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Tempest

Tempest is an OpenStack integration test suite (testing/QA) that validates interoperability and Application Programming Interface (API) correctness of a deployed OpenStack cloud against the project’s documented interfaces and expected behaviors.

  • Comprehensive integration test suite for multiple OpenStack services (testing/QA)
  • Validation of OpenStack Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs, including positive and negative test coverage (API testing)
  • Pluggable tests for OpenStack components such as compute, image, identity, volume, and networking (cloud infrastructure)
  • Configurable test runs against live OpenStack deployments, including public, private, and Continuous Integration (CI) environments (dev/test automation)
  • Framework for projects and vendors to add and maintain their own service-specific integration tests (extensibility)

More About Tempest

Tempest is the integration test suite for OpenStack (testing/QA), designed to verify that a deployed OpenStack cloud behaves according to the official APIs and documented expectations. It runs against live OpenStack environments and provides a controlled way to evaluate conformance, detect regressions, and validate interoperability across multiple services.

The project focuses on API-level testing (API testing), exercising the REST interfaces of core OpenStack services such as compute, image, identity, block storage, and networking. Tempest includes positive tests that confirm correct behavior under expected conditions and negative tests that verify proper handling of error cases. These tests help operators and developers ensure that changes in configuration or code do not introduce incompatibilities with OpenStack’s published interfaces.

Tempest operates as a configurable test harness (test framework), using a configuration file that describes the target OpenStack deployment, including service endpoints, authentication credentials, and enabled features. Test runs execute against this live environment, which can be a development cloud, a CI-targeted deployment, or a production-like staging environment. The framework supports running full test suites or filtered subsets, such as smoke tests or service-specific test groups, which is useful for CI pipelines.

The project provides a plugin mechanism (extensibility framework) that allows individual OpenStack services or vendors to contribute additional test suites without modifying Tempest’s core. These plugins can introduce new API tests, scenario tests that span multiple services, or service-specific configuration. This structure aligns with OpenStack’s modular architecture (cloud infrastructure), where services interact through Keystone-based identity and versioned REST APIs.

In enterprise environments, Tempest is used in Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) systems (DevOps tooling) to test OpenStack deployments during upgrades, configuration changes, or custom development. It is also used in interoperability and conformance programs associated with OpenStack, where consistent test runs help verify that different deployments adhere to the same API behaviors. This supports multi-vendor ecosystems and reduces integration risk for organizations that rely on OpenStack-based clouds.

From a technical directory perspective, Tempest fits into the categories of integration testing frameworks, API conformance testing tools, and cloud infrastructure validation suites. It targets OpenStack-specific protocols and interfaces, relies on standard HTTP/HTTPS communication with JSON payloads, and is developed under the OpenInfra Foundation governance model as part of the broader OpenStack project ecosystem.

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