OpenStack Horizon is the project that provides the web based dashboard for OpenStack based clouds. In this 2-part blog I will show you how you can extend the dashboard. Customizing and extending is one of the most powerful capabilities in OpenStack and in private cloud environments it is common to add additional enhancements to address an organization’s needs.
Mitaka is the most recent release of OpenStack and currently it is supports Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (trusty). I would like to share scripts that can be used to install the Mitaka release of OpenStack on Ubuntu. As part of my blogging, book writing projects, I have had the need to install OpenStack many times. And I have been automating the installation by writing simple shell scripts. The result is a collection of scripts that should help you get going with OpenStack’s latest release.
OpenStack is made up of various services. These services have their own logs stored under /var/log directory. While working on OpenStack related projects it is quite common to monitor the logs for any problems or errors. While the tail command is the most popular, there are many benefits of using web browser to view the logs. In this blog let us see how we can view OpenStack Controller Logs using a browser.
OpenStack is based on the Python programming language and DevStack is the most common development and test environment for OpenStack. If you are doing serious, professional programming around OpenStack, it is very useful to have a proper development environment. In this blog, I will show you how to use the PyCharm IDE from Jetbrains for your OpenStack programming. I will use the Neutron ML2 driver code from my book OpenStack Networking Cookbook to guide you in setting up the PyCharm IDE.
My first publication OpenStack Networking Cookbook is now available for purchase. It is available as a printed book as well as e-book. OpenStack is a rapidly evolving cloud platform and Networking (Neutron) is one of its critical components. The current trends of SDN and NFV make OpenStack Networking even more exciting and complex. I have co-authored the book with a colleague and the overall experience of writing a book was very satisfying.
OpenStack supports rich abstractions to handle virtual networking needs in a cloud. As a user the most visible entities are the Network, Subnets, Routers, Firewall etc. But if we consider ingress and egress points for data traffic, the most critical entity is the Port. OpenStack Neutron Ports are usually created automatically as part of other user operations. However the CLI allows users to create Ports independently as well.
The best way to learn OpenStack is by installing, running and playing with it directly. In this blog, I will share the details of the VirtualBox based multi-node OpenStack installation. I will be focusing only on the networking aspects when using VirtualBox. I will also share some tips that are important in this deployment. This blog will not cover the steps to install and create a virtual machine using VirtualBox.