Cloud Blueprint (OpenStack)
Purpose: For platform engineers and operators, describes the Cloud blueprint that deploys a production-grade OpenStack private cloud on Kubernetes using Genestack.
Overview
Kubernetes and OpenStack under one operating model. Not two teams, two toolchains, and two sets of problems. Genestack deploys a production-grade private cloud using Helm, Kustomize, and Kubernetes operators — from bare metal to running VMs and containers side by side.
- OpenStack services deployed and managed on Kubernetes via Helm and Kustomize. One ops model for everything.
- Bare-metal provisioning with Ironic — PXE, IPMI, and automated re-provisioning.
- Leaf-spine network architecture with Kube-OVN and OVS/OVN. Two-hop east-west traffic.
- Commodity storage: Ceph, Swift, Longhorn, iSCSI, RBD, NFS, and LVM.
- Kubernetes operators manage backing services (MariaDB, RabbitMQ, Memcached) with automatic failover.
- Production and test deployment modes from the same codebase.
Core Capabilities
Compute (Nova)
Nova manages the full lifecycle of virtual machines — creation, scheduling, live migration, and termination. Backed by KVM/QEMU through libvirt, it runs on bare-metal nodes provisioned via Ironic. Placement tracks resource allocation across the cloud to ensure optimal scheduling. Horizontal scaling groups auto-scale API services based on demand.
Networking (Neutron + Kube-OVN)
Neutron provides virtual networks, routers, security groups, and load balancers (Octavia). Kube-OVN serves as the CNI plugin, bridging Kubernetes and OpenStack networking through OVS/OVN switches. Gateway API handles ingress and egress. The leaf-spine network architecture minimizes latency with two-hop east-west traffic paths.
Storage (Cinder + Longhorn + Ceph)
Cinder provides block storage volumes for VMs. Longhorn handles distributed block storage for Kubernetes workloads with PVC replication. Ceph and Swift provide scalable object storage on commodity hardware. CSI plugins integrate storage drivers directly into Kubernetes. Multiple backends supported: iSCSI, RBD, NFS, and LVM.
Observability
Prometheus collects metrics from node and API exporters across the infrastructure. Alertmanager handles alert aggregation, grouping, deduplication, and notification routing. Fluentbit collects and processes logs from Kubernetes pods and OpenStack services, forwarding to Loki for aggregation and LogQL querying. Grafana ties it all together with dashboards, Loki datasources, and alert configuration.
OpenStack Services
| Service | Function |
|---|---|
| Keystone | Identity and authentication |
| Nova | Compute (VM lifecycle) |
| Neutron | Networking (SDN) |
| Cinder | Block storage |
| Glance | Image management |
| Placement | Resource tracking |
| Heat | Orchestration |
| Horizon / Skyline | Dashboard |
| Octavia | Load balancing |
| Ironic | Bare metal provisioning |
| Barbican | Key management |
| Magnum | Container orchestration |
| Masakari | Instance HA |
| Ceilometer | Telemetry |
| Gnocchi | Time series |
Infrastructure Services
MariaDB Operator, RabbitMQ, Memcached, PostgreSQL Operator, Redis Operator, Longhorn, MetalLB, Kube-OVN, Gateway API, Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, Fluentbit, Loki.
Architecture
| Layer | Components |
|---|---|
| Bare Metal | Ironic provisions physical servers via PXE/IPMI. Leaf-spine networking connects compute, storage, and control planes. |
| Kubernetes Control Plane | etcd-backed API server runs operators for MariaDB, RabbitMQ, Memcached, and all OpenStack services. |
| OpenStack Integration | OpenStack APIs connect to backing databases (read-many cluster), quorum queues, and storage drivers via Kubernetes operators. |
| Networking | Kube-OVN CNI bridges K8s and OpenStack networking. Neutron manages VLANs, VXLANs, and advanced routing through OVS/OVN. |
| Storage | Longhorn for K8s PVCs, Ceph/Swift for object storage, Cinder for VM block volumes. CSI plugins for all backends. |
| Observability | Prometheus metrics, Fluentbit + Loki logging, Alertmanager notifications, Grafana dashboards. |
Documentation
Deployment guides, architecture references, and operational runbooks are available at the Rackspace OpenStack documentation site: docs.rackspacecloud.com.