances of OpenStack compute. The block storage system or cinder is responsible for managing the creation, attaching and detaching off block devices to servers

Neutron

    OpenStack Networking code named Neutron is a system for managing networks and IP addresses.

Dashboard

    OpenStack Dashboard code named Horizon provides administrators and users a graphical interface to access, provision and automate cloud-based resources.

Advantages

      
      There are various advantages associated with using OpenStack, they are

•  Since OpenStack is an open source software, it guarantees it a non-commitment to a proprietary vendor, that also means a modular design and ability to integrate with the various third party and legacy technologies.
• OpenStack is an industry standard when coming to cloud technologies, with over 200 companies from about 60 countries participating in the project 
• It's already proven software, running services on open stack means running on one of the world largest private and public cloud.
• OpenStack APIs are compatible with various Amazon services like Ec2 and S3 and thus client applications that have been written for Amazon Web Services can be used with OpenStack, without using much of an effort for porting. 

References

Retrieved March 4, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack.

Retrieved March 4,2014 from https://www.openstack.org/

Dan Sullivan (2014,Jan 9) Retrieved March 4,2014 from http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/openstack-costs-benefits,2-684-2.html.