OpenStack Networking offers the ability to create and manage different technologies found in a data center in a virtualized and programmable manner. If the built-in features and reference implementations are not enough, the pluggable architecture of OpenStack Networking allows for additional functionality to be provided by third-party commercial and open source vendors. The security requirements of the organization building the cloud as well as the use cases of the cloud, will ultimately dictate the physical layout and separation of services across the infrastructure nodes.
To successfully deploy Neutron and harness all it has to offer, it is important to have a strong understanding of core networking concepts. In this book, we will cover some fundamental network concepts around Neutron and build a foundation for deploying instances.
In the next chapter, we will begin a package-based installation of OpenStack on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS operating system. Topics covered include the installation, configuration, and verification of many core OpenStack projects, including Identity, Image, Dashboard, and Compute. The installation and configuration of base OpenStack Networking services, including the Neutron API, can be found in Chapter 3, Installing Neutron.