is a cloud computing platform that virtualizes resources from industry-standard hardware, organizes those resources into clouds, and manages them so users can access what they need—when they need it.
OpenStack is an open source platform that uses pooled virtual resources to build and manage private and public clouds. The tools that comprise the OpenStack platform, called “projects,” handle the core cloud-computing services of compute, networking, storage, identity, and image services. More than a dozen optional projects can also be bundled together to create unique, deployable clouds.
In virtualization, resources such as storage, CPU, and RAM are abstracted from a variety of vendor-specific programs and split by a hypervisor before being distributed as needed. OpenStack uses a consistent set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to abstract those virtual resources 1 step further into discrete pools used to power standard cloud computing tools that administrators and users interact with directly.