This tutorial shows how to install a multi-node MicroStack cluster using MAAS as machine provider. It will deploy an OpenStack 2024.1 (Caracal) cloud.
Some steps provide estimated completion times. They are based on an average internet connection.
Prerequisite knowledge
A MAAS cluster is needed so familiarity with the MAAS machine provisioning system is a necessity. You should also be acquainted with these MAAS concepts:
Some knowledge of OpenStack networking will be helpful.
Hardware requirements
You will need a total of six machines. One to act as a client host and five to make up the MAAS cluster.
Client
The client machine will act as an administrative host. It does not require significant resources and it need not be dedicated to this task.
All the commands in this tutorial are run on the client.
Important: For environments constrained by a proxy server, the client machine must first be configured accordingly. See section Configure for the proxy at the OS level on the Manage a proxied environment page before proceeding.
MAAS cluster
The MAAS cluster will consist of five machines (the MAAS nodes): one will manage software orchestration, one will manage internal components like clusterd and three will host the actual cloud (the cloud nodes). MAAS needs to be set up in advance.
Orchestration node
The requirements for the orchestration node are:
- physical or virtual machine
- a dual-core processor
- a minimum of 4 GiB of free memory
- 128 GiB of storage available on the root disk
- one network interface
Infra node
The requirements for the infra node are:
- physical or virtual machine
- a dual-core processor
- a minimum of 4 GiB of free memory
- 128 GiB of storage available on the root disk
- one network interface
Cloud nodes
The requirements for each of the three cloud nodes are:
- physical machine running
- a 16+ core amd64 processor
- a minimum of 32 GiB of free memory
- 500 GiB of SSD storage available on the root disk
- a least one un-partitioned disk of at least 200 GiB in size
- two network interfaces
- primary: for access to the OpenStack control plane
- secondary: for remote access to cloud VMs
Summary of MAAS nodes
In this tutorial, the five MAAS nodes that comprise the MAAS cluster are described in this way:
| Machine | FQDN | Storage device | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| sunbeam00 | sunbeam00.example.com | orchestration node | |
| sunbeam01 | sunbeam01.example.com | infra node | |
| sunbeam02 | sunbeam02.example.com | /dev/sdb | cloud node |
| sunbeam03 | sunbeam03.example.com | /dev/sdb | cloud node |
| sunbeam04 | sunbeam04.example.com | /dev/sdb | cloud node |
Ensure that your MAAS cluster is built before proceeding.
Prepare cloud networking
Some planning in your environment and a corresponding configuration in MAAS is needed. This affects the primary and secondary network interfaces on the three cloud nodes.
Primary interface
In this tutorial, a single subnet will be used for the primary network interface on all five MAAS nodes: 10.5.0.0/16.
Ensure you have a subnet connected to the primary interface.
Note: The Network traffic isolation with MAAS page contains background information on the purpose of using multiple subnets.
Secondary interface
The secondary network interface must be set as âUnconfiguredâ in MAAS and be connected to a subnet that has unused (available) IP addresses. This requirement permits the VMs to be contacted by remote hosts and comprises the âexternal networkingâ of the cloud. This interface must be tagged with a network tag neutron:physnet1.
In this tutorial, the following values are used:
| External networking parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| CIDR | 172.16.2.0/24 |
| default gateway | 172.16.2.1 |
| address range | 172.16.2.2 - 172.16.2.254 |
The number of addresses needed is dependent upon the number of VMs you wish to be remotely contactable (simultaneously). When used in this way, the addresses are known as âfloating IP addressesâ.
You will be asked at a later step, via an interactive prompt, what addressing to use for external networking.
Configure MAAS
Several aspects of MAAS need to be configured. Perform the steps in the following sections within the MAAS web UI.
Configure MAAS Reserved IP Ranges
Two particular cloud networks need to be assigned their own (labelled) Reserved IP Range with a minimum number of available IP addresses. A label is created by using the Comment field for the range. Its name is based upon the chosen deployment name, which for this tutorial is mycloud (created later).
This is what is needed:
- a range for network
internal(minimum of five addresses) and with labelmycloud-internal-api - a range for network
public(minimum of ten addresses) and with labelmycloud-public-api
In this tutorial, the ranges are defined in this way:
| Cloud network | Reserved IP Range label | IP range |
|---|---|---|
| internal | mycloud-internal-api | 10.5.0.100 - 10.5.0.104 |
| public | mycloud-public-api | 10.5.0.105 - 10.5.0.114 |
Configure your ranges now.
Create network space
Create the network space that all the MAAS nodes will use.
In this tutorial, a single space is used, called myspace.
The space will be mapped to cloud networks in a later step.
Caution: While MAAS supports _ in space names, sunbeam and juju do not. Avoid using _ in space names.
Choosing the MAAS resource tag
Sunbeam will look for machine bearing the âresource tagâ. This tag is used to identify the machines that will be used for the deployment.
This is built from the deployment name: openstack-<deployment name>.
In this tutorial, the resource tag is called openstack-mycloud.
Prepare the client
Duration: 5 minutes
Prepare the client host by installing and configuring software.
Begin by installing the openstack snap:
sudo snap install openstack --channel 2024.1/beta
Caution: It is highly recommended to use the --channel 2024.1/beta switch which includes all the latest bug fixes and updates before the next stable release coming in Q4 2024.
MicroStack can generate a script to ensure that the client has all of the required dependencies installed and is configured correctly for use in MicroStack - you can review this script using:
sunbeam prepare-node-script --client
or the script can be directly executed in this way:
sunbeam prepare-node-script --client | bash -x
The script will ensure some software requirements are satisfied on the host. In particular, it will:
- install orchestration software (i.e.
Juju) - create any necessary data directories
Prepare the MAAS nodes
In this tutorial, the five MAAS nodes look like this:
| Machine | Machine tag | Storage device | Storage tag | Network tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| sunbeam00 | openstack-mycloud, juju-controller |
|||
| sunbeam01 | openstack-mycloud, infra |
|||
| sunbeam02 | openstack-mycloud, control, compute, storage |
/dev/sdb | ceph |
neutron:physnet1 |
| sunbeam03 | openstack-mycloud, control, compute, storage |
/dev/sdb | ceph |
neutron:physnet1 |
| sunbeam04 | openstack-mycloud, control, compute, storage |
/dev/sdb | ceph |
neutron:physnet1 |
To prepare the MAAS nodes for the deployment, use the above information to perform the following:
- assign the machine tags (to the machines)
- assign the storage tags (to the storage devices)
- assign the network tags (to the secondary interfaces)
The tags must be named as per the above table.
Add the MAAS deployment
Adding the MAAS deployment informs the orchestration node about the MAAS cluster.
To do this you will need to pass options that describe the deployment. They are:
name: an arbitrary name (e.g.mycloud)token: a MAAS API key (e.g.z6sbVdQTuKWPFCFvPF:WkRdtsJnwXu38aRHUz:77SqG9DmaugFRHNT4SFtyGqubmLawNBJ)url: the MAAS URL (e.g.http://10.236.110.5:5240/MAAS)
Add the MAAS deployment now:
sunbeam deployment add maas mycloud <token> <maas url>
The above command will check for the following:
- working authentication
- uniqueness of the deployment name
Map network spaces to cloud networks
Certain machines need access to certain cloud networks.
In this tutorial, because weâre using a single subnet (and space) for the primary network interface on each cloud node, map the same space (myspace) to each supported cloud network:
sunbeam deployment space map myspace # will use myspace as default for every network
These mappings tell MicroStack where to route certain types of cloud traffic.
Validate the added deployment
MicroStack expects a correctly configured MAAS, which includes adequate networking.
To check whether your environment is ready, use the deployment validate command:
sunbeam deployment validate
Example output:
Checking machines, roles, networks and storage... OK
Checking zone distribution... OK
Checking networking... OK
Report saved to '/home/ubuntu/snap/openstack/common/reports/validate-deployment-mycloud-<...>.yaml'
A report will be generated under $HOME/snap/openstack/common/reports if a failure is detected. A sample failure looks like this:
- diagnostics: A machine root disk needs to be at least 500GB to be a part of an openstack
deployment.
machine: sunbeam02
message: root disk is too small
name: Root disk check
passed: false
Note: A validation error will lessen the chances of a successful deployment but it will not block an attempted deployment.
Initialise the orchestration and infra layer
Duration: 30 minutes
Set up the orchestration and infra layer using the cluster bootstrap command. This will provision the MAAS nodes that are assigned the juju-controller tag and infra tag:
sunbeam cluster bootstrap
You will first be prompted whether or not to enable network proxy usage. If âYesâ, several sub-questions will be asked.
Use proxy to access external network resources? [y/n] (y):
Enter value for http_proxy: ():
Enter value for https_proxy: ():
Enter value for no_proxy: ():
Note that proxy settings can also be supplied by using a manifest (see Deployment manifest).
Deploy the cloud
Duration: 30 minutes
This estimate does not take into account base-level provisioning (operating system install). This can take a while for some systems (e.g. bare metal).
Deploy the cloud using the cluster deploy command. This will provision the remaining three MAAS nodes:
sunbeam cluster deploy
Configure the cloud
Duration: 5 minutes
Configure the deployed cloud using the configure command:
sunbeam configure --openrc demo-openrc
The --openrc option specifies a regular user (non-admin) cloud init file (demo-openrc here).
A series of questions will now be asked interactively. Below is a sample session. The values in square brackets, when present, provide acceptable values. A value in parentheses is the default value. We use the values for âexternal networkingâ given earlier:
CIDR of network to use for external networking (10.20.20.0/24): 172.16.2.0/24
IP address of default gateway for external network (10.20.20.1): 172.16.2.1
Populate OpenStack cloud with demo user, default images, flavors etc [y/n] (y):
Username to use for access to OpenStack (demo):
Password to use for access to OpenStack (mt********):
Network range to use for project network (192.168.122.0/24):
Enable ping and SSH access to instances? [y/n] (y):
Start of IP allocation range for external network (10.20.20.2): 172.16.2.2
End of IP allocation range for external network (10.20.20.254): 172.16.2.254
Network type for access to external network [flat/vlan] (flat):
Writing openrc to demo-openrc ... done
The network range for the initial project defaults to 192.168.122.0/24. This is for OpenStack internal purposes (âprivate networkingâ) and should suffice for most clouds.
These questions are explained in more detail on the Interactive configuration prompts page in the reference section.
Launch a VM
Duration: 2 minutes
The first launch will take longer than any subsequent launches due to caching.
Verify the cloud by launching a VM called âtestâ based on the âubuntuâ image (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). The launch command is used:
sunbeam launch ubuntu --name test
Sample output:
Launching an OpenStack instance ...
Access instance with `ssh -i /home/ubuntu/.config/openstack/sunbeam ubuntu@172.16.2.200`
Connect to the VM over SSH using the provided command.
Related how-tos
Now that OpenStack is set up, be sure to check out the following how-to guides: