OpenStack: course, training, education, overview of schools and offers

OpenStack Swift - also known as OpenStack Object Storage - is an open source object storage system. It is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license and runs on standardized hardware. OpenStack Swift is used in particular for backing up and archiving unstructured data such as documents, images, audio and video files, e-mail and images of virtual machines. Objects and files are written to several hard disks. The software ensures that the data is replicated across a server cluster. Swift places three copies of each object as standard in a location that is as unique as possible. The order is region, zone, server and then hard disk. This is because if a server or hard disk fails, the content from an active node is moved to a new location in the cluster. The OpenStack Swift system can be scaled horizontally and is accessed via a "REST HTTP API".

To install an OpenStack on a virtual machine for a test lab, read instructions and installation tips for the OpenStack installation on OpenStack Ubuntu. Here are the most important steps:

• Setting up a basic environment consisting of a database and host files
• Installation of the Identity Service
• Installation of the Image Service
• Installation of the Compute Service
• Installation of the dashboard to be able to log in to the lb interface

A Proxmox cluster simplifies complex virtualization technology for users. Entire herds of virtual machines can be managed with just a few clicks - without having to worry about installing or partitioning them. So when comparing OpenStack vs Proxmox, beginners could really have an easier time with the second choice. This is because it is a complete distribution based on Debian that aims to enable even virtualization novices to deal with this technology in the simplest possible way. It therefore makes perfect sense to consider this option.

What is the situation with OpenStack vs AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) can also be considered as a public cloud. This is a cloud environment that is typically created from IT infrastructures that were owned by the end user. Today, the location and ownership of the cloud have lost their importance to on-premise services. With public clouds, costs are typically incurred according to usage. Public cloud users have virtually unlimited access to resources, but this leads to higher operating costs.

OpenStack-Ansible provides Ansible playbooks and roles for deploying and configuring an OpenStack environment. Integrating the openstack-ansible repository into another project can be done in different ways - with git submodule or by automatically running a git checkout. You can also create your own playbook, variable and role structure while still containing the OpenStack Ansible roles and libraries by setting environment variables.

In the first few years, the focus was very much on feature development and stabilizing the platform, which was important for the broad acceptance of the platform. Kubernetes and the focus on containerization also led to a reorientation of OpenStack. However, there is still a strong interest in OpenStack. This is mainly due to the fact that the fundamental problem of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has not disappeared. And OpenStack, as the only independent and stable open infrastructure platform, addresses this use case particularly well. It has also dedicated itself to the complex task of providing the infrastructure with an API. This is made available in a multi-tenant system, i.e. multi-client capable. Other technologies such as Kubernetes have not faced this challenge, even though it would be much closer to the workload. Kubernetes also struggles with areas of application such as multi-tenancy or workload isolation. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is much better suited for API integration to increase productivity because it is much more workload-centric. When Kubernetes is installed on OpenStack, it solves both the problem of multi-tenancy and also provides workload isolation.

The OpenStack Neutron Server runs as a service on the network node to serve the Networking API and its extensions. It also enforces the network model and the IP addressing of each port. However, the Neutron server requires indirect access to a persistent database, which is done by plugins. The plugins in turn communicate with the database using AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol).

A few years ago, there was more than one equivalent OpenStack alternative. These included, for example: CloudStack, AzureStackEucalyptus, Nimbus, OpenNebula and vCloud. Today, however, cloud specialists are wondering whether there is even a single serious competitor left. Because OpenStack clearly leads the private cloud market. The current alternatives are Noris Network, Grass-Merkur and Syntax. These also have many years of experience in cloud computing.

OpenStack is an open source project that consists of a series of software elements for the creation of cloud platforms. In other words, a collection of programs for building a cloud environment. With open source, the source code of the software is publicly available. This means that a large community can contribute to the further development of the software, which guarantees good further development. Cloud computing refers to the decentralized access of programs and data. This environment must be protected against unauthorized access and data loss.
Actually, it shouldn't be OpenStack vs OpenShift, but with OpenShift. OpenShift is a container platform that can be operated on OpenStack. This was developed by Red Hat. The advantage of this is that container technology is more resource-intensive and easier to manage.

OpenStack Heat is used to orchestrate OpenStack components. The handling of OpenStack Heat can often be too rigid for private clouds. Environment files can increase the flexibility of the OpenStack configuration. This is because OpenStack Heat provides orchestration functions within the cloud framework. It works with templates to orchestrate IaaS resources.