OpenStack is at the core of our Infrastructure as a Service product, featuring hosted private cloud. We also use OpenStack to provide IT services to our own staff. As both active users of OpenStack and the first to create on demand hosted private cloud on OpenStack, we want to share our experiences with OpenStack. You can find more information in our Flex Metal Cloud Product Guide as well.

If you are going to be an operator and a user, the best place to start would be with our OpenStack Cloud Operator’s Manual and a Small Flex Metal Private Cloud Core. With a preconfigured OpenStack and Ceph, this manual is designed to get an experienced system administrator up to speed on running and using OpenStack and Ceph in roughly 40 hours of hands on training and experimenting.

You can also contact our Account Managers to request longer Timed Trials or Credits to help offset building a Proof of Concept.

We hope the following content helps you be more successful with OpenStack, either here at InMotion or where ever your cloud takes you!

Newest OpenStack Articles

On-Demand OpenStack – FMC Release V1.1
Flex Metal Cloud Release V1.1 – Feb 15th, 2021 Our goal is to enable smaller teams to easily learn, run, and grow private cloud infrastructure. We are also big Open Source fans so we are focused on improving OpenStack for use by smaller teams. This can mean teams of 1 to teams of 100s. OpenStack, to architect, build, and run, is very hard. To also do so economically, Read More >
Detailed Private Cloud Pricing Background
On-Demand Private Cloud Pricing A repeat of many previous posts: Here at InMotion we are reshaping OpenStack from the traditional large footprint deployment. We believe that Open Source based private clouds are a critical counterpoint to the mega public clouds. The leading open source cloud management system is OpenStack. But, OpenStack is complex as is is both a very large software system and complex servers and networking under Read More >
AutoScaling the Cloud
Managing Resources on a Server is Like a Game of Tetris It used to be simple, SysAdmins would manage resources on a server like a game of Tetris, closely monitoring and making sure service resource utilization would stay in balance with the hardware. Optimizations were mostly done at the application layer. Before we knew it, one server wasn’t enough and any downtime would be a bad time for Read More >
Ceph Crimson – Performance Testing on NVMe
We are closely following the Ceph advancements targeting NVMe performance. We use Ceph as the hosted private cloud core of our Infrastructure as a Service Product. Our concern is, as is many long time fans of Ceph, is how will Ceph adapt to NVMe performance when its history has long been rooted in spinning media. As an example, currently we use very high performance NVMes in almost all Read More >
Sizing a Hyper Converged OpenStack Private Cloud Control Plane
This discusses sizing of a Flex Metal Cloud Core. A Flex Metal Cloud Core is a combination of OpenStack and Ceph hyper converged onto 3 servers. See our Flex Metal private cloud pages. You can also review much of our configurations on Github if you are not a customer yet. There are two major flavors of the hyper converged OpenStack private cloud core. The “Standard” and the “Small”. Read More >
How InMotion Hosting Builds Better OpenStack Deployments
InMotion Hosting Builds Better OpenStack Deployments with the Institute for Cyber Security Since July 2020, InMotion Hosting’s Flex Metal Cloud team has worked closely with OpenStack administrators and architects at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Cyber Security (ICS). The two teams met during the 2020 OpenStack OpenDev virtual event for OpenStack developers and administrators. At the time, both teams were working on deploying OpenStack Read More >
Production OpenStack in 45 Minutes. How and Why?
Mega cloud providers are dominating the conversation of the future of IT. News headlines about “new 150,000 square foot data center put down in this city” or “AWS or Microsoft or Google scoops up this government contract for $25 Billion” all add to the acceptance of those brand names and their approaches. I noticed today (11/30/2020) that if you search for “Why OpenStack” Google will even auto suggest Read More >
OpenStack or Kubernetes
When considering a cloud deployment, the choice of cloud architecture is critical for the success of your project. OpenStack and Kubernetes are popular choices for cloud applications, but which technology is the best fit for your individual use case? Learn about the differences between OpenStack and Kubernetes and for which use cases they are great. What is OpenStack? What is Kubernetes? Do I use OpenStack or Kubernetes? OpenStack Read More >
How to Build a Private Cloud Using OpenStack
OpenStack is often seen as a way to create a private cloud but it is equally important as an overall Infrastructure as a Service or Data Center management software. This article focuses on the private cloud aspect of OpenStack since most research starts on how to set up private cloud with OpenStack. We can cover more information on how OpenStack fits into Data Center management in another post. Read More >
What are the OpenStack Networking Essentials?
This article is written based on our background with our OpenStack private cloud, Flex Metal, created with OpenStack and Ceph. In this guide, we will walk you through the essentials that make up the OpenStack Network architecture, services, and security. Networking Architecture OpenStack Networking is a standalone service that often deploys several processes across several nodes. Neutron-server is the main process for OpenStack Networking. This is a Python Read More >

OpenStack Basics

OpenStack is a collection of Services. Each service performs functionality that make up the whole of OpenStack. There are a set of “core” that are typically installed to provide the common functionality of a “Cloud”. In addition, there are over 30 other Services that can be added for your particular needs. Find out more with “What is OpenStack?” or you can also explore our Why OpenStack background.

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