Setting up your own cloud with OpenStack

We have already seen how to create virtual machines with KVM and Qemu, and how to manage them with tools such as virsh and virt-manager. This approach works when you need to work with a handful of machines and manage few hosts. To operate on a larger scale, you need a tool to manage host machines, VM configurations, images, network, and storage, and monitor the entire environment. OpenStack is an open source initiative to create and manage a large pool of virtual machines (or containers). It is a collection of various tools to deploy IaaS clouds. The official site defines OpenStack as an operating system to control a large pool of compute, network, and storage resources, all managed through a dashboard.

OpenStack was primarily developed and open-sourced by Rackspace, a leading cloud service provider. With its thirteenth release, Mitaka, OpenStack provides tons of tools to manage various components of your infrastructure. A few important components...