OpenStack Compute gives you a tool to orchestrate a cloud, including running instances, managing networks, and controlling access to the cloud through users and projects. The underlying open source project's name is Nova, and it provides the software that can control an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform. It is similar in scope to Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud Servers. OpenStack Compute does not include any virtualization software; rather it defines drivers that interact with underlying virtualization mechanisms that run on your host operating system, and exposes functionality over a web-based API.
