The previous chapter should have given you a good understanding of OpenStack Swift's architecture. This chapter is meant for IT administrators who want to install OpenStack Swift. The version discussed here is the Juno release of OpenStack. Installation of Swift has several steps and requires careful planning before beginning the process.
A simple installation consists of installing all Swift components on a single node, and a complex installation consists of installing Swift on several proxy server nodes and storage server nodes. The number of storage nodes can be in the order of thousands across multiple zones and regions. Depending on your installation, you need to decide on the number of proxy server nodes and storage server nodes that you will configure. This chapter demonstrates a manual installation process; advanced users may want to use utilities such as Puppet or Chef to simplify the process.