Murano
Murano is an OpenStack application catalog (cloud application lifecycle management) project that enables modeling, deployment, and lifecycle operations of complex applications on OpenStack clouds through a declarative application definition and orchestration framework.
- Application catalog and repository for publishing, discovering, and deploying applications on OpenStack (cloud application lifecycle management).
- Declarative package format and MuranoPL language for describing application topology, configuration, and lifecycle (infrastructure as code).
- Automated provisioning and orchestration of application components on OpenStack services such as compute, networking, and storage (cloud orchestration).
- Integration with OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon) to provide a GUI-driven workflow for browsing, configuring, and deploying cataloged applications (cloud management UI).
- Support for custom packages, environments, and dynamic configuration to enable reusable enterprise application blueprints and service catalogs (platform automation).
More About Murano
Murano is an OpenStack project focused on providing an application catalog (cloud application lifecycle management) that allows operators and developers to publish, compose, and deploy applications on OpenStack-based clouds using a consistent, declarative model. It targets the problem of packaging complex multi-tier or service-oriented applications so they can be instantiated and managed in a repeatable way across environments.
At the core of Murano is an application packaging and description model (infrastructure as code) based on MuranoPL, a domain-specific language for describing application objects, dependencies, configuration, and lifecycle methods. Application packages typically include MuranoPL classes, UI definitions, and metadata that define how an application appears in the catalog, which parameters an operator or user must supply, and how resources are provisioned on the underlying OpenStack services.
Murano operates through concepts such as environments, services, and packages (cloud orchestration). An environment describes a logical application deployment context, within which one or more Murano services, representing application components, are instantiated. Murano uses its orchestration engine to translate these definitions into OpenStack Application Programming Interface (API) calls, interacting with services such as Nova for compute, Neutron for networking, and Cinder for block storage when provisioning virtual machines, network topologies, and volumes required by the application.
The project integrates with the OpenStack Dashboard, Horizon (cloud management UI), exposing an application catalog panel where users can browse available applications, review package attributes, and launch deployments via wizard-based forms. These forms are driven by the package’s UI definitions, allowing administrators to control what configuration parameters appear in the user interface while keeping the orchestration logic encapsulated in MuranoPL classes.
Murano is designed to be extensible (platform automation). Organizations can build custom packages that capture their internal application architectures, reference images, and configuration standards, publish them into a curated catalog, and reuse them across tenants or projects. The packaging mechanism allows composition of services, enabling blueprints that include application servers, databases, middleware, and ancillary services as a single deployable unit.
In enterprise and institutional environments, Murano is used to standardize how applications are provisioned on OpenStack clouds (cloud governance and compliance). By encapsulating deployment logic and configuration in packages, operators can enforce patterns, reduce manual provisioning steps, and provide self-service capabilities to development teams through the catalog. Within a technical taxonomy, Murano fits under cloud application lifecycle management, orchestration, and service catalog tooling for OpenStack-based private or public clouds.