Best books for Learning OpenStack Cloud Platform 2025

Introduction

OpenStack is a popular technology with pooled virtual resources that speed up building and managing private and public clouds. With OpenStack, you can effectively handle cloud computing services, including compute, storage, Networking, image services, and more. Remember that the applications built in the OpenStack platform stand out and are mostly resilient to failure. You are in the right place if you want to learn more about building and integrating private and public clouds.

At the moment, OpenStack Open Source Cloud software has become one of the most used cloud infrastructures whereat a wide variety of use cases can be implemented. Whether you are doing software development, AI or big data analysis, OpenStack can be your main infrastructure to run your workloads efficiently and conveniently. Developed by a thriving community of developers around the world and supported by most of the leading players in the cloud space today, you can be sure that the platform will deliver the results you are looking for.

1. OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook – Fourth Edition

OpenStack Cloud Computing Cookbook, written for cloud system engineers, system administrators, and technical architects who are moving from a virtualized environment to cloud environments has now been updated to work with the latest OpenStack builds. Written by four OpenStack experts (Kevin Jackson, Cody Bunch, Egle Sigler and James Denton) with vast OpenStack experience, the book will begin by showing you the steps to build up an OpenStack private cloud environment using the Ansible automation tool. After you have built your platform, you’ll then discover the uses of cloud services such as identity service, image service, and compute service. As you progress into the meat of the book you will get right into Neutron, the OpenStack Networking service, and get your hands dirty with configuring networks, routers, load balancers, and more.

Moreover, you will get advanced knowledge of OpenStack cloud computing by managing your cloud’s security and migration. After that, you will dive into OpenStack Object storage and you’ll see how to manage servers and work with objects, clusters, and storage functionalities. Finally, you will learn about the OpenStack dashboard, Ansible, Keystone, and other interesting topics. In a nutshell:

This is what you will glean from the book

• Understand, install, configure, and manage a complete OpenStack Cloud platform using OpenStack-Ansible
• Configure networks, routers, load balancers, and more with Neutron
• Use Keystone to setup domains, roles, groups and user access
• Learn how to use Swift and setup container access control lists
• Gain hands-on experience and familiarity with Horizon, the OpenStack Dashboard user interface
• Automate complete solutions with our recipes on Heat, the OpenStack Orchestration service as well as using Ansible to orchestrate application workloads
• Follow practical advice and examples to run OpenStack in production

Check out more details about this interesting resource in Amazon by clicking on the link below:

2. OpenStack for Architects: Design production-ready private cloud infrastructure, 2nd Edition

Ben Silverman and Michael Solberg have put together OpenStack for Architects to help Cloud architects who are responsible for designing and implementing a private cloud with OpenStack. If you are a System engineer or an enterprise architect, you will also find this book useful. A basic understanding of core OpenStack services, as well as some working experience of concepts, is recommended.

OpenStack for Architects leads you through the major decision points that you’ll face while architecting an OpenStack private cloud for any organization. With the content delivered, you will be able to address the recent changes made in the latest OpenStack release i.e. Queens.

Furthermore, you will also deal with advanced concepts such as containerization, NVF, and security. At each point, the authors offer you advice based on the experience they’ve gained from designing and leading successful OpenStack projects in a wide range of industries.

Each chapter also includes lab material that gives you a chance to install and configure the technologies used to build production-quality OpenStack clouds. Most importantly, the book focuses on ensuring that your OpenStack project meets the needs of your organization, which will guarantee a successful rollout.

Expertise you will learn

• Learn the overall structure of an OpenStack deployment
• Craft an OpenStack deployment process which fits within your organization
• Apply Agile Development methodologies to engineer and operate OpenStack clouds
• Build a product roadmap for Infrastructure as a Service based on OpenStack
• Use containers to increase the manageability and resiliency of applications running in and on OpenStack.
• Use enterprise security guidelines for your OpenStack deployment

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3. OpenStack Networking Essentials

Once you deploy your OpenStack platform, you will soon find out that one of the tricky parts to learn and implement is Neutron. James Denton, the author of OpenStack Networking Essentials, has made this a lot more easier for you. With more than 15 years of experience in system administration and networking, he has been deploying, operating, and maintaining OpenStack clouds since late 2012. He is currently a Principal Architect at Rackspace.

This book starts by describing the various components of OpenStack Neutron and installing Ubuntu OpenStack based on Canonical’s process. You will then use various methods to interface with Neutron to create and manage network resources. If you need to know the relationship between ports, networks, and subnets then you will be right at home. You will get it all through diagrams and explanations, and see how the logical components are implemented via plugins and agents.

Moving forward, you will learn how virtual switches are implemented and how to build Neutron routers. Using simple examples, you will also configure networks, subnets, and routers to provide connectivity to instances. In the end, you will configure and manage security groups and will observe how these rules translate to iptables rules on the host machines.

In a nutshell, these are what you will learn

• Install Liberty (2015.2) release of OpenStack using RDO in VirtualBox
• Discover the basics of the Neutron API, including networks, subnets, and ports
• Interact with Neutron using the CLI and Horizon dashboard
• Create networks and subnets that provide connectivity to instances
• Implement software routers that connect networks and provide network address translation
• Secure instances using Neutron’s security group functionality

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4. OpenStack in Action 1st Edition

V. K. Cody Bumgardner in OpenStack in Action offers real-world use cases and step-by-step instructions you can take to develop your own cloud platform from inception to deployment. This book guides you through the design of both the physical hardware cluster and the infrastructure services you’ll need to create a custom cloud platform.

Focusing on real-world use cases and step-by-step instructions on how to develop your own cloud platform you can depend on this resource to guide you through the design of both the physical hardware cluster and the infrastructure services you’ll need. You’ll learn how to select and set up virtual and physical servers, how to implement software-defined networking, and the technical details of designing, deploying, and operating an OpenStack cloud in your enterprise. You’ll also discover how to best tailor your OpenStack deployment for your environment. Finally, you’ll learn how your cloud can offer user-facing software and infrastructure services.

Take aways from OpenStack in Action

• Develop and deploy an enterprise private cloud
• Private cloud technologies from an IT perspective
• Organizational impact of self-service cloud computing

Take a look at the pricing, reviews and more information about the book at Amazon by clicking on the link below:

5. Mastering OpenStack – Third Edition: Design, deploy, and manage clouds in mid to large IT infrastructures

Co-authored by Omar Khedher and Chandan Dutta Chowdhury, Mastering OpenStack, aims to aid system administrators, cloud engineers, and system architects who would like to deploy an OpenStack-based cloud in a mid-to-large IT infrastructure.

The authors provide relevant and expert information on how to Design and deploy an OpenStack-based cloud in your mid-to-large IT infrastructure using automation tools and best practices. It goes into the internals of OpenStack to help you keep yourself up-to-date with valuable insights into OpenStack components and new services in the latest OpenStack release. As you continue into the chapters, you will discover how the new features in the latest OpenStack release can help your enterprise and infrastructure.

The following are most of the stuff that you will learn as you go through the book

Explore the main architecture design of OpenStack components and core-by-core services, and how they work together
Design different high-availability scenarios and plan for a no-single-point-of-failure environment
Set up a multinode environment in production using orchestration tools
Boost OpenStack’s performance with advanced configuration
Delve into various hypervisors and container technology supported by OpenStack
Get familiar with deployment methods and discover use cases in a real production environment
Adopt the DevOps style of automation while deploying and operating in an OpenStack environment
Monitor the cloud infrastructure and make decisions on maintenance and performance improvement

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6. OpenStack for Architects: Design production-ready private cloud infrastructure, 2nd Edition

OpenStack for Architects leads you through the major decision points that you’ll face while architecting an OpenStack private cloud for your organization. This book will address the recent changes made in the latest OpenStack release i.e. Queens, and will also deal with advanced concepts such as containerization, NVF, and security.

At each point, the authors offer you advice based on the experience they’ve gained from designing and leading successful OpenStack projects in a wide range of industries. Each chapter also includes lab material that gives you a chance to install and configure the technologies used to build production-quality OpenStack clouds. Most importantly, the book focuses on ensuring that your OpenStack project meets the needs of your organization, which will guarantee a successful rollout.

What you will learn

• Learn the overall structure of an OpenStack deployment
• Craft an OpenStack deployment process which fits within your organization
• Apply Agile Development methodologies to engineer and operate OpenStack clouds
• Build a product roadmap for Infrastructure as a Service based on OpenStack
• Use containers to increase the manageability and resiliency of applications running in and on OpenStack.
• Use enterprise security guidelines for your OpenStack deployment

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7. OpenStack Operations Guide: Set Up and Manage Your OpenStack Cloud

If you are looking for a guide to help you quickly design, deploy, and maintain your own public or private Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), using the open-source OpenStack platform then this is the guide for you.

In this book, experienced OpenStack contributors and developers have put together their minds to avail a practical guide to help you build clouds based on reference architectures and perform other daily Openstack administration tasks. OpenStack provides several features and benefits to your organization such as horizontal scalability and also allows integration with other services.

By following this guide to the end, you should be able to:

• Use metrics to improve scalability
• Set up a single-node cloud controller
• Run automated deployments and configurations
• Install all the required OpenStack packages
• simplify decision-making using the example architecture
• Explore compute nodes, network design, and storage
• Run maintenance, debugging, and network troubleshooting

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8. Preparing for the Certified OpenStack Administrator Exam: A complete guide for developers taking tests conducted by the OpenStack Foundation

This book will provide you with the required content to take and pass the OpenStack Foundation’s first professional certification(Certified OpenStack Administrator). In addition to that, the book will take you through the entire OpenStack administration journey. Boosting your confidence and skills required to administer the real-world OpenStack clouds.

The journey starts with the fundamentals of the OpenStack environment, ensuring that you understand the importance of the exam, and installing all the required OpenStack packages. After the introduction, you will learn the basics of the individual services required for OpenStack administration.

In the book, you will learn:

• How to manage the Keystone identity service by creating and modifying domains, projects, users, groups, roles, endpoints, services and quotas.
• Learn how to upload Glance images, launch new Nova instances, and create flavours, key pairs, and snapshots
• Learn about the Neutron tenant and provider networks, security groups, routers, and floating IPs.
• How to manage the Cinder block storage(creating volumes and attaching them to instances).
• Understand the Heat orchestration templates, create, list and update stacks.

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9. Learning OpenStack Networking: Build a solid foundation in virtual networking technologies for OpenStack-based clouds, 3rd Edition

This is the go-to guide if you want to:

• Know the difference between Linux bridge and Open vSwitch switching technologies
• Know how to connect VMs to virtual networks, subnets, and ports
• Create virtual load balancers, firewalls, and routers in your network

This guide will take you through the installation of OpenStack, and then provide you with the required knowledge to build a scalable and production-ready OpenStack cloud. You will then get an overview and concepts of Neutron networking such as subnets, ports and networks. I will also dive into deep concepts such as distributed virtual routers, security groups, VLAN tagging and virtual load balancers on OpenStack.

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10. Openstack for Architects: Design and implement successful private clouds with OpenStack

This guide is written to target individuals who want to design OpenStack clouds and lead their implementation. The target group can be cloud architects who are in system engineering, product management or enterprise architecture.

By following the book, you will learn:

• How to build a complex OpenStack lab deployment
• How to do the documentation for the architecture teams in the organization
• Gain familiarity with the OpenStack components.
• How to apply Agile configuration management techniques to deploy OpenStack
• Using the enterprise security guidelines in your OpenStack deployments
• Build a product roadmap that delivers functionality quickly to the users of your platform
• How to integrate OpenStack with your organization’s identity management, provisioning, and billing systems
• Build a powerful virtual environment for users to interact with

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11. Common OpenStack Deployments: Real-World Examples for Systems Administrators and Engineers

Common OpenStack Deployments is a well-rated book that will take you through the whole concept of OpenStack and let you master its internals. Elizabeth Joseph and Matthew Fischer, the authors of this excellent learning material, have provided content on deploying OpenStack on virtual and physical servers.

From real-world examples, IT professionals, including system administrators and engineers, will gain practical experience and prepare to address any challenges they face in the OpenStack cloud platform. Dive deep into this book, and understand why OpenStack attracts many organizations and individuals. Learn from the author’s experience on how to address cost, data sovereignty, and security issues. Note that the introductions to new topics in the book are reader-friendly, well-explained, and detailed to help you get familiar with OpenStack terms and concepts. Joseph and Fisher will take you through real deployment scenarios while providing advice and expert tips to enhance your OpenStack skillset.

Common OpenStack Deployments book coverage includes:

• Understand Customizing, deploying, and scaling OpenStack in any environment
• Learn how to build single-server test deployments with DevStack quickly
• Tips on making the right networking decisions for any OpenStack deployment
• How to manually install Nova compute, Glance image storage, Keystone identity, and Neutron networking
• Explore metering clouds with Ceilometer
• Master setting up controllers and compute nodes
• Steps on deploying private compute clouds with Puppet
• How to implement block and object storage clouds
• Learn provisioning on bare metal with OpenStack Ironic
• Understand controlling containers with OpenStack Magnum
• Take note of troubleshooting OpenStack: error messages, logs, configuration problems,  tools, Puppet debugging, and more
• Step-by-step virtualized reference deployment using KVM/QEMU on Ubuntu

12. Learning OpenStack Networking

OpenStack cloud platform offers tools and services necessary when building and managing public and cloud services. With OpenStack, you can work or create virtualized resources, including storage, virtual machines, or storage on a large scale. Also, this cloud platform portrays more benefits and has acquired a significant community since its launch in 2010. If you are wondering how to gain skills on this open-source cloud platform, don’t worry; the Learning OpenStack Networking book is here to save your day. OpenStack Networking (Neutron) is essential as it allows users to create and manage virtual networking infrastructure, including routers, subnets, and more.

James Denton will take you through the basics, such as the physical network requirements; then, as you proceed reading, he will guide you on installing OpenStack and its usage in building a scalable and efficient cloud platform. James aims to ensure you have gained extensive knowledge on building a network infrastructure for your public or private cloud with OpenStack Neutron. You will jump straight into advanced topics such as virtual load balancers, distributed virtual routers, security groups, and more from the unique content. Buy a copy of this book and get ready to discover the potential of virtual networking in OpenStack when implementing a variety of cloud network architectures.

Some of the topics covered include the Learning OpenStack Networking book:

• How to get familiar with Neutron constructs, including agents and plugins
• Building foundational Neutron resources to provide connectivity to instances
• How to work with legacy Neutron routers and troubleshoot traffic through them
• Exploring high-availability routing capabilities utilizing Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
• Creating and managing load balancers and associated components
• How to manage security groups as a method of securing traffic to and from instances

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Conclusion

In case your organization has come to the point where it needs a private cloud, the above resources are what you are looking for to design and deploy your infrastructure. You can check out some of our OpenStack deployment guides as well below:

• Installation of Openstack three Node Cluster on CentOS Part One
• How To Deploy OpenStack Cloud on CentOS With Packstack RDO
• How To Install and Configure OpenStack Client on Linux
• OpenStack Deployment on Ubuntu with DevStack