OpenStack for Architects - Second Edition

Security zones within OpenStack

Within an OpenStack deployment, there exists a series of logical security zones. These are the basic areas of trust within the OpenStack platform that can be leveraged by applications, servers, networks, or users. These zones have an increasing level of trust and can be broken down into the following zones:

• Public zones: These zones within OpenStack are an entirely untrusted areas of a cloud's infrastructure. By convention, they are the most open and are thus called public. They are not necessarily open to the internet, but the area is open to being consumed by untrusted resources and on networks without the operators direct authority. This area requires encryption and other compensating controls in order ...