OpenStack Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield OpenStack facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. Which Nova scheduler filter ensures that a VM is placed on a host with enough RAM? → RamFilter
2. Which of the following is not a flavor included in the OpenStack default installation? → None of these
3. Which Glance API feature allows sharing an image with specific OpenStack projects? → Image members
4. Which network technique enables communication between hosts that are not physically close to one another? → Virtual Local Area Network
5. Cinder handles block storage for OpenStack, while Swift handles object storage. → TRUE
6. What is the purpose of the Cinder 'transfer' feature? → Transferring ownership of a volume from one project to another
7. Which OpenStack CLI command uploads a local disk image to Glance? → openstack image create --file
8. In Swift, what does the term 'consistency' refer to? → Swift uses eventual consistency where replicas sync asynchronously
9. Which services does Glance offer? → Image management
10. Which OpenStack service provides shared filesystem storage (NFS/CIFS) as a service? → Manila
11. What part of OpenStack offers identity services? → Keystone
12. What command checks the current status and events of a deployed Heat stack? → openstack stack show
13. What is the purpose of the 'get_attr' intrinsic function in Heat? → To retrieve an attribute value from a resource defined in the template
14. In Neutron, what is a 'router' used for? → Connecting two or more networks and providing gateway functionality
15. What is a Nova 'flavor' in OpenStack? → A hardware profile defining vCPUs, RAM, and disk size for VM instances
16. Which Neutron component acts as the L3 routing agent responsible for routing traffic between subnets? → neutron-l3-agent
17. Which Neutron plug-in mechanism uses software-defined networking (SDN) with virtual switches? → Open vSwitch (OVS) ML2 driver
18. What Horizon panel allows an admin to manage all tenant resources in OpenStack? → Admin panel
19. What file format does OpenStack Heat use to define infrastructure templates? → YAML or JSON
20. What happens to an instance's ephemeral disk when a Nova instance is terminated? → It is permanently deleted along with the instance
21. What is Keystone federation used for? → Allowing users from external identity providers (IdPs) to authenticate to OpenStack
22. What is the purpose of 'scoped tokens' in Keystone v3? → Tokens bound to a specific project or domain, limiting their authorization scope
23. Which Neutron feature provides load balancing capabilities as a service? → LBaaS (Octavia)
24. What OpenStack command boots a new instance named 'web01' using a specific image and flavor? → openstack server create --image --flavor web01
25. What is a Neutron 'provider network' in OpenStack? → A network connected directly to the physical network infrastructure
26. In Cinder, what is a 'volume'? → A detachable persistent block device that can be attached to a VM
27. Which Heat resource type is used to create a Nova compute instance? → OS::Nova::Server
28. What is a Keystone 'project' (formerly 'tenant') in OpenStack? → An organizational unit that groups resources and users for isolation and quota management
29. What is the Swift 'ring' responsible for? → Determining the placement of objects, containers, and accounts across storage nodes
30. Which Heat function is used to reference another resource within the same template? → get_resource