OpenStack is a project originally started by NASA and Rackspace for delivering a cloud computing and storage platform. Today, OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and technologists producing an open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds.
The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution. OpenStack software delivers a massively scalable cloud operating system consisting of three major components:
- Compute: open source software designed to provision and manage large networks of virtual machines, creating a redundant and scalable cloud computing platform.
- Object Storage: open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data (code-named “Swift”).
- Image Service: provides discovery, registration, and delivery services for virtual disk images (code-named “Glance”).
OpenStack has attracted more than 500 member organizations, including Dell, Cisco, Citrix, HP, EMC, VMware, Red Hat, IBM and Intel, and the project is currently managed by the non-profit OpenStack Foundation.
Since its development in 2010, OpenStack has been updated on a roughly every-six-months release cycle. The OpenStack releases since 2010 have been:
