OpenStack Operations Guide

Chapter 1. Example Architectures

To understand the possibilities OpenStack offers, it’s best to start with basic architectures that are tried-and-true and have been tested in production environments. We offer two such examples with basic pivots on the base operating system (Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and the networking architectures. There are other differences between these two examples, but you should find the considerations made for the choices in each as well as a rationale for why it worked well in a given environment.

Because OpenStack is highly configurable, with many different backends and network configuration options, it is difficult to write documentation that covers all possible OpenStack deployments. Therefore, this guide defines example architectures to simplify the task of documenting, as well as to provide the scope for this guide. Both of the offered architecture examples are currently running in production and serving users.

Tip

As always, refer to the Glossary if you are unclear about any of the terminology mentioned in these architectures.

Example Architecture—Legacy Networking (nova)

This particular example architecture has been upgraded from Grizzly to Havana and tested in production environments where many public IP addresses are available for assignment to multiple instances. You can find a second example architecture that uses OpenStack Networking (neutron) after this section. Each example offers high availability, meaning that if a particular node ...