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OpenNebula: Open Source IaaS Cloud Computing Software Platforms

Conference Paper · November 2014

DOI: 10.13140/2.1.3584.4805

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National Conference on Computational and Mathematical Sciences (COMPUTATIA-IV) - 2014

OpenNebula: Open Source IaaS Cloud Computing

Software Platforms
Rakesh Kumar1, Laveena Adwani2, Sourabh Kumawat3, Sunil Kumar Jangir2
1, 2, 3, 4,
Department of Information Technology, JECRC, Jaipur, India
1
rakeshkumar.it14@jecrc.ac.in,2Lavinaadwani.itjecrc@gmail.com,
3
Sourabhkumawat94@gmail.com,4sunil.jangir07@gmail.com

Abstract— OpenNebula combines existing virtualization technologies with powerful features for automatic
provision, multi-tenancy, as well as elasticity, following a bottom-up approach driven by real needs of
sysadmins and devops. OpenNebula exists to help companies build simple, reliable, cost-effective, open
enterprise clouds on existing IT infrastructure, and also brings beauty, peace of mind, simplicity to private
and hybrid enterprise cloud. In this research paper, we are discussing about Introduction to Cloud
Computing, with its important benefits. Further discussing about OpenNebula technology, with its key
features, OpenNebula system, components of an OpenNebula system as well as interfaces provided by
OpenNebula and at last covering Reasons for using OpenNebula as well as comparison between OpenStack
and OpenNebula. The aim of this paper is to show importance of OpenNebula technology and also provides
most simple but feature rich as well as flexible solution for comprehensive management of virtualized data
centers to enable on-premise IaaS clouds.

Keywords— Cloud Computing; IaaS; KVM; OpenNebula; VMs

I. INTRODUCTION
In last few years, Information Technology has embarked on a new paradigm; cloud computing. Cloud
computing is only a different way to deliver computer resources, rather than a new technology, as well as it is a
comprehensive solution that delivers IT as a service. Cloud Computing is an Internet based computing solution
where shared resources are provided like electricity distributed on electrical grid. Cloud computing easily
increases efficiency, helps improve cash flow and offers many more benefits like Flexibility, Disaster recovery,
Automatic software updates, Cap-Ex Free, Increased collaboration, Work from anywhere, Document control,
Security, Competitiveness, Environmentally friendly etc.

Fig. 1: Cloud Computing

II. OPENNEBULA
OpenNebula is a powerful, adaptable and interoperable open-source platform for data center virtualization as
well as enterprise cloud management that provides most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for
comprehensive management of virtualized infrastructure in data center to enable on premise IaaS clouds.
OpenNebula supports Hybrid Cloud to combine local infrastructure with public cloud-based infrastructure,
enabling highly scalable hosting environments, as well as it also supports Public Clouds by providing Cloud
interfaces to expose its functionality for virtual machines (VMs), storage and network management.
National Conference on Computational and Mathematical Sciences (COMPUTATIA-IV) - 2014

III. OPENNEBULA KEY FEATURES

OpenNebula is a cloud computing toolkit which is used for managing heterogeneous distributed data
center infrastructures. OpenNebula that now operates as an open source project began as a research project by
Ignacio M. Llorente and Rubén S. Montero in 2005, as well as it is free, open-source software, subject to
requirements of Apache License version 2, and also first public release of OpenNebula was in March 2008. The
toolkit contains features for integration, scalability, management, security and accounting. It
claims interoperability, standardization, as well as portability, providing cloud users and administrators with a
choice of several cloud interfaces like Amazon EC2 Query, OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface etc. and
hypervisors like Xen, KVM etc., and can accommodate multiple hardware and also software combinations in
a data center.

Fig. 2: OpenNebula Key Features

IV. INTERFACES PROVIDED BY OPENNEBULA

OpenNebula is an open-source Cloud Management Tool, and its open, architecture, interfaces as well as
components provide flexibility and extensibility that many enterprise IT shops need for internal cloud adoption.
OpenNebula also provides an abstraction layer independent from underlying services for security, networking,
virtualization, and storage, avoiding vendor lock-in and enabling interoperability. It is not only built on
standards, but has it also provided reference implementation of open community specifications. Open as well as
flexible approach for cloud management ensures widest possible market and user acceptability, and also
simplifies adaptation to different environments.

Fig. 3: OpenNebula Interfaces

National Conference on Computational and Mathematical Sciences (COMPUTATIA-IV) - 2014

OpenNebula provides interfaces that can be used to interact with functionality offered to manage physical as
well as virtual resources, and four main different perspectives to interact with OpenNebula such as:

 Cloud interfaces for Cloud Consumers, such as EBS interfaces, EC2 Query etc.

 Administration interfaces for Cloud Advanced Users and Operators, such as command line interface,
Sunstone GUI

 Extensible low-level APIs for Cloud Integrators in JAVA, Ruby, XMLRPC API

 Marketplace for Appliance Builders

Fig. 4: OpenNebula

V. REASONS FOR USING OPENNEBULA

OpenNebula is a powerful open source management tool that helps virtualized data centers enable private
clouds, public clouds as well as hybrid clouds. It combines existing virtualization technologies with advanced
features for multi-tenancy, elasticity and automated provisioning. OpenNebula can
use KVM, Xen or VMware hypervisors, and it is vendor neutral, as well as also platform- and API-agnostic.
Here, we are discussing some important reason for using OpenNebula such as:

 Mature, Innovative and Powerful

 Fully platform independent and Enterprise class Product
 Open, adaptable and extensible architecture, interfaces and components
 Cloud interoperability and portability
 Truly open-source code and Infrastructure Agnostic
 Easy to download, install and update
 Scalability, reliability and performance
 Wide variety of commercial and community support

VI. OPENNEBULA SYSTEM

OpenNebula requires a cluster-like setup with a single frontend, containing management interface as well as a
bunch of cluster nodes. Use frontend node as a cluster node, in a small infrastructure, but in big infrastructures,
frontend node could require a lot of memory, CPU, as well as disk resources that should be placed on a
dedicated node. Basic components of an OpenNebula system such as:

 Frontend: Frontend executes OpenNebula services.

 Hosts: These are basically hypervisor enabled nodes that will physically run infrastructure.
 Datastores: Datastores holds base images of VMs.
 Physical network: Physical network provides VLAN for VMs infrastructure links.
National Conference on Computational and Mathematical Sciences (COMPUTATIA-IV) - 2014

VII. COMPARISON BETWEEN OPENSTACK AND OPENNEBULA

S. No. OpenStack component Equivalent to OpenNebula

1. Compute (Nova) built-in
2. Object Storage (Swift) not equivalent
3. Image Service (Glance) built-in
4. Identity (Keystone) built-in
5. Dashboard (Horizon) Sunstone
6. Networking (Neutron) built-in
7. Block Storage (Cinder) built-in + plugins
8. Telemetry (Ceilometer) built-in
9. Orchestration (Heat) flow
10. Database Service (Trove) not equivalent
11. Data processing (Sahara) not equivalent
12. Bare metal (Ironic) not equivalent
13. Queue service (Zaqar) not equivalent
14. Key management (Barbican) not equivalent
15. DNS Services (Designate) not equivalent

VIII. CONCLUSIONS
Cloud computing is an evolving technology, and OpenNebula cloud infrastructure provide elastic platform
for scalability, fast delivery of services to meet dynamic demand of service end users. Open Source Software
means that their source code available to user with or without fee. Open source cloud computing platform
provide an alternative way to user for improved scalability, flexibility, portability as well as on demand services.
This paper compares two most popular and commonly used open source software such as OpenStack and
OpenNebula. Summarization as well as comparison allow users to choose better services according to their
requirement.

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