Top Answers to Openstack Interview Questions

1. Compare AWS and OpenStack

Criteria AWS OpenStack
License Amazon proprietary Open Source
Operating System Whatever cloud administrator provides Whatever AMIs provided
by AWS
Performing repeatable operations Through templates Through text files
2. Describe OpenStack.
Most multinational organizations define OpenStack as the future of Cloud Computing.
The Internet and large volumes of data together have instigated the purpose of
cloud computing, and OpenStack is one such platform to create and handle massive
groups of virtual machines through a Graphical User Interface. It is a set of
efficient software tools to manage private and public cloud computing platforms.
Openstack is free, open-source software and works similar to Linux.

3. Explain the benefits of using OpenStack Cloud.

Openstack is useful in developing any software-as-a-service (SAAS) applications,
for new developments or to improve existing solutions.

Can serve as a strong foundation to deliver self-service storage to IT users.

Can deliver on-demand objective or block storage with higher scalability and easy-
to-handle storage at lower costs.
Most enterprises can save bigger on licensing fees by switching virtual machines
running on VMware to OpenStack.
4. What are the key components of OpenStack?
Horizon: the only GUI in OpenStack; the first component administrators see and get
an idea of the current operations in the cloud.
Nova: chief computing engine to handle multiple virtual machines and computing
tasks
Swift: reliable and robust storage system for files and objects helping developers
to refer to a unique identifier and Openstack decides where to store the info.
Cinder: similar to traditional computer storage system, it is a block storage
system in OpenStack for accessing files at faster speed.
Neutron: ensures efficient connectivity between components during deployment.
Keystone: a central identity list of all OpenStack cloud users and provides various
mapping techniques to access methods against Keystone.
Glance: image service provider where images are the virtual copies of hard disks.
Allows using the images as templates during deployment of new instances.
Ceilometer: component providing billings services and other telemetry services to
cloud users. Maintains an account of component system usage by each user.
Heat (Orchestration Engine): Allows developers to orchestrate/illustrate and store
the cloud application requirements and resources needed in a file, thereby
maintaining the cloud infrastructure.
5. What storage types are allowed by OpenStack Compute?
OpenStack Cloud Operating system supports two types of storage:
Persistent Storage: Persistent and independent of any particular instance, created
by users. This further includes three storages:

Object storage: to access binary objects through the REST API.

Block storage: offers access-to-block storage devices by affixing volumes their
current VM instances.
Shared File System storage: provides a set of services to manage multiple files
together for storage and exchange with multiple users at one time.
Ephemeral Storage: Referring to a single instance. As the name suggests, these
storage options are temporary and short-lived and disappear once the VM is
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6. Define �users,� �role� and �tenant� in OpenStack.

Users can be members of multiple projects
Tenant is a group of users and an alternative term for Project/accounts where
projects are organizational units in cloud processing
Role is the position to which a user is mapped (the authorization level). Roles are
usually assigned to project-user duos.

7. Define Identity Service in OpenStack.

Keystone is the most important and preferred Identity Service in OpenStack and
executes the complete OpenStack Identity API. The Keystone Identity Service is
responsible for user management and service catalog. In user management, it tracks
users and their permissions while Service Catalog offers a list of services
available with their API. The former provides authentication credential details of
users, tenants and roles.
Internal services like Token and Policy are also part of Keystone Identity

8. Define the Networking Managers in OpenStack Cloud.

Flat Network Manager: This places all VMs on a single network utilizing the same
subnet and bridge as created by the administrator. Thus, all VMs share the same
network that can be interconnected and are known to have Flat Network Manager.

Flat DHCP Network Manager: Much similar to the above except that the IP addresses
to VM are assigned via DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).
VLAN: Unlike the single network concept, VLAN facilitates more secure and separate
network to VMs. It has a physical switch to offer separate virtual network and
separate IP range and bridge for each tenant. This is indeed most preferable choice
for multi-tenant/project environment.
9. Name the commands used to pause and un-pause(resume) an instance
$ novaunpause INSTANCE_NAME
$ nova pause INSTANCE_NAME

10. List the storage locations for VM images in OpenStack

� OpenStack Object Storage
� Filesystem
� S3
� HTTP
� RBD or Rados Block Device
� GridFSMaster Openstack from industry experts.

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11. What is Token?

Token is a type of authentication similar to password-based validation. A token
gets generated once the user inserts the credentials and authenticates as a
Keystone user. The token can then be used to access OpenStack services without any
revalidation. It is interesting to note that a token is active for a limited period
and must be renewed after regular intervals.
To create a token, users first need to authenticate their Keystone credentials.

12. What is OpenStack Python SDK?

Python SDK (Software Development Kit) helps users to write applications for
performing automation tasks in Python by calling Python objects. It provides a
platform to work with multiple OpenStack services at one place. It consists of
language bindings to access OpenStack clouds, complete API reference, easy
interaction with REST API and sample code for initial applications.

13. Describe the function of Filter Scheduler.

The Filter Scheduler facilitates filtering and weighting to notify where a new
instance can be created. It supports working with Compute Nodes. Filter Scheduler
firstly creates an unfiltered dictionary of hosts and then filter them using
related properties and makes the final selection of hosts for the number of
instances as needed.

14. Define the Networking option in OpenStack.

AvalabilityZoneFilter: filters hosts by their availability zone.
CapacityFilter: filtering based on volume host�s capacity consumption
DifferentBackendFilter: Scheduling volumes to a different back-end
DriverFilter: filters based on �filter function� and �metrics�
InstanceLocalityFilter
JSONFIlter
RetryFilter: Filter the previously attempted hosts
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15. List down the Networking hardware in OpenStack.

Networks
Routers
Subnets
Ports Vendor Plugins
16. Define Hypervisor
For all cloud computing paltforms, Hypervisor is a term to define virtual machine
monitor (VMM) including hardware, software and firmware components running on a
virtual machine. Host machine is the one having hypervisor with one or more virtual
machines.
OpenStack Compute allows multiple hypervisors. There are functionalities to choose
one among them for a specific purpose.

17. List down the type of Hypervisors supported by OpenStack.

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual machine)
LXC: Linux Containers having Linux-based VMs
QEMU: Quick EMUlator used for development purposes
UML: User Mode Linux used for development purposes
VMware vSphere: VMware-based Linux and Windows via vCenter server connection.
Hyper-V: Server virtualization with Microsoft�s Hyper-V
18. Explain in brief the modular architecture of OpenStack.
The three important components of OpenStack modular architecture are:

OpenStack Compute: For managing large networks on the virtual machine

Image Service: The delivery service provides discovery and registration for virtual
disk images
OpenStack Object Storage: A storage system that provides support for both block
storage and object storage
19. What command manages floating IP addresses in OpenStack
nova floating-ip-*

20. Define bare-metal node.

Bare-metal node grants access to control bare-metal driver that handles the
provisioning of OpenStack Compute physical hardware utilizing the standard cloud
APIs and tools like Heat. It is generally used for single tenant clouds like high-
performance cluster computing. For using the bare-metal driver, a network interface
must be created with the bare-metal node inserted into it. Afterwards, users can
launch an instance from the node. Users can also list and delete bare-metal nodes
by removing the associated network instances

21. List down the components of OpenStack Compute

Nova (Compute) Cloud comprises following components:

API server
Message Queue (Rabbit-MQ Server)
Compute Workers (Nova-Compute)
Network controller (Nova-Network)
Volume Worker
Scheduler
22. Define the role of API Server.
It provides an interface for the external world to interact with the cloud
infrastructure.

23. List the commands to generate Key pairs.

ssh-keygen
cd .ssh
nova keypair-add �pub_key id_rsa.pub mykey
24. Define Flavor
Flavors are virtual hardware templates present in OpenStack, which define the
memory sizes of RAM, hard disk, etc. Flavors illustrate a number of parameters like
ID, Name, Memory_MB, Disk and others, giving a choice of Virtual Machine to the
user just like having a physical server. OpenStack dashboard also allows users to
modify a flavor by deleting the existing one and creating a new with the similar
name and parameters.

25. How to create a user in OpenStack?

sudo nova-manage user create user-name

26. How to assign a project/tenant to a user?

By using the command sudo nova-manage user create user-name

27. Can we see the list of roles and associated IDs in OpenStack environment?
Yes, by using keystone role-list