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 OpenStack service provides object storage with high durability through replication? → Swift
5. Which OpenStack service manages bare-metal provisioning? → Ironic
6. Which OpenStack service is used for secret management, such as storing encryption keys and certificates? → Barbican
7. In OpenStack, what is the role of the 'nova-scheduler' component? → Selecting the compute host for a new instance
8. Which network technique enables communication between hosts that are not physically close to one another? → Virtual Local Area Network
9. Cinder handles block storage for OpenStack, while Swift handles object storage. → TRUE
10. Which OpenStack service provides object storage with eventual consistency? → Swift
11. Which command lists all available Nova flavors in OpenStack? → nova flavor-list
12. What is the purpose of the Cinder 'transfer' feature? → Transferring ownership of a volume from one project to another
13. Which Cinder backend driver is commonly used for local LVM-based block storage? → cinder.volume.drivers.lvm.LVMVolumeDriver
14. Which OpenStack CLI command uploads a local disk image to Glance? → openstack image create --file
15. In Swift, what does the term 'consistency' refer to? → Swift uses eventual consistency where replicas sync asynchronously
16. Which services does Glance offer? → Image management
17. Which OpenStack service provides shared filesystem storage (NFS/CIFS) as a service? → Manila
18. In OpenStack, what does 'live migration' require that 'cold migration' does not? → Shared storage or block migration support between compute hosts
19. What is the purpose of a Glance 'image property' (metadata)? → Storing key-value pairs that describe the image and influence scheduler behavior
20. Which OpenStack component manages the lifecycle of VM images before they are launched? → Glance
21. What part of OpenStack offers identity services? → Keystone
22. What command checks the current status and events of a deployed Heat stack? → openstack stack show
23. What is the purpose of the 'get_attr' intrinsic function in Heat? → To retrieve an attribute value from a resource defined in the template
24. In Neutron, what is a 'router' used for? → Connecting two or more networks and providing gateway functionality
25. Which OpenStack Load Balancer as a Service (LBaaS) project replaced the older Neutron LBaaS? → Octavia
26. What is a Nova 'flavor' in OpenStack? → A hardware profile defining vCPUs, RAM, and disk size for VM instances
27. In OpenStack Neutron, what is a 'floating IP' used for? → Providing external/public connectivity to an instance
28. Which token format does modern Keystone (v3) use by default? → Fernet tokens
29. Which Neutron component acts as the L3 routing agent responsible for routing traffic between subnets? → neutron-l3-agent
30. Which Neutron plug-in mechanism uses software-defined networking (SDN) with virtual switches? → Open vSwitch (OVS) ML2 driver