Openstack Essentials

OpenStack is a set of opensource software tools for building and managing cloud computing platforms for public and private clouds. Go to official documentation.

It can be managed from web application dashboard, command line tools, and from restful web services.

Overview of OpenStack services

Quick Start

Follow instructions from: https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/

1. Install Linux

Start with a clean and minimal install of a Linux system. DevStack attempts to support the two latest LTS releases of Ubuntu, Rocky Linux 9 and openEuler.

If you do not have a preference, Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) is the most tested, and will probably go the smoothest.

2. Add Stack User (optional)

DevStack should be run as a non-root user with sudo enabled (standard logins to cloud images such as “ubuntu” or “cloud-user” are usually fine).

If you are not using a cloud image, you can create a separate stack user to run DevStack with

sudo useradd -s /bin/bash -d /opt/stack -m stack

Ensure home directory for the stack user has executable permission for all, as RHEL based distros create it with 700 and Ubuntu 21.04+ with 750 which can cause issues during deployment.

sudo chmod +x /opt/stack

Since this user will be making many changes to your system, it should have sudo privileges:

echo "stack ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/stack
sudo -u stack -i

3. Download DevStack

git clone https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack
cd devstack

The devstack repo contains a script that installs OpenStack and templates for configuration files.

4. Create a local.conf

Create a local.conf file with four passwords preset at the root of the devstack git repo.

[[local|localrc]]
ADMIN_PASSWORD=secret
DATABASE_PASSWORD=$ADMIN_PASSWORD
RABBIT_PASSWORD=$ADMIN_PASSWORD
SERVICE_PASSWORD=$ADMIN_PASSWORD

This is the minimum required config to get started with DevStack. There is a sample local.conf file under the samples directory in the devstack repository.

Warning: Only use alphanumeric characters in your passwords, as some services fail to work when using special characters.

5. Start the install

./stack.sh

This will take 15 - 30 minutes, largely depending on the speed of your internet connection. Many git trees and packages will be installed during this process.

Last update: 2023-11-16
Created: November 16, 2023 18:46:16