Updated August 29, 2026
OpenStack is a free cloud computing software platform deployed as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The software was licensed under Apache License 2.0. It was purely written in the Python Programming Language. The initial release of OpenStack was in the year 2010. Cross-platform operating systems are supported. For clients or customers to use the services as IaaS, it offers virtual servers and resources. Free public and private cloud services are provided by OpenStack. OpenStack has various service components, such as Networking, Computing, Block Storage, Dashboard, web workflows, databases, messaging, DNS services, upgrades, and long-term support services. OpenStack offers various cloud services, including Public, Private, on-premises, and appliance-based.
Now, if you are looking for a job related to OpenStack, you must prepare for the 2026 OpenStack Interview Questions. Every interview is indeed different depending on the job profile. Here, we have prepared the critical OpenStack Interview Questions and Answers to help you succeed in your interview.
OpenStack Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers
This 2026 OpenStack Interview Questions article will present the 10 most important and frequently asked OpenStack interview questions. These questions are divided into two parts as follows:
Part 1 – OpenStack Interview Questions (Basic)
This first part covers basic OpenStack Interview Questions and Answers.
Q1. What is OpenStack, and explain its uses?
Answer:
OpenStack is the most popular open-source cloud computing platform that provides most customers with virtual machine resources and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) services. It captures the market in the future of cloud computing. You can access and manage all OpenStack services through the GUI-based user interface. The several benefits of OpenStack Cloud Computing are mentioned below –
- OpenStack boosts the business by eliminating maintenance services.
- Improves agility and high availability.
- Improves Efficiency and provides cloud infrastructure.
- It provides excellent services for on-demand infrastructure services within no time.
- With OpenStack, you can build your own data center, giving you more control over the data you manage and control.
- It enables rapid development.
- OpenStack boosts high scalability and effective resource utilization.
Q2. What are the different key components involved in the OpenStack Cloud Computing platform?
Answer:
The different key components available with the OpenStack Cloud Computing platform are Keystone, Neutron, Nova, Cinder, Horizon, Swift, Heat, Ceilometer, and Glance. We explain the different key components involved in the Cloud Computing platform below:–
- Keystone – It provides the identity service for all cloud users and various OpenStack services. It is also a way to provide individual cloud users with access to other available services.
- Neutron – It enables the networking functionality of Virtual Machines. It also computes nodes and Controller Nodes in its architectural model.
- Nova – It controls virtual machine instances at the compute level and performs various computing tasks at the hypervisor or compute node level.
- Cinder – Usually, Chef and Scale IO integrate with it to enable a block storage facility that provides block storage services to the Compute and Controller nodes.
- Horizon – It enables the GUI (Graphical User Interface) service based on the GUI Admin mode and efficiently performs day-to-day operational tasks.
- Swift – It enables the object storage functionality, which provides Glance images on the object storage. In contrast, you can integrate the external storage Scale IO with the Glance Services, allowing it to function as object storage.
- Heat – It enables the orchestration service functionality by using the Heat admin service or functionality. It can efficiently utilize the Virtual Machines as Stack IO, scaling in and out as required by the stack.
- Ceilometer – It enables billing services and telemetry services.
- Glance – It enables Cloud Image services by utilizing Glance admin services to upload and download the cloud images.
- Placement – Tracks and manages the inventory and allocation of resource providers, helping Nova determine where workloads can be placed based on available resources.
- Octavia – Provides Load Balancing as a Service (LBaaS), allowing applications to distribute traffic across multiple backend servers.
- Manila – It is a shared file-system service, allowing users to create and manage shared file-system resources.
- Barbican – It provides secure storage and management of secrets, such as encryption keys, certificates, and credentials.
- Ironic – Provides bare-metal provisioning, allowing OpenStack to deploy and manage physical servers instead of only virtual machines.
Let us move to the next OpenStack Interview Questions.
Q3. What are the different services run in the controller mode of the OpenStack cloud architecture?
Answer:
The different types of services run on the OpenStack Cloud computing controller mode are as follows –
- Identity Services such as Keystone.
- Nova Services, such as Nova APIs
- Imaging Services such as Glance
- Nova Schedulers
- Nova Database Block and the Object Services
- Ceilometer Services
- MariaDB or MySQL database services and RabbitMQ messaging Services
- Networking Management services such as Neutron
- Networking agents and Orchestration Services such as Heat
- Placement Service: Placement
- API Telemetry Services
Q4. What are the three different components of the modular OpenStack architecture model?
Answer:
These are the basic OpenStack interview questions. Please find below the different tables that OpenStack supports. We explain the three different types of modules in the OpenStack architecture below: OpenStack Compute, OpenStack Object Storage, and Image Service.
- OpenStack Compute – The OpenStack Compute manages more extensive networks of virtual machine instances.
- OpenStack Object Storage – It provides Object Storage and Block Storage model support services.
- Image Service– You can use the Image Service to discover delivery services, register services, and access virtual disk images.
Q5. What are the different endpoint types of OpenStack Cloud Computing Services?
Answer:
The different types of endpoints in the OpenStack Cloud Computing Services are as follows –
- Public type endpoint
- Admin type endpoint and
- Internal type endpoint.
Part 2 – OpenStack Interview Questions (Advanced)
Let us now have a look at the advanced OpenStack Interview Questions.
Q6. What are the different nodes available in OpenStack?
Answer:
There are two types of nodes.
- Compute Node
- Network Node
Q7. What is a hypervisor, and what are the different types of Hypervisors supported by the OpenStack Cloud?
Answer:
Firmware or computer hardware uses the Hypervisor to provide virtual machine instances for cloud computing. The Hypervisor has several types, including KVM, VMware, Containers, Xen, and Hyper-V, which we explain below:-
- KVM – This Hypervisor is a virtualization layer in the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).
- VMware – This Hypervisor is of type ESXi Hypervisor and an enterprise-class version hypervisor.
- Containers – This Hypervisor is a cloud-native type hypervisor
- Xen– This Hypervisor is a microkernel design that provides services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute the same computer hardware processes in concurrent mode.
- Hyper-V – This Hypervisor, also called Windows Server Virtualization, creates virtualized machines on Windows OS x86 – 64.
Let us move to the next OpenStack Interview Questions.
Q8. What is CPU Pinning in OpenStack Cloud Computing?
Answer:
CPU Pinning reserves the physical CPU cores for virtual machines, as specified by the requirement. It is also called the process of isolating the CPU.
Q9. What is the OpenFlow rule in OpenStack Cloud Networking?
Answer:
These are the most frequently asked OpenStack interview questions. OpenFlow rule is defined as the data packet’s reaching path from source to destination in cloud computing.
Q10. What are the different Networking Options available in OpenStack?
Answer:
Networking options available in OpenStack are as follows:-
- VLAN Network Manager
- Flat Network Manager
- Flat DHCP Network Manager
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