Mistral Client Installation

To install python-mistralclient, it is required to have pip (in most cases). Make sure that pip is installed. Then type:

$ pip install python-mistralclient

Or, if it is needed to install python-mistralclient from master branch, type:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/openstack/python-mistralclient.git

After python-mistralclient is installed you will see command mistral in your environment.

Configure Authentication Against Keystone

If Keystone is used for authentication in Mistral, then the environment should have auth variables:

$ export OS_AUTH_URL=http://<Keystone_host>:5000/v2.0
$ export OS_TENANT_NAME=tenant
$ export OS_USERNAME=admin
$ export OS_PASSWORD=secret
$ export OS_MISTRAL_URL=http://<Mistral host>:8989/v2
  ( optional, by default URL=http://localhost:8989/v2)

and in the case when you are authenticating against keystone over https:

$ export OS_CACERT=<path_to_ca_cert>

Note

In client, we can use both Keystone auth versions - v2.0 and v3. But server supports only v3.

You can see the list of available commands by typing:

$ mistral --help

To make sure Mistral client works, type:

$ mistral workbook-list

Configure Authentication Against Keycloak

Mistral also supports authentication against Keycloak server via OpenID Connect protocol. In order to use it on the client side the environment should look as follows:

$ export MISTRAL_AUTH_TYPE=keycloak-oidc
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=https://<Keycloak-server-host>:<Keycloak-server-port>/auth
$ export OS_TENANT_NAME=my_keycloak_realm
$ export OS_USERNAME=admin
$ export OS_PASSWORD=secret
$ export OPENID_CLIENT_ID=my_keycloak_client
$ export OPENID_CLIENT_SECRET=my_keycloak_client_secret
$ export OS_MISTRAL_URL=http://<Mistral host>:8989/v2
 (optional, by default URL=http://localhost:8989/v2)

Note

Variables OS_TENANT_NAME, OS_USERNAME, OS_PASSWORD are used for both Keystone and Keycloak authentication. OS_TENANT_NAME in case of Keycloak needs to correspond a Keycloak realm. Unlike Keystone, Keycloak requires to register a client that access some resources (Mistral server in our case) protected by Keycloak in advance. For this reason, OPENID_CLIENT_ID and OPENID_CLIENT_SECRET variables should be assigned with correct values as registered in Keycloak.

Similar to Keystone OS_CACERT variable can also be added to provide a certification for SSL/TLS verification:

$ export OS_CACERT=<path_to_ca_cert>

In order to disable SSL/TLS certificate verification MISTRALCLIENT_INSECURE variable needs to be set to True:

$ export MISTRALCLIENT_INSECURE=True

Targeting Non-preconfigured Clouds

Mistral is capable of executing workflows on external OpenStack clouds, different from the one defined in the mistral.conf file in the keystone_authtoken section. (More detail in the Configuration and Policy Guide).

For example, if the mistral server is configured to authenticate with the http://keystone1.example.com cloud and the user wants to execute the workflow on the http://keystone2.example.com cloud.

The mistral.conf will look like:

[keystone_authtoken]
www_authenticate_uri = http://keystone1.example.com:5000/v3
...

The client side parameters will be:

$ export OS_AUTH_URL=http://keystone1.example.com:5000/v3
$ export OS_USERNAME=mistral_user
...
$ export OS_TARGET_AUTH_URL=http://keystone2.example.com:5000/v3
$ export OS_TARGET_USERNAME=cloud_user
...

Note

Every OS_* parameter has an OS_TARGET_* correspondent. For more detail, check out mistral –help

The OS_* parameters are used to authenticate and authorize the user with Mistral, that is, to check if the user is allowed to utilize the Mistral service. Whereas the OS_TARGET_* parameters are used to define the user that executes the workflow on the external cloud, keystone2.example.com.

Use cases

Authenticate in Mistral and execute OpenStack actions with different users

As a user of Mistral, I want to execute a workflow with a different user on the cloud.

Execute workflows on any OpenStack cloud

As a user of Mistral, I want to execute a workflow on a cloud of my choice.

Special cases

Using Mistral with zero OpenStack configuration:

With the targeting feature, it is possible to execute a workflow on any arbitrary cloud without additional configuration on the Mistral server side. If authentication is turned off in the Mistral server (Pecan’s auth_enable = False option in mistral.conf), there is no need to set the keystone_authtoken section. It is possible to have Mistral use an external OpenStack cloud even when it isn’t deployed in an OpenStack environment (i.e. no Keystone integration).

With this setup, the following call will return the heat stack list:

$ mistral \
    --os-target-auth-url=http://keystone2.example.com:5000/v3 \
    --os-target-username=testuser \
    --os-target-tenant=testtenant \
    --os-target-password="MistralRuleZ" \
    run-action heat.stacks_list

This setup is particularly useful when Mistral is used in standalone mode, when the Mistral service is not part of the OpenStack cloud and runs separately.

Note that only the OS-TARGET-* parameters enable this operation.