Quick Start

This guide provides step by step instructions to deploy OpenStack using Kolla Ansible on bare metal servers or virtual machines.

Host machine requirements

The host machine must satisfy the following minimum requirements:

  • 2 network interfaces

  • 8GB main memory

  • 40GB disk space

See the support matrix for details of supported host Operating Systems. Kolla Ansible supports the default Python 3.x versions provided by the supported Operating Systems. For more information see tested runtimes.

Install dependencies

Typically commands that use the system package manager in this section must be run with root privileges.

It is generally recommended to use a virtual environment to install Kolla Ansible and its dependencies, to avoid conflicts with the system site packages. Note that this is independent from the use of a virtual environment for remote execution, which is described in Virtual Environments.

  1. For Debian or Ubuntu, update the package index.

    sudo apt update

  2. Install Python build dependencies:

    For CentOS, Rocky or openEuler, run:

    sudo dnf install git python3-devel libffi-devel gcc openssl-devel python3-libselinux

    For Debian or Ubuntu, run:

    sudo apt install git python3-dev libffi-dev gcc libssl-dev

Install dependencies using a virtual environment

If not installing Kolla Ansible in a virtual environment, skip this section.

  1. Install the virtual environment dependencies.

    For CentOS, Rocky or openEuler, you don’t need to do anything.

    For Debian or Ubuntu, run:

    sudo apt install python3-venv

  2. Create a virtual environment and activate it:

    python3 -m venv /path/to/venv
source /path/to/venv/bin/activate

    The virtual environment should be activated before running any commands that depend on packages installed in it.

  3. Ensure the latest version of pip is installed:

    pip install -U pip

  4. Install Ansible. Kolla Ansible requires at least Ansible 4 and supports up to 5.

    pip install 'ansible>=4,<6'

Install dependencies not using a virtual environment

If installing Kolla Ansible in a virtual environment, skip this section.

  1. Install pip.

    For CentOS, Rocky or openEuler, run:

    sudo dnf install python3-pip

    For Debian or Ubuntu, run:

    sudo apt install python3-pip

  2. Ensure the latest version of pip is installed:

    sudo pip3 install -U pip

  3. Install Ansible. Kolla Ansible requires at least Ansible 4 and supports up to 5.

    For CentOS or Rocky, run:

    sudo dnf install ansible

    For openEuler, run:

    sudo pip install ansible

    For Debian or Ubuntu, run:

    sudo apt install ansible

    Note

    If the installed Ansible version does not meet the requirements, one can use pip: sudo pip install -U 'ansible>=4,<6'. Beware system package upgrades might interfere with that so it is recommended to uninstall the system package first. One might be better off with the virtual environment method to avoid this pitfall.

Install Kolla-ansible

Install Kolla-ansible for deployment or evaluation

  1. Install kolla-ansible and its dependencies using pip.

    If using a virtual environment:

    pip install git+https://opendev.org/openstack/kolla-ansible@|KOLLA_BRANCH_NAME|

    If not using a virtual environment:

    sudo pip3 install git+https://opendev.org/openstack/kolla-ansible@|KOLLA_BRANCH_NAME|

  2. Create the /etc/kolla directory.

    sudo mkdir -p /etc/kolla
sudo chown $USER:$USER /etc/kolla

  3. Copy globals.yml and passwords.yml to /etc/kolla directory.

    If using a virtual environment:

    cp -r /path/to/venv/share/kolla-ansible/etc_examples/kolla/* /etc/kolla

    If not using a virtual environment, run:

    cp -r /usr/local/share/kolla-ansible/etc_examples/kolla/* /etc/kolla

  4. Copy all-in-one and multinode inventory files to the current directory.

    If using a virtual environment:

    cp /path/to/venv/share/kolla-ansible/ansible/inventory/* .

    For all-in-one scenario in virtual environment add the following to the very beginning of the inventory:

    localhost ansible_python_interpreter=python

    If not using a virtual environment, run:

    cp /usr/local/share/kolla-ansible/ansible/inventory/* .

Install Kolla for development

  1. Clone kolla-ansible repository from git.

    git clone --branch |KOLLA_BRANCH_NAME| https://opendev.org/openstack/kolla-ansible

  2. Install requirements of kolla and kolla-ansible:

    If using a virtual environment:

    pip install ./kolla-ansible

    If not using a virtual environment:

    sudo pip3 install ./kolla-ansible

  3. Create the /etc/kolla directory.

    sudo mkdir -p /etc/kolla
sudo chown $USER:$USER /etc/kolla

  4. Copy the configuration files to /etc/kolla directory. kolla-ansible holds the configuration files ( globals.yml and passwords.yml) in etc/kolla.

    cp -r kolla-ansible/etc/kolla/* /etc/kolla

  5. Copy the inventory files to the current directory. kolla-ansible holds inventory files ( all-in-one and multinode) in the ansible/inventory directory.

    cp kolla-ansible/ansible/inventory/* .

Install Ansible Galaxy requirements

Install Ansible Galaxy dependencies (Yoga release onwards):

kolla-ansible install-deps

Configure Ansible

For best results, Ansible configuration should be tuned for your environment. For example, add the following options to the Ansible configuration file /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg:

[defaults]
host_key_checking=False
pipelining=True
forks=100

Further information on tuning Ansible is available here.

Prepare initial configuration

Inventory

The next step is to prepare our inventory file. An inventory is an Ansible file where we specify hosts and the groups that they belong to. We can use this to define node roles and access credentials.

Kolla Ansible comes with all-in-one and multinode example inventory files. The difference between them is that the former is ready for deploying single node OpenStack on localhost. If you need to use separate host or more than one node, edit multinode inventory:

  1. Edit the first section of multinode with connection details of your environment, for example:

    [control]
10.0.0.[10:12] ansible_user=ubuntu ansible_password=foobar ansible_become=true
# Ansible supports syntax like [10:12] - that means 10, 11 and 12.
# Become clause means "use sudo".

[network:children]
control
# when you specify group_name:children, it will use contents of group specified.

[compute]
10.0.0.[13:14] ansible_user=ubuntu ansible_password=foobar ansible_become=true

[monitoring]
10.0.0.10
# This group is for monitoring node.
# Fill it with one of the controllers' IP address or some others.

[storage:children]
compute

[deployment]
localhost       ansible_connection=local become=true
# use localhost and sudo

    To learn more about inventory files, check Ansible documentation.

  2. Check whether the configuration of inventory is correct or not, run:

    ansible -i multinode all -m ping

    Note

    Distributions might not come with Python pre-installed. That will cause errors in the ping module. To quickly install Python with Ansible you can run: for Debian or Ubuntu: ansible -i multinode all -m raw -a "apt -y install python3", and for CentOS, Rocky or openEuler: ansible -i multinode all -m raw -a "dnf -y install python3".

Kolla passwords

Passwords used in our deployment are stored in /etc/kolla/passwords.yml file. All passwords are blank in this file and have to be filled either manually or by running random password generator:

For deployment or evaluation, run:

kolla-genpwd

For development, run:

cd kolla-ansible/tools
./generate_passwords.py

Kolla globals.yml

globals.yml is the main configuration file for Kolla Ansible. There are a few options that are required to deploy Kolla Ansible:

  • Image options

    User has to specify images that are going to be used for our deployment. In this guide Quay.io-provided, pre-built images are going to be used. To learn more about building mechanism, please refer Building Container Images.

    Kolla provides choice of several Linux distributions in containers:

    • CentOS Stream (centos)

    • Debian (debian)

    • Rocky (rocky)

    • Ubuntu (ubuntu)

    For newcomers, we recommend to use Rocky Linux 9 or Ubuntu 22.04.

    kolla_base_distro: "rocky"

  • Networking

    Kolla Ansible requires a few networking options to be set. We need to set network interfaces used by OpenStack.

    First interface to set is “network_interface”. This is the default interface for multiple management-type networks.

    network_interface: "eth0"

    Second interface required is dedicated for Neutron external (or public) networks, can be vlan or flat, depends on how the networks are created. This interface should be active without IP address. If not, instances won’t be able to access to the external networks.

    neutron_external_interface: "eth1"

    To learn more about network configuration, refer Network overview.

    Next we need to provide floating IP for management traffic. This IP will be managed by keepalived to provide high availability, and should be set to be not used address in management network that is connected to our network_interface.

    kolla_internal_vip_address: "10.1.0.250"

  • Enable additional services

    By default Kolla Ansible provides a bare compute kit, however it does provide support for a vast selection of additional services. To enable them, set enable_* to “yes”. For example, to enable Block Storage service:

    enable_cinder: "yes"

    Kolla now supports many OpenStack services, there is a list of available services. For more information about service configuration, Please refer to the Services Reference Guide.

  • Multiple globals files

    For a more granular control, enabling any option from the main globals.yml file can now be done using multiple yml files. Simply, create a directory called globals.d under /etc/kolla/ and place all the relevant *.yml files in there. The kolla-ansible script will, automatically, add all of them as arguments to the ansible-playbook command.

    An example use case for this would be if an operator wants to enable cinder and all its options, at a later stage than the initial deployment, without tampering with the existing globals.yml file. That can be achieved, using a separate cinder.yml file, placed under the /etc/kolla/globals.d/ directory and adding all the relevant options in there.

  • Virtual environment

    It is recommended to use a virtual environment to execute tasks on the remote hosts. This is covered Virtual Environments.

Deployment

After configuration is set, we can proceed to the deployment phase. First we need to setup basic host-level dependencies, like docker.

Kolla Ansible provides a playbook that will install all required services in the correct versions.

The following assumes the use of the multinode inventory. If using a different inventory, such as all-in-one, replace the -i argument accordingly.

  • For deployment or evaluation, run:

    1. Bootstrap servers with kolla deploy dependencies:

      kolla-ansible -i ./multinode bootstrap-servers

    2. Do pre-deployment checks for hosts:

      kolla-ansible -i ./multinode prechecks

    3. Finally proceed to actual OpenStack deployment:

      kolla-ansible -i ./multinode deploy

  • For development, run:

    1. Bootstrap servers with kolla deploy dependencies:

      cd kolla-ansible/tools
./kolla-ansible -i ../../multinode bootstrap-servers

    2. Do pre-deployment checks for hosts:

      ./kolla-ansible -i ../../multinode prechecks

    3. Finally proceed to actual OpenStack deployment:

      ./kolla-ansible -i ../../multinode deploy

When this playbook finishes, OpenStack should be up, running and functional! If error occurs during execution, refer to troubleshooting guide.

Using OpenStack

  1. Install the OpenStack CLI client:

    pip install python-openstackclient -c https://releases.openstack.org/constraints/upper/|KOLLA_OPENSTACK_RELEASE|

  2. OpenStack requires a clouds.yaml file where credentials for the admin user are set. To generate this file:

    • For deployment or evaluation, run:

      kolla-ansible post-deploy

    • For development, run:

      cd kolla-ansible/tools
./kolla-ansible post-deploy

    Note

    The file will be generated in /etc/kolla/clouds.yaml, you can use it by copying it to /etc/openstack or ~/.config/openstack or setting OS_CLIENT_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

  3. Depending on how you installed Kolla Ansible, there is a script that will create example networks, images, and so on.

    Warning

    You are free to use the following init-runonce script for demo purposes but note it does not have to be run in order to use your cloud. Depending on your customisations, it may not work, or it may conflict with the resources you want to create. You have been warned.

    • For deployment or evaluation, run:

      If using a virtual environment:

      /path/to/venv/share/kolla-ansible/init-runonce

      If not using a virtual environment:

      /usr/local/share/kolla-ansible/init-runonce

    • For development, run:

      kolla-ansible/tools/init-runonce