OpenStack can easily be installed in your own machine. This article describes how.

Install OpenStack on a single machine

The RDO project proposes to install OpenStack on a single machine, which can be interesting to test this middleware.

The installation tutorial is quite easy to read with a minimal technical skill level. However some points may be obscur.

One may note that each installation attempt generates:

• needed electronic keys for each IT services;
• needed identifiers;
• an « answers » file containing the installation configuration.

Dependancy to the « WerkZeug » package

The « WerkZeug » package is necessary to run the packstack. At least, you must install this package by hand running the following command (tested on CentOS-7):

sudo yum install -y ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/opensuse/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/suse/noarch/python-Werkzeug-0.9.6-2.1.5.noarch.rpm

Mysql configuration

OpenStack services use a mysql database. Each service has an identifier and a password to access its database. These identifiers are kept in the service configuration file, in /etc. For example, the « nova » service configuration file is /etc/nova/nova.conf.

Each configuration file has a « connection » or « sql_connection » ligne. For example, /etc/nova/nova.conf has (where PASSWD is the password , and SRV_IP  your mysql server IP address) :

connection = mysql://neutron:PASSWD@SRV_IP/neutron

You must manually grant access to the database, if the installation fails and you have a error message like: (_mysql_exceptions.OperationalError) (1045, "Access denied for user 'nova'@'134.158.77.245' (using password: YES)").

Run the following command to grant access:

mysql -e "grant all privileges on nova.* to nova@SRV_IP identified by 'MDP' with grant option"

mysql -e "grant all privileges on nova.* to nova@localhost identified by 'MDP' with grant option"

You then should restart the installation using the last « answers » file, running the following command:

packstack --answer-file=./packstack-answers-xxxxxxx.txt

VPNaaS configuration

If you want to install VPNaaS , use the following command:

packstack --os-neutron-vpnaas-install=y

Nagios configuration

By default, the installation process installs the nagios monitoring tool. This tools is not absolutely necessary to install OpenStack. If you encounter any trouble with nagios installation, you can deasctivate nagios by setting the following variable in the  « answers » file:

CONFIG_NAGIOS_INSTALL=n

You can always reuse the « answer » file like this:

packstack --answer-file=packstack-answers-XXX-YYY.txt