OpenStack is an open-source platform for building cloud infrastructure. Its own documentation describes it as “a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed and provisioned through APIs with common authentication mechanisms.” In other words, it is software for running an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud, whether private to one organization or offered publicly.
The project’s origins lie in a convergence of two efforts in early 2010. As the OpenStack project documentation recounts, “Rackspace wanted to rewrite the infrastructure code running its Cloud servers offering, and considered open sourcing the existing Cloud files code,” while “Anso Labs (contracting for NASA) had published beta code for Nova, a Python-based cloud computing fabric controller.” Rackspace’s storage code became the Swift object store and NASA’s Nova became the compute service. The two were combined to form the foundation of OpenStack.
OpenStack was launched publicly in July 2010. The documentation records that “the first Design Summit was held in Austin, TX on July 13-14, 2010, and the project was officially announced at OSCON in Portland, OR, on July 21st, 2010.” From the start it was governed as an open community project rather than a single vendor’s product.
The significance of OpenStack is as a community-run, open alternative to the proprietary hyperscale clouds. Where Amazon’s EC2 and S3 were controlled by one company, OpenStack let any organization assemble compute, storage, and networking into a cloud it owned and operated, using interchangeable components contributed by a broad community of vendors and operators.