Install OpenStack

Now that we’ve installed and configured MAAS and successfully deployed a Juju controller, it’s time to do some real work; use Juju to deploy OpenStack, the leading open cloud platform.

We have two options when installing OpenStack.

  1. Install and configure each OpenStack component separately. Adding Ceph, Compute, Swift, RabbitMQ, Keystone and Neutron in this way allows you to see exactly what Juju and MAAS are doing, and consequently, gives you a better understanding of the underlying OpenStack deployment.

  2. Use a bundle to deploy OpenStack with a single command. A bundle is an encapsulation of a working deployment, including all configuration, resources and references. It allows you to effortlessly recreate a deployment with a single command or share that deployment with other Juju users.

If this is your first foray into MAAS, Juju and OpenStack territory, we’d recommend starting with the first option. This will give you a stronger foundation for maintaining and expanding the default deployment. Our instructions for this option continue below.

Alternatively, jump to Deploying OpenStack from a bundle to learn about deploying as a bundle.

Important

Irrespective of install method, once the cloud is deployed, the following management practices related to charm versions and machine series are recommended:

  1. The entire suite of charms used to manage the cloud should be upgraded to the latest stable charm revision before any major change is made to the cloud (e.g. migrating to new charms, upgrading cloud services, upgrading machine series). See Charm upgrades for details.

  2. The Juju machines that comprise the cloud should all be running the same series (e.g. ‘xenial’ or ‘bionic’, but not a mix of the two). See Series upgrade for details.

Deploy the Juju controller

Previously, we tested our MAAS and Juju configuration by deploying a new Juju controller called maas-controller. You can check this controller is still operational by typing juju status. With the Juju controller running, the output will look similar to the following:

Model    Controller           Cloud/Region  Version
default  maas-controller-two  mymaas        2.2.1

App  Version  Status  Scale  Charm  Store  Rev  OS  Notes

Unit  Workload  Agent  Machine  Public address  Ports  Message

Machine  State  DNS  Inst id  Series  AZ

If you need to remove and redeploy the controller, use the following two commands:

juju kill-controller maas-controller
juju bootstrap --constraints tags=juju mymaas maas-controller

During the bootstrap process, Juju will create a model called default, as shown in the output from juju status above. Models act as containers for applications, and Juju’s default model is great for experimentation.

We’re going to create a new model called uos to hold our OpenStack deployment exclusively, making the entire deployment easier to manage and maintain.

To create a model called uos (and switch to it), simply type the following:

juju add-model uos

Deploy OpenStack

We’re now going to step through adding each of the various OpenStack components to the new model. Each application will be installed from the Charm store. We’ll be providing the configuration for many of the charms as a yaml file which we include as we deploy them.

Ceph OSD

We’re starting with the Ceph object storage daemon and we want to configure Ceph to use the second drive of a cloud node, /dev/sdb. Change this to match your own configuration if the device name on your system is different. The configuration is held in the file called ceph-osd.yaml:

ceph-osd:
  osd-devices: /dev/sdb

We’re going to deploy Ceph-OSD to each of the four cloud nodes we’ve already tagged with compute. The following command will import the settings above and deploy Ceph-OSD to each of the four nodes:

juju deploy --constraints tags=compute --config ceph-osd.yaml -n 4 ceph-osd

Note

If a message from a ceph-osd unit like “Non-pristine devices detected” appears in the output of juju status you will need to use actions zap-disk and add-disk that come with the ‘ceph-osd’ charm if you do in fact want to purge the disk of all data and signatures for use by Ceph.

In the background, Juju will ask MAAS to commission the nodes, powering them on and installing Ubuntu. Juju then takes over and installs the necessary packages for the required application.

Remember, you can check on the status of a deployment using the juju status command. To see the status of a single charm of application, append the charm name:

juju status ceph-osd

In this early stage of deployment, the output will look similar to the following:

Model  Controller       Cloud/Region  Version
uoa    maas-controller  mymaas        2.2-beta1

App       Version  Status   Scale  Charm     Store       Rev  OS      Notes
ceph-osd  10.2.6   blocked      4  ceph-osd  jujucharms  241  ubuntu

Unit         Workload  Agent  Machine  Public address   Ports  Message
ceph-osd/0   blocked   idle   0        192.168.100.113         Missing relation: monitor
ceph-osd/1*  blocked   idle   1        192.168.100.114         Missing relation: monitor
ceph-osd/2   blocked   idle   2        192.168.100.115         Missing relation: monitor
ceph-osd/3   blocked   idle   3        192.168.100.112         Missing relation: monitor

Machine  State    DNS              Inst id  Series  AZ       Message
0        started  192.168.100.113  fr36gt   xenial  default  Deployed
1        started  192.168.100.114  nnpab4   xenial  default  Deployed
2        started  192.168.100.115  a83gcy   xenial  default  Deployed
3        started  192.168.100.112  7gan3t   xenial  default  Deployed

Don’t worry about the ‘Missing relation’ messages. We’ll add the required relations in a later step. You also don’t have to wait for a deployment to finish before adding further applications to Juju. Errors will resolve themselves as applications are deployed and dependencies are met.

Nova Compute

We’re going use three machines to host the OpenStack Nova Compute application. The first will use the following configuration file, compute.yaml, while we’ll use the second and third to scale-out the same application to two other machines.

nova-compute:
  enable-live-migration: True
  enable-resize: True
  migration-auth-type: ssh
  virt-type: qemu

Type the following to deploy nova-compute to machine number 1:

juju deploy --to 1 --config compute.yaml nova-compute

And use the following commands to scale-out Nova Compute to machines 2 and 3:

juju add-unit --to 2 nova-compute
juju add-unit --to 3 nova-compute

As before, it’s worth checking juju status nova-compute output to make sure nova-compute has been deployed to three machines. Look for lines similar to these:

Machine  State    DNS              Inst id  Series  AZ       Message
1        started  192.168.100.117  7gan3t   xenial  default  Deployed
2        started  192.168.100.118  fr36gt   xenial  default  Deployed
3        started  192.168.100.119  nnpab4   xenial  default  Deployed

Note

The nova-compute charm is designed to support one image format type per application at any one time. Changing format (see charm option libvirt-image-backend) while existing instances are using the prior format will require manual image conversion for each instance. See bug LP #1826888.

Swift storage

The Swift-storage application is going to be deployed to the first machine (machine 0), and scaled across the other three with the following configuration file:

swift-storage:
  block-device: sdc
  overwrite: "true"

This example configuration points to block device /dev/sdc. Adjust according to your available hardware. In a production environment, avoid using a loopback device.

Here are the four deploy commands for the four machines:

juju deploy --to 0 --config swift-storage.yaml swift-storage
juju add-unit --to 1 swift-storage
juju add-unit --to 2 swift-storage
juju add-unit --to 3 swift-storage

Neutron networking

Next comes Neutron for OpenStack networking. We have just a couple of configuration options than need to be placed within neutron.yaml and we’re going to use this for two applications, neutron-gateway and neutron-api:

neutron-gateway:
  data-port: br-ex:eth1
neutron-api:
  neutron-security-groups: True

The data-port refers to a network interface that Neutron Gateway will bind to. In the above example it is eth1 and it should be an unused interface. In the MAAS web UI this interface must be given an IP mode of ‘Unconfigured’ (see MAAS documentation for guidance). Set all four nodes in this way to ensure that any node is able to accommodate Neutron.

Deploy neutron-gateway on machine 0 now:

juju deploy --to 0 --config neutron.yaml neutron-gateway

We’re going to colocate the Neutron API on machine 1 by using an LXD container. This is a great solution for both local deployment and for managing cloud instances.

We’ll also deploy Neutron OpenvSwitch:

juju deploy --to lxd:1 --config neutron.yaml neutron-api
juju deploy neutron-openvswitch

We’ve got to a stage where we can start to connect applications together. Juju’s ability to add these links, known as a relation in Juju, is one of its best features.

See Managing relationships in the Juju documentation for more information on relations.

Add the network relations with the following commands:

juju add-relation neutron-api neutron-gateway
juju add-relation neutron-api neutron-openvswitch
juju add-relation neutron-openvswitch nova-compute

There are still ‘Missing relations’ messages in the status output, leading to the status of some applications to be blocked. This is because there are many more relations to be added but they’ll resolve themselves automatically as we add them.

Percona cluster

The Percona XtraDB cluster application comes next, and like Neutron API above, we’re going to use LXD.

The following mysql.yaml is the only configuration we need:

mysql:
  max-connections: 20000

To deploy Percona alongside MySQL:

juju deploy --to lxd:0 --config mysql.yaml percona-cluster mysql

And there’s just a single new relation to add:

juju add-relation neutron-api mysql

Keystone

As Keystone handles OpenStack identity management and access, we’re going to use the following contents of keystone.yaml to set an admin password for OpenStack:

keystone:
  admin-password: openstack

We’ll use an LXD container on machine 3 to help balance the load a little. To deploy the application, use the following command:

juju deploy --to lxd:3 --config keystone.yaml keystone

Then add these relations:

juju add-relation keystone mysql
juju add-relation neutron-api keystone

RabbitMQ

We’re using RabbitMQ as the messaging server. Deployment requires no further configuration than running the following command:

juju deploy --to lxd:0 rabbitmq-server

This brings along four new connections that need to be made:

juju add-relation neutron-api rabbitmq-server
juju add-relation neutron-openvswitch rabbitmq-server
juju add-relation nova-compute:amqp rabbitmq-server
juju add-relation neutron-gateway:amqp rabbitmq-server:amqp

Nova Cloud Controller

This is the controller service for OpenStack, and includes the nova-scheduler, nova-api and nova-conductor services.

The following simple controller.yaml configuration file will be used:

nova-cloud-controller:
  network-manager: "Neutron"

To add the controller to your deployment, enter the following:

juju deploy --to lxd:2 --config controller.yaml nova-cloud-controller

Followed by these add-relation connections:

juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller:shared-db mysql:shared-db
juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller keystone
juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller:amqp rabbitmq-server:amqp
juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller neutron-gateway
juju add-relation neutron-api nova-cloud-controller
juju add-relation nova-compute nova-cloud-controller

OpenStack Dashboard

We’ll deploy the dashboard to another LXD container with a single command:

juju deploy --to lxd:3 openstack-dashboard

And a single relation:

juju add-relation openstack-dashboard:identity-service keystone:identity-service

Glance

For the Glance image service, deploy as follows:

juju deploy --to lxd:2 glance

Relations:

juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller glance
juju add-relation nova-compute glance
juju add-relation glance mysql
juju add-relation glance keystone
juju add-relation glance rabbitmq-server

Ceph monitor

For Ceph monitors (which monitor the topology of the Ceph deployment and manage the CRUSH map which is used by clients to read and write data) no additional configuration over the defaults provided is required, so deploy three units with this:

juju deploy --to lxd:1 ceph-mon
juju add-unit --to lxd:2 ceph-mon
juju add-unit --to lxd:3 ceph-mon

With these additional relations:

juju add-relation ceph-osd ceph-mon
juju add-relation nova-compute ceph-mon
juju add-relation glance ceph-mon

Cinder

For Cinder block storage, use the following cinder.yaml file:

cinder:
  glance-api-version: 2
  block-device: None

And deploy with this:

juju deploy --to lxd:1 --config cinder.yaml cinder

Relations:

juju add-relation nova-cloud-controller cinder
juju add-relation cinder mysql
juju add-relation cinder keystone
juju add-relation cinder rabbitmq-server
juju add-relation cinder:image-service glance:image-service
juju add-relation cinder ceph-mon

Swift proxy

Swift also needs a unique identifier, best generated with the uuid command.

The uuid command on Ubuntu is in the uuid package (sudo apt-get install uuid) and it is best to produce a version 4 uuid, which is based on random numbers, rather than a version 1 which is based on the MAC address of a network card and a timer.

Generate the uuid by running:

uuid -v 4

The output UUID is used for the swift-hash value in the swift-proxy.yaml configuration file:

swift-proxy:
  zone-assignment: auto
  swift-hash: "a1ee9afe-194c-11e7-bf0f-53d662bc4339"

Use the following command to deploy:

juju deploy --to lxd:0 --config swift-proxy.yaml swift-proxy

These are its two relations:

juju add-relation swift-proxy swift-storage
juju add-relation swift-proxy keystone

NTP

The final component we need to deploy is a Network Time Protocol client, to keep everything in time. This is added with the following simple command:

juju deploy ntp

This last add-relation command finishes all the connections we need to make. It will add an ntp unit alongside each of the four ceph-osd units:

juju add-relation ceph-osd ntp

All that’s now left to do is wait on the output from juju status to show when everything is ready (everything turns green, if your terminal support colour).

Test OpenStack

After everything has deployed and the output of juju status settles, you can check to make sure OpenStack is working by logging into the Horizon dashboard.

The quickest way to get the IP address for the dashboard is with the following command:

juju status --format=yaml openstack-dashboard | grep public-address | awk '{print $2}'

The dashboard URL then becomes:

http://<ip-address>/horizon

On the resulting web page you will be able to log in with these default credentials:

  • Domain: admin_domain

  • User Name: admin

  • Password: openstack

You should then see something similar to the following:

Horizon dashboard

Next steps

Congratulations, you’ve successfully deployed a working OpenStack environment using both Juju and MAAS. The next step is to configure OpenStack for use within a production environment.