Nova Concepts:
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/nova/nova.concepts.html

Nova’s lower level programming API’s:
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/nova/devref/index.html

Nova VM provisioning form OpenStack’s Training Guide:
There is also a writeup on Managing Volumes:
http://docs.openstack.org/training-guides/content/associate-computer-node.html

OpenStack Cloud Request Flow: Demonstration of the flow of REST API requests between key services that comprise the OpenStack Compute Use Case : Provision a Virtual Machine for OpenStack Essex release.
http://www.slideshare.net/mirantis/openstack-cloud-request-flow

VM Creation process - 2014
http://prosuncsedu.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/vm-creation-process-in-openstack-nova/

Internals of launching an instance in OpenStack Nova:
http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/openstack-nova-internals-of-instance-launching/

Swift Developer documentation:
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/

Authentication System for Swift:
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/swift/overview_auth.html

Storage Components Swift and Cinder from developerWorks:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-openstack-swift-cinder/index.html?ca=dat