OpenStack: host aggregates, flavors, and availability zones

OpenStack uses terms like host aggregates, flavors, and availability zones in unique ways that can lead to confusion. Host aggregates are used by administrators to group hardware according to various properties such as RAM size, while availability zones are customer-facing and usually partitioned geographically. Flavors are the customer-accessible subset of host aggregates, defining specific public flavors from which clients can choose to run their virtual machines. Understanding these distinctions is crucial for both end users and administrators when using OpenStack services.