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01 - What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is a free and open-source software project that enables you to build and manage private, public, or hybrid clouds, offering full control over infrastructure through open APIs. It is not a product from a single company, but an open ecosystem maintained by a global community under the Apache license. Founded in 2010 by NASA and Rackspace, it has received contributions from organizations such as AT&T, Red Hat, Canonical, Intel, IBM, and Huawei.

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 5 minutes Read
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02 - OpenStack installation and deployment methods

Before deploying OpenStack, it’s important to know that each release has its own installation and maintenance guide, adapted to its components and features. OpenStack releases are published regularly and receive direct support for roughly 18 months. This means it’s best to plan deployments around stable releases with active support, rather than always opting for the latest release, which may contain early-stage issues. You can find official installation guides for each release in the OpenStack Install Guide and review all published versions along with their support schedule at OpenStack Releases.

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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03 - Manual OpenStack installation guide with Vagrant

Introduction and scope In this series, I will show you how to manually deploy a minimal OpenStack installation on a lab of virtual machines managed with Vagrant. We’ll use Caracal 2024.1, the latest available in Ubuntu’s stable repositories. The goal is not to provide a production solution, but to understand the components, key configuration files, and the correct deployment order so that a basic cloud works with Keystone, Glance, Placement, Nova, Neutron, Cinder, and Horizon.

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 3 minutes Read
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04 - Environment deployment and preparation

First, we need to bring up our environment. As mentioned in the previous post, clone my repository: git clone git@github.com:javierasping/openstack-vagrant-ansible.git git clone https://github.com/javierasping/openstack-vagrant-ansible.git Once cloned, everything related to these posts is in the manual-install directory, so cd into it. Bring up the machines with Vagrant Inside the repository you’ll find the Vagrantfile. Simply run: vagrant up After launching, make sure the machines are up: vagrant status Current machine states: controller01 running (libvirt) compute01 running (libvirt) storage01 running (libvirt) To connect to the VMs, you can use:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 4 minutes Read
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05 - Install and configure Keystone on the controller node

OpenStack is made up of many services, and Keystone (Identity) handles authentication, authorization, and the service catalog. In this post, I will install Keystone on the controller01 node, explain the main files, and check that it works. Make sure you’ve completed the steps from the previous post. All commands in this post are executed on the controller01 node. Create the Keystone database Connect to the database server as root: sudo mysql Create the keystone database:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 3 minutes Read
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06 - Create domains, projects, users and roles in OpenStack

Identity (Keystone) is OpenStack’s authentication and authorization service. In this step I prepare the minimal Identity configuration we need to continue the installation and to test OpenStack. Although the default domain already exists after keystone-manage bootstrap, I explicitly create the projects and users we use in the guides: service (for service users) and demo (for non‑admin user tests). I also create an example role and assign it to the demo user.

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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07 - Install and configure Glance

At first glance, Glance may seem simple: it stores, manages, and serves images to the compute service (Nova). In this post I install and configure Glance on the controller01 node, explain key components, and leave a minimal flow to upload a test image. Glance architecture Components you’ll see during installation: Glance API: exposes the REST API to store, list, and retrieve images. Glance Store: manages backends where image files are stored (file, Swift, Ceph, …). Metadata / registry service: stores image metadata (in many deployments this functionality is integrated into the API and DB). Glance uses an SQL database for state; here we use MySQL/MariaDB on the controller. In this guide we use the file backend for simplicity.

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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08 - Configure Placement in OpenStack

Placement tracks available physical resources and helps Nova schedule allocations. In this guide I will install and configure Placement on controller01 using Ubuntu packages and provide the minimal steps to verify it. Prerequisites Before starting, make sure you have: Keystone installed and reachable. A MySQL/MariaDB database available. Administrative credentials (admin-openrc) to create users and services. Create the database Connect to the database server as root to create the Placement database:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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09 - Install and configure Nova on the controller node

This document describes how to install and configure the Compute service (Nova) on the controller node (controller01). Prerequisites Before starting, make sure you have the basic Keystone credentials and databases created (admin-openrc available). Create the databases (on controller01) Connect to the SQL server as root to create the necessary databases: vagrant@controller01:~$ sudo mysql Create the nova_api, nova, and nova_cell0 databases: CREATE DATABASE nova_api; CREATE DATABASE nova; CREATE DATABASE nova_cell0; Grant permissions to the nova account (replace NOVA_DBPASS with your password):

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 3 minutes Read
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10 - Install and configure Nova on compute nodes

On this page I configure a compute node (for example compute01) so it can run instances with Nova. I use QEMU/KVM when the hardware supports it; if not, I configure pure QEMU. Before starting, make sure you have: Added the controller name and IP in /etc/hosts on the compute node. Service credentials (admin-openrc) and access to the database server. Install and configure the components (on the compute node) vagrant@compute01:~$ sudo apt install nova-compute -y Edit /etc/nova/nova.conf and point the connection strings to the controller databases:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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11 - Configure Neutron on the controller node

This page installs and configures the Neutron networking service on the controller node (controller01). Neutron manages virtual networks, routers, subnets, and other networking components for instances. Prerequisites Before starting, ensure you have: Keystone installed and reachable. A MySQL/MariaDB database available. Administrative credentials (admin-openrc) to create users and services. Create the database Connect to the database server as root to create the Neutron database: Access the SQL client: vagrant@controller01:~$ sudo mysql Create the neutron database: MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE neutron; Grant privileges to user neutron (replace NEUTRON_DBPASS with your password): MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON neutron.* TO 'neutron'@'localhost' \ IDENTIFIED BY 'NEUTRON_DBPASS'; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON neutron.* TO 'neutron'@'%' \ IDENTIFIED BY 'NEUTRON_DBPASS'; Exit the client when finished. Create the user and service endpoints Load your admin credentials to work with the OpenStack CLI:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 4 minutes Read
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12 - Configure Neutron on compute nodes

On this page, we configure Neutron on the compute node (compute01). The compute node manages network connectivity and security groups for the instances that run on it. Prerequisites Make sure you have completed all previous posts before starting. Install the components vagrant@compute01:~$ sudo apt install -y neutron-linuxbridge-agent Configure the common component Edit /etc/neutron/neutron.conf to configure authentication and the message queue. In [DEFAULT], configure access to RabbitMQ and the authentication strategy:

Sunday, November 23, 2025 | 3 minutes Read