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Combining containers and OpenStack

Interaction

Article from ADMIN 41/2017

By Udo Seidel

The OpenStack cosmos cannot ignore the trend toward containers. If you want to combine both technologies, projects like Magnum, Kolla, and Zun come into play. Which one?

Most IT users rely on containers à la Docker [1], rkt [2], and LXD [3] as platforms for processing data. Sooner or later, cloud solutions such as OpenStack [4] also have to contend with containers; currently, several possibilities exist. The most obvious solution is to anchor the container technology within OpenStack with the use of services such as Magnum [5] and Zun [6]. The other case is less obvious, wherein the container technology runs OpenStack, so it is outside the cloud. This approach includes the Kolla project [7].

Incidentally: The idea of using containers as a basic infrastructure can also be found in Google's Infrastructure for Everyone Else (GIFEE) project [8]. This community has been the impetus for recent developments in the field of OpenStack in containers. Depending on your preference, you can operate containers above OpenStack, below it, or even in combinations of the two. In this article, I briefly introduce container-related OpenStack projects and explain their goals and interactions.

Zun

The Zun project has only been around for about a year. Its goal is to provide an interface for managing containers as native OpenStack components (e.g., like Cinder, Neutron, or Nova). Thus, it is the successor to Nova Docker [9], which has now been discontinued.

Nova Docker was a simple way to integrate containers in OpenStack. Managing containers followed the same principles as managing virtual

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