nova/doc/source/concepts.and.introduction.rst

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Concepts and Introduction
=========================


Introduction
------------

Nova is the software that controls your Infrastructure as as Service (IaaS)
cloud computing platform.  It is similar in scope to Amazon EC2 and Rackspace
CloudServers.  Nova does not include any virtualization software, rather it
defines drivers that interact with underlying virtualization mechanisms that
run on your host operating system, and exposes functionality over a web API.

This document does not attempt to explain fundamental concepts of cloud
computing, IaaS, virtualization, or other related technologies.  Instead, it
focues on describing how Nova's implementation of those concepts is achieved.

This page outlines concepts that you will need to understand as a user or
administrator of an OpenStack installation.  Each section links to more more
detailed information in the `Administration Guide`_, but you'll probably want
to read this section straight-through before tackling the specifics presented
in the administration guide.

.. _`Administration Guide`: administration.guide.html


Concept: Users and Projects
---------------------------

* access to images is limited by project
* access/secret are per user
* keypairs are per user
* quotas are per project


Concept: Virtualization
-----------------------

* KVM
* UML
* XEN
* HyperV
* qemu


Concept: Volumes
----------------

Volumes


Concept: Quotas
---------------

* Defaults
* Override for project


Concept: RBAC
-------------

* Intersecting Roles
* cloudadmin vs. user admin flag


Concept: API
------------

* EC2
* OpenStack / Rackspace


Concept: Networking
-------------------

* VLAN
  * Cloudpipe
    * Certificates (See also: CA)
* Flat Networking
* Flat with DHCP
* How to generate addresses
* Floating Addresses


Concept: Services
-----------------

* nova-api
* nova-scheduler
* nova-compute
* nova-volume
* nova-network
* nova-instancemonitor


Concept: nova-manage
--------------------

nova manage


Concept: Flags
--------------

python-gflags


Concept: Plugins
----------------

* Managers/Drivers: utils.import_object from string flag
* virt/connections: conditional loading from string flag
* db: LazyPluggable via string flag
* auth_manager: utils.import_class based on string flag
* Volumes: moving to pluggable driver instead of manager
* Network: pluggable managers
* Compute: same driver used, but pluggable at connection


Concept: IPC/RPC
----------------

Rabbit!


Concept: Fakes
--------------

* auth
* ldap


Concept: Scheduler
------------------

* simple
* random


Concept: Security Groups
------------------------

Security groups


Concept: Certificate Authority
------------------------------

Per-project CA
* Images
* VPNs


Concept: Images
---------------

* launching
* bundling