OpenStack Horizon is the web-based graphical user interface (GUI) provided by the OpenStack project for managing and interacting with an OpenStack cloud infrastructure. It is designed to provide users, administrators, and developers with an intuitive and accessible way to manage their cloud resources.
Here are some key details about OpenStack Horizon:
- Purpose and Features:
- Management Interface: Horizon allows users to manage various components of an OpenStack cloud, including virtual machines, storage, networking, and identity and access management.
- Dashboard: It provides a comprehensive and user-friendly dashboard that gives an overview of the cloud infrastructure, resource usage, and status of various services.
- Multi-Tenancy Support: Horizon supports the multi-tenancy model, allowing different users or organizations to have separate resources and access controls within the same cloud infrastructure.
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): It implements RBAC, enabling administrators to define granular access controls and assign roles to users based on their responsibilities and privileges.
- Project Management: Users can create, manage, and organize projects, which act as containers for cloud resources and provide isolation between different groups or departments.
- Orchestration: Horizon supports the OpenStack Orchestration service (Heat), enabling users to define and manage infrastructure deployments as templates.
- Image Management: Users can upload, manage, and launch virtual machine images through the image service (Glance) integration in Horizon.
- Networking: It allows users to manage networking resources like virtual networks, subnets, routers, and security groups through the network service (Neutron) integration.
- Monitoring and Reporting: Horizon provides basic monitoring and reporting features, allowing users to view resource utilization, performance metrics, and billing information.
- User Interface:
- Web-Based: Horizon is a web-based interface accessible through a standard web browser, making it platform-independent and easily accessible from anywhere.
- Responsive Design: The interface is designed to be responsive, adapting to different screen sizes and devices, including desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
- Customizable: Horizon allows administrators to customize the interface by adding or removing panels, creating custom workflows, and integrating additional services.
- Architecture:
- Django Framework: Horizon is built using the Django web framework, which follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Django provides a robust foundation for developing web applications in Python.
- Modular Structure: Horizon has a modular structure that separates different components and functionalities, making it easier to maintain and extend.
- API Integration: Horizon interacts with various OpenStack services through their respective APIs. It leverages the OpenStack APIs to retrieve information, perform actions, and update the state of the cloud resources.
- Extensibility and Integration:
- Pluggable Dashboard: Horizon allows developers to create custom dashboards, panels, and plugins to extend its functionality or integrate with external services.
- Service Integration: Horizon integrates with various OpenStack services like Nova (compute), Cinder (block storage), Swift (object storage), Keystone (identity), Neutron (networking), Glance (image), and Heat (orchestration).
- Third-Party Integration: It can be extended to integrate with third-party services or tools using APIs, custom plugins, or by modifying the Horizon codebase.
Overall, OpenStack Horizon provides a user-friendly interface for managing and administering OpenStack cloud infrastructure. It simplifies the management of virtual machines, networks, storage, and other resources, making it easier for users to leverage the power of OpenStack.