The OpenStack Image Service provides discovery, registration and delivery services for disk and server images. The ability to copy or snapshot a server image and immediately store it away is a powerful capability of the OpenStack cloud operating system. Stored images can be used as a template to get new servers up and running quickly—and more consistently if you are provisioning multiple servers—than installing a server operating system and individually configuring additional services. It can also be used to store and catalog an unlimited number of backups.

The Image Service can store disk and server images in a variety of back-ends, including OpenStack Object Storage. The Image Service API provides a standard REST interface for querying information about disk images and lets clients stream the images to new servers.