OpenStack is a widely popular cloud-computing platform. Each of the OpenStack components that will be covered in subsequent chapters will be discussed in this preface. This will give you a high-level overview of these components and how they work together.
This book offers step-by-step practical instructions to help you quickly navigate through the complexities of OpenStack. While the examples in this book are situational, it can also be used as a reference for Linux-related topics and commands. This book provides you with the ability to reference both troubleshooting steps and specific commands for resolving complex issues.
Chapter 1, RDO Installation, presents a standard installation and an advanced installation of the RDO distribution of OpenStack. A demonstration architecture will be defined, and step-by-step instructions will be given.
Chapter 2, Identity Management, talks about Keystone, which is the identity-management component of OpenStack. You will be introduced to basic username-password authentication and the structure of how Keystone manages users, roles, tenants, and services.
Chapter 3, Image Management , talks about Glance, which is the image-management component. The process flow of how images are built, added to the registry, and consumed in the cluster will be presented.
Chapter 4, Network Management, talks about Neutron, which is the network-management component. Neutron can create and allocate virtual networks, routers, and IP addresses to OpenStack tenants. There is system preparation that is necessary for the cluster to allow external connectivity for instances.
Chapter 5, Instance Management, talks about Nova, which is the instance-management component. It is in charge of keeping track of which resources are used on which hypervisors, scheduling new instances for launch, and gathering all the resources necessary for an instance launch.
Chapter 6, Block Storage, talks about Cinder, which is the block storage-management component. It creates volumes and presents them to the instances. This can be done with multiple storage engines.
Chapter 7, Object Storage, talks about Swift, which is the object storage-management component. It creates object containers and manages file objects in the containers. Swift can optionally be backed with storage engines other than the default Swift object storage engine.
Chapter 8, Telemetry, talks about Ceilometer, which is the telemetry and metering component. It monitors the cluster and collects statistics of the resources that are in use.
Chapter 9, Orchestration, talks about Heat, which is the orchestration component. It is able to launch multiple instances and coordinate exchanging information about the instances within a heat stack.
Chapter 10, Docker, talks about containerization, which has become a prominent part of cloud computing. I'll go through the steps it takes to convert a compute node to a compute node that can support Docker containers.
Chapter 11, Scaling Horizontally, tells you how add a compute node and configure HAProxy by simply installing a new node, telling it where the control services are, and starting compute services.
Chapter 12, Monitoring, shows you how to use Nagios to perform basic monitoring.
Chapter 13, Troubleshooting, discusses some of the common issues that will surface while running an OpenStack cluster and where to go to find out where the error messages have been recorded.