How to Install OpenStack Using RDO Packstack

One of the great things about OpenStack is all the options you have for deploying it. A recent blog mentioned various deployment models – and the flowchart below may help as you decide which model is best for you. For example, if you need a highly customized OpenStack deployment, then DIY may be the way to go. Then, there’s the question of which tool to use. This blog gives an overview of how to install OpenStack using RDO Packstack.

The 2016 OpenStack survey report asked what tools are being used to deploy OpenStack. Puppet was at the top of the list, with Ansible following a close second. RDO Packstack is a Puppet-based utility to install OpenStack. RDO is the Red Hat distribution for OpenStack and it packages the OpenStack components for Fedora based Linux.

Prerequisites for Packstack

Packstack is based on OpenStack Puppet modules. It’s a good option when installing OpenStack for a POC or when all OpenStack controller services are installed on a single node. Packstack defines OpenStack resources declaratively and sets reasonable default values for all settings that are essential to installing OpenStack. The settings can be read or modified in a file, called the answerfile in Packstack.

Packstack runs on RHEL 7 or later versions and the equivalent version for CentOS. The machine where Packstack will run needs at least 4GB of memory, at least one network adapter and x86 64-bit processors with hardware virtualization extensions.

Install RDO Repository

To install OpenStack, first download the RDO repository rpm and install it.

On RHEL
[code lang=”bash”]$ sudo yum install -y https://rdoproject.org/repos/rdo-release.rpm[/code]

On CentOS
[code lang=”bash”]$ sudo yum install -y centos-release-openstack-mitaka[/code]

Install OpenStack

Install the Packstack installer and then run packstack to install OpenStack on a single node.

[code lang=”bash”]$ sudo yum install -y openstack-packstack[/code]

[code lang=”bash”]$ packstack –allinone[/code]

Once the installer completes, verify the installation by login at http://${YourIp}/dashboard.

Things to Consider

During the early days of our product development, Platform9 used Packstack to perform around 400 setups in a day. We found that, for this volume, the performance was not reliable and there were random timeouts. It was difficult to investigate deployment errors. In addition, it was non-trivial to customize the scripts to build and deploy our custom changes.

In general, we think it is best to use Packstack for installing OpenStack on a single node during a PoC, when there isn’t a need to customize the install process.

Check out these other resources below for more information on OpenStack Deployments.

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Categorized within: OpenStack Tags: diy openstack install, openstack deployment models, openStack install, rdo packstack