# Welcome to Watcher documentation

OpenStack Watcher provides a flexible and scalable resource optimization service for multi-tenant OpenStack-based clouds. Watcher provides a complete optimization loop—including everything from a metrics receiver, complex event processor and profiler, optimization processor and an action plan applier. This provides a robust framework to realize a wide range of cloud optimization goals, including the reduction of data center operating costs, increased system performance via intelligent virtual machine migration, increased energy efficiency and more!

Watcher project consists of several source code repositories:

- watcher - is the main repository. It contains code for Watcher API server, Watcher Decision Engine and Watcher Applier.

- python-watcherclient - Client library and CLI client for Watcher.

- watcher-dashboard - Watcher Horizon plugin.

The documentation provided here is continually kept up-to-date based on the latest code, and may not represent the state of the project at any specific prior release.

- System Architecture
  - Overview
  - Components
  - Data model
  - Sequence diagrams
  - State Machine diagrams
- Contribution Guide
  - So You Want to Contribute…
  - Set up a development environment manually
  - Set up a development environment via DevStack
  - Developer Testing
  - Rally job
  - Chronological Release Liaison Guide
- Install Guide
  - Infrastructure Optimization service overview
  - Install and configure
  - Verify operation
  - Next steps
- Administrator Guide
  - Installing API behind mod_wsgi
  - Guru Meditation Reports
  - Policies
  - Strategies
  - Actions
  - Datasources
  - Notifications in Watcher
  - Concurrency
- User Guide
  - Ways to install Watcher
  - Watcher User Guide
  - Audit using Aodh alarm
  - Using Continuous Audit
- Configuration Guide
  - Configuring Watcher
  - watcher.conf
- Plugin Guide
  - Create a third-party plugin for Watcher
  - Build a new action
  - Build a new cluster data model collector
  - Build a new goal
  - Build a new planner
  - Build a new scoring engine
  - Build a new optimization strategy
  - Available Plugins
- Integrations
  - Integration Status Matrix
- Watcher Manual Pages
  - watcher-api
  - watcher-applier
  - watcher-db-manage
  - watcher-decision-engine
  - watcher-status

- API Reference
- Watcher API Microversion History
- Glossary

this page last updated: 2026-04-01 21:51:00

Except where otherwise noted, this document is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. See all OpenStack Legal Documents.

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