Master the Cloud with Free OpenStack Training Tools
Step back and think about it, and It's hard to believe that the OpenStack cloud computing story isn't even five years old yet. Back in 2010, Rackspace and NASA announced an effort to create a sophisticated open source cloud computing infrastructure that could compete with proprietary offerings. Since then, OpenStack has won over countless tech titans that are backing it, and has its own foundation.
But many organizations are struggling with launching and maintaining OpenStack deployments. If you're looking for free resources and tutorials for mastering OpenStack, this post will provide many good choices.
First, you may want to take a look at what the Data Center Knowledge site offers. It has surprisingly easy to follow and rich video demos and explanations of the OpenStack platform. If you're totally new to the OpenStack cloud platform, look into Data Center Knowledge's OpenStack 101 video, which comes originally from Rackspace and NASA. As the site notes: "Rackspace, one of the original founders of the OpenStack project along with NASA, published this video that gives quick primer on OpenStack, what it is and who uses it. This 6-minute video, which is part of an ongoing series on OpenStack, introduces the cloud OS and dives into it from a high level to give you the basic understanding of this disruptive technology."
Among other OpenStack-focused videos and posts worth taking a look at, Data Center Knowledge offers:
Closer Look: Piston Cloud Computing
Closer Look: OpenStack OS for Clouds
Video: Demo of PentOS Open Stack Cloud
For even more, look into the video archive, and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
We have also covered The OpenStack Foundation's launch of a Training Marketplace designed to make it easier to discover training courses offered by providers in the OpenStack community. And, the foundation has made available a series of free, online training guides for OpenStack, which you can find here. There are training guides for OpenStack Associates, Operators, Developers and Architects.
In addition, here on OStatic, we've collected much of our own OpenStack and cloud computing coverage, including many interviews, in this post.
And, Opensource.com has some excellent coverage of OpenStack tutorials, found here and here. As the site notes:
"In September, we gave tips for running OpenStack on FreeBSD, testing out OpenStack's newest incubated project, building an elastic Wordpress installation, and more."
"In June, we linked to guides for getting OpenStack play well with firewalld and NetworkManager, using Test Kitchen with Puppet on an OpenStack deployment, Kerberos, Docker containers, and getting started with OpenStack on Solaris."
"In May, we highlighted several excellent beginners' guides, tips on managing floating IPs, security and server hardening guides, an introduction to multi-node installation, and an overview of what is new in the most recent release of OpenStack Heat."
Finally, it is worth remembering that the official documentation for OpenStack is a valuable resource, too.
OStatic will continue to update coverage of free online training resources for OpenStack, and also look into our coverage of OpenStack training and certification coursework and classes.