OpenStack is a suite of software designed to offer scale-out cloud environments, deployed in datacenters around the world. Managing the installation of software in a remote location is different (and sometimes challenging) than installing software locally, and so tools and techniques have been developed to ease this task. Design considerations of how to deal with hardware and software failure must also be taken into consideration in operational environments. Identifying Single Points Of Failure (SPOF) and adding ways of making them resilient ensures that our OpenStack environment remains available when something goes wrong.

This chapter introduces some methods and software that help manage OpenStack in production datacenters—from making the services highly available to automating installations for consistency and repeatability.