VyOS Universal Router for OpenStack

OpenStack is an open source cloud platform that controls a large pool of processing, memory, storage and networking resources across a data center. To empower existing data center assets that comprise multiple networking devices, OpenStack has created a pluggable, scalable, automated and API-driven system for managing networks and IP addresses. A convenient graphical interface provided by the dashboard gives administrators and users the ability to access, provision and automate cloud-based resources.

Providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS), OpenStack makes it easy for users to quickly add deploy instances, enabling other cloud components to run on it. The open source nature of the software allows users to easily access the source code, make necessary changes and freely share them with the community at large.

To build and manage the private and public clouds, OpenStack gather pooled virtual resources under “projects”. Projects consist of scripts bundled into packages that describe tasks for provisioning the cloud environment.

Two types of software are used by OpenStack to create those environments:

• Virtualization that creates a layer of virtual resources abstracted away from hardware.
• A base operating system (OS) that carries out commands given by OpenStack scripts.

Unlike other virtualization management platforms that adds a layer of interface for manipulation of virtual resources, OpenStack actually uses the virtual resources to run that combination of tools. These tools create a cloud environment that meets the 5 criteria of cloud computing: a network, pooled resources, a user interface, provisioning capabilities and automatic resource control/allocation.