What is OpenStack?

Definition of OpenStack

OpenStack is a service initiative that is an open infrastructure and allows for the creation and management of large categories of virtual private servers within one data center.

Brief Explanation of OpenStack

The purpose of the OpenStack service initiative is to lend assistant interoperability amongst cloud services and to enable organized to develop cloud services similar to Amazon, within their own data centers. OpenStack is available free of cost within the Apache 2.9 license and is popularly known as ‘the Linux of the Cloud’ within the media. It is also often compared to the Apache CloudStack project and Eucalyptus, both of which are also open source cloud service initiatives. OpenStack was developed by a collaboration between Rackspace and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Rackspace is a cloud computing and managed hosting service provider that donated the code which powers OpenStack’s content delivery and storage service as well as its production servers. NASA’s contribution was to provide the technology that gives power to Nebula, which is OpenStack’s high-performance networking, computing and data storage cloud service. Nebula helps researchers to work alongside significantly large scientific sets of data. Companies such as Intel, VMware and IBM consist of the board of directors who oversee the OpenStack community.