What is openStack Compute Node?

I am beginner in openStack. I've just created two Fedora 20 VM's.

In the first one I ran the openStack Controller, which started the web interface of openStack. And in the second I ran one openStack compute Node.

I don't know exactly what is a openStack compute node.

Thinking about VMware. I can relate the openStack Controller to the Vmware ESXI.

But I can't relate the compute node to anything.

Solution 1:

in relatively simple terms, a compute node is a server that can provide CPU, storage, network, and Memory resources through a hypervisor for VM's to be run on in the OPENSTACK cloud.

have a look here for a bit more detail http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/compute_nodes.html