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Magnum: Exploring OpenStack's Container API

Magnum Container API

Article from ADMIN 29/2015

By Udo Seidel

The Magnum project brings Docker container technology to the OpenStack cloud.

The Docker container system [1] is a rising star. The mere fact that Microsoft's latest operating system supports this technology [2] speaks volumes. Meanwhile, OpenStack [3] has been surfing its own wave of hype for some time. Enter Magnum, a hotly debated project at the interface between Docker and OpenStack.

OpenStack has officially supported Docker since the Havana version [4], but the reality is a little more complex. In the past, integrating Docker container technology involved a detour via the OpenStack compute module, Nova. Purists have never really liked this approach, which required integrating Docker as a hypervisor driver [5]. (Docker does have a few things in common with KVM and the like, but at the end of the day, containers are not hypervisors.)

Extending the Nova API for containers was possible in principle, but this solution was not as clean as developing a separate interface. This need for a container interface is precisely the gap that Magnum [6] [7] sets out to fill. As a new OpenStack interface service, Magnum supports CaaS – Containers as a Service.

Interfaces and Conductors

In January 2015, Rackspace's Adrian Otto announced the release of the first version of Magnum [8]. The software is licensed under the Apache license and written in Python. Magnum was officially added to the list of OpenStack projects in March. Adrian Otto is the technical lead. The primary objective of the Magnum project is to provide an OpenStack interface for

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