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Welcome to Synnefo’s documentation

_images/synnefo-logo.png
Synnefo is open source cloud software, used to create massively scalable IaaS clouds.
Synnefo uses Google Ganeti for the low level VM management part.
You can see Synnefo in action, powering GRNET’s ~okeanos public cloud service.
It is a collection of components (snf-*), most of them written in python, that are used as the building bricks to provide the following services:
_images/synnefo-overview.png

There are also the following tools:

Synnefo is designed to be as simple, scalable and production ready as possible. Furthermore, although it can be deployed in small configurations, its prime target is large installations.

All Synnefo components use an intuitive settings mechanism, that adds and removes settings dynamically as components are getting added or removed from a physical node. All settings are stored in a single location.

Synnefo General Architecture

The following graph shows the whole Synnefo architecture and how it interacts with multiple Ganeti clusters.

_images/synnefo-arch2.png

Synnefo also supports RADOS as an alternative storage backend for Files/Images/VM disks. Here is a graph that shows Synnefo running with two different storage backends.

Synnefo Guides

There are 4 guides for Synnefo.

The Quick Installation guide describes how to install Synnefo on a single node in less than 10 minutes using the snf-deploy tool. This kind of installation is targeted for testing and demo environments rather than production usage deployments. It is the perfect way, even for an inexperienced user to have the whole Synnefo stack up and running and allows for a quick preview of the basic Synnefo features.

The Admin’s installation guide describes how to install the whole Synnefo stack in just two physical nodes. This guide is useful to those interested in deploying Synnefo in large scale, as a starting point that will help them get familiar with the Synnefo components and overall architecture, as well as the interconnection between different services. This guide explains the whole procedure step by step, without the use of the snf-deploy tool. Anyone familiar with this guide, will be able to easily install Synnefo in a larger number of nodes too, or even expand the two node installation dynamically.

The Administrator’s Guide targets system administrators, who want to dive into more details and common tasks regarding Synnefo. For the experienced Synnefo administrator, there is also a section that describes how to do scale-out Synnefo deployments with corresponding examples. This targets large scale installations of Synnefo.

The Developer’s Guide targets developers, who want to build on top of Synnefo and so describes all the different types of interfaces Synnefo provides to the external world. Also documents all Synnefo external REST APIs.

Contact

You can contact the Synnefo team at the following mailing lists:

The official site is:

Indices and tables

Table Of Contents

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