Chapter 1. Understanding Red Hat OpenStack Platform
Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) provides the foundation to build a private or public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It is a scalable, fault-tolerant platform for the development of cloud-enabled workloads.
RHOSP delivers an integrated foundation to create, deploy, and scale a secure and reliable public or private OpenStack cloud.
RHOSP is packaged so that you can create private, public, or hybrid cloud platforms from your available physical hardware. RHOSP clouds include the following components:
- Fully distributed object storage
- Persistent block-level storage
- Virtual machine provisioning engine and image storage
- Authentication and authorization mechanisms
- Integrated networking
- Web browser-based interface accessible to users and administrators
The RHOSP IaaS cloud is implemented by a collection of interacting services that control its computing, storage, and networking resources. You can manage the cloud with a web-based interface to control, provision, and automate RHOSP resources. Additionally, an extensive API controls the RHOSP infrastructure and this API is also available to end users of the cloud.
1.1. Advantages of using Red Hat OpenStack Platform
You can use Red Hat OpenStack Platform to combine virtualization, networking, and storage based on your requirements. The following capabilities are some of the advantages of the Red Hat OpenStack Platform:
- You can create public, private, or hybrid clouds that you can scale up or down based on your requirements.
- You can deploy cloud-enabled workloads based on your needs.
- You can address customer demands in hours or minutes instead of weeks or days, without sacrificing security, performance, or budget.
- You can implement stability and agility for your cloud environments, using hybrid cloud management, monitoring, and reporting with Red Hat CloudForms.
1.2. Relationship between RDO and OpenStack Foundation
OpenStack Foundation promotes the global development, distribution, and adoption of the OpenStack cloud operating system. The goal of the OpenStack Foundation is to serve developers, users, and the entire ecosystem globally by providing a set of shared resources to grow the footprint of public and private OpenStack clouds, enable technology vendors targeting the platform and assist developers to produce the best cloud software in the industry.
RPM Distribution of OpenStack (RDO) is a free, community-supported distribution of the Red Hat version of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its derivatives, such as CentOS. RDO also makes the latest OpenStack development release available for Fedora. In addition to providing a set of software packages, RDO is a community of users of cloud computing platforms on Red Hat-based operating systems to get help and compare notes on running OpenStack. For enterprise-level support or information on partner certification, Red Hat offers Red Hat OpenStack Platform. For more information, see Red Hat OpenStack Platform.
