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An Introduction to Openstack Cloud Computing
The open alternative to cloud lock-in
OpenStack is an open source cloud computing solution, reducing the risks of lock-in associated with proprietary platforms. It’s a collaborative operating system for building scalable public and private clouds that is suitable for every size of business
Rackspace and NASA were the orginators of the open source initiative that became OpenStack. The OpenStack community has grown today into a global collective of innovators, developers, software and hardware vendors and service providers with approximately 850 organisations involved, with more than 6,000 contributing developers.
Powered by OpenStack
Right now, the OpenStack operating system is being used to solve real problems for many types and sizes of organisations. These organisations are looking for long-term technical financial and strategic flexibility by avoiding lock-in with a single cloud vendor. Click each of the logos below to read a case study on the company’s OpenStack use.
What Rackspace is doing with OpenStack
Rackspace helped to build OpenStack so we know how to use and support it. OpenStack now powers the Rackspace Cloud, making our products more flexible, more versatile and removing lock-in. Learn more about what the Open Cloud means to both Rackspace and its customers from the video opposite.
Open and scalable
The Rackspace Cloud, powered by OpenStack, is a powerful and versatile public cloud platform. Our range of cloud solutions includes compute, storage, databases, networks and more. The increased speed of innovation associated with open source technologies means advances are planned in the near future with new releases.
Private cloud available anywhere
Rackspace Cloud: Private Edition combines the scalability and self-service capabilities of the cloud with added security and location flexibility. Depending on your requirements, we can deploy and manage your OpenStack-powered private cloud, fully host it here at Rackspace, colocate it in over 100 of our global partner data centres, or get it hosted in your own data centre.
Training to help you manage your own cloud
OpenStack training gives you an in-depth look at the OpenStack environment, so you can decide whether it’s best for your needs as a new user, or look to improve the performance of an existing installation. The training course should provide the knowledge and skill to install, run and operate your very own OpenStack clouds.
Compute and Storage projects currently available on OpenStack
OpenStack Compute
OpenStack Compute allows the provision and management of large networks of virtual machines, creating redundant and scalable cloud computing platforms. OpenStack Compute supports a wide range of hardware configurations and major hypervisors and strives to be both hardware and hypervisor agnostic, with the software, APIs and control panels required to run instances, manage networks, and control access through users and projects. This is the reason that Rackspace Open Cloud is built on the OpenStack Compute (Nova) code.
OpenStack Object Storage
OpenStack Object Storage uses clusters of standardised servers for redundant, scalable object storage. It can scale to store petabytes of data, handling virtual machine images, photo storage, email storage and backup archiving in a cost-effective manner, primarily via data replication and distribution across commodity hard drives.
OpenStack Object Storage was built using Rackspace’s contribution of the Cloud Files Swift code, making Rackspace Cloud Files one of the largest production deployments of OpenStack Object Storage to date. Find out more about Rackspace Cloud Files.
OpenStack Resource Centre
Developers
Learn the inner workings of OpenStack, and read about advanced scenarios.
- Read developer documentation for OpenStack Compute (Nova) or download the latest release
- Read developer documentation for OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) or download the latest release
- Read developer documentation for OpenStack Image Service (Glance) or download the latest release
- Read developer documentation for OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon)
- More developer documentation
Application Developers or Integrators
Learn how to effectively use the OpenStack API.
Cloud Administrators
Learn how to administer OpenStack on your cloud platform.