OpenStack Cloud Application Development

6 Deploying the Application

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?                   

• An overview of the different virtualization technologies and how deployment varies between them
• A look at the orchestration tools available in OpenStack
• A discussion on the role of configuration management
• The minimum role of monitoring in a cloud deployment
• A dive into application scaling and elasticity
• An example of how to put all of this together and deploy a modern app in an OpenStack-driven system
• Considerations for updating and patching

Devops is a term you have probably heard of recently. It’s a description of someone (or a team of people) who tackles the issues of both developing an application and configuring/maintaining the environment for that application.

For years, the role of a server administrator has been quite different from that of an application programmer. Each role takes a pretty specific skillset, and a lot can be said about devops being a difficult compromise. The term however, could not be better suited to what it’s like to deploy applications in an OpenStack-driven environment.

When we talk about deploying an application to the cloud, it has a slightly different definition than what it has traditionally meant. Traditional deployments are often focused on deploying changes to an application, or on the initial deployment of a piece of software. OpenStack and other cloud-based technologies, however, make it possible to programmatically deploy software along with all of the servers, ...