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. In OpenStack, what is the role of the 'nova-scheduler' component? → Selecting the compute host for a new instance
7. Which network technique enables communication between hosts that are not physically close to one another? → Virtual Local Area Network
8. Cinder handles block storage for OpenStack, while Swift handles object storage. → TRUE
9. What is the purpose of the Cinder 'transfer' feature? → Transferring ownership of a volume from one project to another
10. Which OpenStack CLI command uploads a local disk image to Glance? → openstack image create --file
11. In Swift, what does the term 'consistency' refer to? → Swift uses eventual consistency where replicas sync asynchronously
12. Which services does Glance offer? → Image management
13. Which OpenStack service provides shared filesystem storage (NFS/CIFS) as a service? → Manila
14. What is the purpose of a Glance 'image property' (metadata)? → Storing key-value pairs that describe the image and influence scheduler behavior
15. What part of OpenStack offers identity services? → Keystone
16. In Neutron, what is a 'router' used for? → Connecting two or more networks and providing gateway functionality
17. What is a Nova 'flavor' in OpenStack? → A hardware profile defining vCPUs, RAM, and disk size for VM instances
18. Which Neutron component acts as the L3 routing agent responsible for routing traffic between subnets? → neutron-l3-agent
19. Which Neutron plug-in mechanism uses software-defined networking (SDN) with virtual switches? → Open vSwitch (OVS) ML2 driver
20. What Horizon panel allows an admin to manage all tenant resources in OpenStack? → Admin panel
21. What file format does OpenStack Heat use to define infrastructure templates? → YAML or JSON
22. What happens to an instance's ephemeral disk when a Nova instance is terminated? → It is permanently deleted along with the instance
23. What is Keystone federation used for? → Allowing users from external identity providers (IdPs) to authenticate to OpenStack
24. In Keystone's RBAC model, what is a 'role assignment'? → Granting a role to a user or group on a specific project or domain
25. What is the purpose of 'scoped tokens' in Keystone v3? → Tokens bound to a specific project or domain, limiting their authorization scope
26. Which Neutron feature provides load balancing capabilities as a service? → LBaaS (Octavia)
27. What OpenStack command boots a new instance named 'web01' using a specific image and flavor? → openstack server create --image --flavor web01
28. What is a Neutron 'provider network' in OpenStack? → A network connected directly to the physical network infrastructure
29. In Cinder, what is a 'volume'? → A detachable persistent block device that can be attached to a VM
30. What mechanism does OpenStack use to provide metadata to running instances? → The nova-metadata API accessible at 169.254.169.254