About OpenStack-Ansible

OpenStack-Ansible (OSA) uses the Ansible IT automation engine to deploy an OpenStack environment on Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS.

For isolation and ease of maintenance, all OpenStack services are installed by default from source code into python virtual environments.

The services are further isolated via the use of LXC containers, but these are optional and a bare metal based installation is also possible.

The OpenStack-Ansible manifesto

All the design considerations (the container architecture, the ability to override any code, the network considerations, etc.) of this project are listed in our architecture reference.

Why choose OpenStack-Ansible?

  • Supports the major Linux distributions Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian.

  • Offers automation for upgrades between major OpenStack releases.

  • Uses OpenStack defaults for each of the project roles, and provides extra wiring and optimised configuration when combining projects together.

  • Does not implement its own DSL, and uses wherever possible Ansible directly. All the experience acquired using Ansible can be used in openstack-ansible, and the other way around.

  • You like to use reliable, proven technology. We try to run OpenStack with a minimum amount of packages that are not provided by distributions or the OpenStack community. Less dependencies and distribution tested software make the project more reliable.

  • You want to be able to select how to deploy on your hardware: deploy partially on metal, fully on metal, or fully in machine containers.

When not to choose OpenStack-Ansible?

  • If your company is already invested with other configuration management systems, Puppet or Chef, and does not want to use Ansible we recommend re-using your knowledge and experimenting with a different OpenStack deployment project.

  • You want to deploy OpenStack with 100% application containers. We currently support LXC containers, if you want to go 100% Docker, there are other projects in the OpenStack community that can help you.

  • You want to deploy OpenStack services from distribution packages (deb or rpm). Whilst there is some support for this, coverage of the services is incomplete and a lot of operator flexibility is lost when using this approach.