Introduction to OpenStack
In its own words, OpenStack is a cloud operating system that is used to control a large number of different resources in order to provide all the essential services for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and orchestration.
But what does this mean? OpenStack is designed to completely control all the resources that are in the data center, and to provide both central management and direct control over anything that can be used to deploy both its own and third-party services. Basically, for every service that we mention in this book, there is a place in the whole OpenStack landscape where that service is or can be used.
OpenStack itself consists of several different interconnected services or service parts, each with its own set of functionalities, and each with its own API that enables full control of the service. In this part of this book, we will try to explain what different parts of OpenStack do, how they interconnect, what services they provide,...