Getting started, learning more, or even just finding the solution to your particular problem within the OpenStack universe can be quite an undertaking. Whether you're a developer or an operator, it can be hard to keep up with the rapid pace of development of various OpenStack projects and how to use them. The good news is that there are a number of resources to help you out, including the official documentation, a number of third-party OpenStack certification and training programs, and community-authored tutorials.

Here at Opensource.com, every month we put together a list of the best tutorials, how-tos, guides, and tips to help you keep up with what's going in OpenStack. Check out our favorites from this month.

If you've ever used ownCloud as a file sharing solution, either personally or for your company, you know just how versatile it is in terms of setting up storage backends. Did you know that among those options is the OpenStack Swift object storage platform? Learn how to setup ownCloud to work with OpenStack Swift in this simple tutorial.

Just getting started with exploring OpenStack, and want to make a go at installing it locally? Here's a quick guide to setting up Devstack in a virtual machine, along with getting the Horizon dashboard working so that you can have a visual interface with your test cloud.

Ready to take the next step and install OpenStack in a server environment? Here's how to deploy the RDO distribution of OpenStack onto a single server using Ansible.

Once you're running applications in your OpenStack cloud, you need some way to keep track of performance and any issues that pop up on each server. David Wahlstrom takes a look at 6 easy-to-use tools for monitoring applications on your virtual servers.

If you're an upstream OpenStack developer, you spend a good amount of time on IRC. It's where both weekly meetings and a lot of casual conversations take place. But we can't all be online 24/7. Here's a handy guide from Steve Martinelli about how to set up a ZNC bouncer to keep an eye on IRC conversations when you're away from your computer.

The OpenStack Health dashboard is a quick and easy way to see what's going on in the OpenStack continuous integration environment. The dashboard makes it easy to see how many jobs are being running in any given time period, and what the failure rate for tests within those jobs are. Learn more about how it works in this explainer article.

Even for networking experts, occasional speed bumps happen when managing virtual networks in OpenStack. Arie Bregman takes us through some of the most common problems with OpenStack's Neutron networking project configuration and how to go about troubleshooting and solving the issues.

That's it for this time around; be sure to check out our complete collection of OpenStack tutorials for more great resources. Did we miss one of your favorites? Let us know below in the comments.