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Deployment

Updated Sep 15, 2023 ·

Overview​

OpenStack can be installed in many ways depending on your goals, from full production deployments to small lab setups. Each method has its pros and cons.

  • Manual installation

    • Detailed and provides full control
    • Time-consuming but teaches inner workings of OpenStack

  • Automated deployments

    • Simplifies deployment
    • Reduce errors and save time
    • Suitable for production environments

Vendor tools provide graphical interfaces, professional support, and advanced automation, which makes them well suited for production deployments.

Manual Installation​

Manual installation requires careful planning and multiple steps across nodes.

  1. You need to plan for the following:

    • Number of control, compute, and storage nodes
    • High availability setup
    • Network and storage configuration

  2. After planning, the next steps are:

    • Configure physical networking
    • Install the OS on each node

  3. Deploy the infrastructure components:

    • Network and protocol software, web servers
    • SQL database with clustering if needed
    • Message queues and caching services
    • Additional components like Etcd for newer releases

  4. Once the infrastructure is ready, OpenStack services are installed:

    • Keystone (identity service) first
    • Then image, compute, network, and block storage services
    • Horizon dashboard for easier management

  5. Final configuration and validation is performed:

    • Configure service .conf / .ini files
    • Set database, message queue, and authentication details
    • Populate service databases and start services
    • Verify services and basic functionality

Automated Deployment Tools​

Automated tools use scripts, containers, or orchestration to simplify OpenStack installation.

Kolla​

Kolla packages OpenStack services in Docker containers and provides scripts for deployment:

  • Kolla-Ansible

    • Services runs on Docker runtime, installed on Linux
    • Uses Ansible playbooks for service provisioning
    • Includes features like HAProxy to loadbalance API traffic
    • Uses Galera for SQL database high availability

  • Kolla Kubernetes

    • Services runs containers in Kubernetes
    • Uses Ansible to configure services
    • Uses Helm for orchestration

You need basic knowledge of Docker and Ansible for operations, but initial deployment is straightforward.

OpenStack Ansible​

OpenStack Ansible installs many services in Linux containers (LXC) or systemd units:

  • Uses Ansible roles for installing optional services
  • Comes with reasonable default configurations
  • Provides extensive operations and troubleshooting guides

Workflow:

  1. Prepare deployment host with Ansible:

    • Install software
    • Clone the OSA repo

  2. Configure target nodes, network, storage, and SSH:

    • Install software
    • Configure SSH
    • Configure network and storage settings

  3. Edit OpenStack Ansible configuration files:

    • Add or remove OpenStack services
    • Configure credentials

  4. Run scripts to deploy services:

    • setup_hosts.yml
    • setup_infrastructure.yml
    • setup_openstack.yml

  5. Verify the OpenStack deployment:

    • List LXC containers
    • Run CLI commands inside the utility containers
    • Login to Horizon

OpenStack-on-OpenStack (OOO)​

OpenStack-on-OpenStack uses a small “undercloud” OpenStack to provision the main OpenStack (“overcloud”) nodes:

  • Undercloud runs bare metal service (Ironic)
  • Overcloud nodes are deployed via orchestration templates
  • Adding or upgrading nodes is simplified using Ironic and orchestration

This approach is production-ready and simplifies scaling and upgrades.

Development and POC Deployments​

For learning or proof-of-concept deployments, the following lightweight tools are available:

  • DevStack

    • Installs OpenStack quickly from source
    • Supports single-node or multi-node setups
    • Ideal for experimentation

  • Packstack

    • Red Hat community tool
    • Easy installation on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora
    • Supports adding compute nodes to single-node setups

These tools allow you to explore OpenStack features without heavy infrastructure.