Installing, configuring, and maintaining OpenStack clouds can be an arduous task when performed by hand. Many third-party vendors offer downloadable cloud software based on OpenStack that provide deployment and management strategies using Chef, Puppet, Fuel, Ansible, and other tools.
This chapter will step you through a package-based installation of the following OpenStack components on the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS operating system:
- OpenStack Identity (Keystone)
- OpenStack Image Service (Glance)
- OpenStack Compute (Nova)
- OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder)
- OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon)
Note
The installation process documented within this chapter is based on the OpenStack Installation Guide for Ubuntu 14.04 found at http://docs.openstack.org/. If you wish to install OpenStack on a different operating system, the guides available at that site provide instructions to do so.
If you'd rather download a third-party cloud distribution based on OpenStack, try one of the following distributions:
- Rackspace Private Cloud at http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/private/
- Red Hat RDO at http://openstack.redhat.com/
- Mirantis OpenStack at http://software.mirantis.com/
Once installed, many of the concepts and examples used throughout this book should still apply to the preceding distributions, but may require extra effort to implement.
OpenStack components are intended to run on standard hardware that range from desktop machines to enterprise-grade servers. For optimal performance, the processors of the compute nodes must support hardware virtualization technologies, such as Intel's VT-x or AMD's AMD-v virtualization extensions.
This book assumes that OpenStack will be installed on physical hardware that meets the following minimum requirements:
|
Server |
Hardware Requirements |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
|
Controller node (runs API, network, volume, scheduler, and image services) |
|
While a single NIC can be used for all network traffic, that configuration is not addressed in this book |
|
Compute nodes (run virtual instances) |
|
While a single NIC can be used for all network traffic, that configuration is not addressed in this book |
While machines that fail to meet the minimum requirements may be capable of installation based on the documentation included here, these minimums have been defined to ensure a successful experience. Virtualization products, such as VirtualBox, may be used in lieu of physical hardware. However, they will require additional configuration to the environment and to OpenStack, which is outside the scope of this book.
OpenStack currently supports CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu. Each new release of OpenStack tends to support the current releases of these operating systems, with little regard to backward compatibility. This book assumes that the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server operating system has been installed on all hosts prior to the installation of OpenStack. You can find Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server at http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server.
In order to support all the Neutron features discussed in this book, the minimum kernel version recommended is 3.16.0-38.