Revision as of 06:27, 26 April 2013

This Wiki provides the Open Source and Red Hat communities with a guide to deploy OpenStack infrastructures using Puppet/Foreman system management solution.

We are describing how to deploy and provision the management system itself and how to use it to deploy OpenStack Controller and OpenStack Compute nodes.

Note
This information has been gathered from real OpenStack lab tests using the latest data available at the time of writing.

Introduction

Assumptions

Upstream OpenStack based on Folsom (2012.2) from EPEL6
The Operating System is Red Hat Enterprise Linux - RHEL6.4+. All machines (Virtual or Physical) have been provisioned with a base RHEL6 system and up to date.
The system management is based on Foreman 1.1 from the Foreman Yum Repo and Puppet 2.6.17 from the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 (EPEL6)/
Foreman provides full system provisioning, meanwhile this is not covered here, at least for now.
Foreman Smart-proxy runs on the same host as Foreman. Please adjust accordingly if running on a separate host.

Conventions

All the code examples unless specified otherwise, are to be run as root
The URL provided must be replaced with corresponding host name of the targeted environment

Definitions

Name	Description
Host Group	Foreman definition grouping environment, Puppet Classes and variables together to be inherited by hosts.
OpenStack Controller node	Server with all OpenStack modules to manage OpenStack Compute nodes
OpenStack Compute node	Server OpenStack Nova Compute and Nova Network modules providing OpenStack Cloud Instances
RHEL Core	Base Operation System installed with standard RHEL packages and specific configuration required by all systems (or hosts)

Architecture

The idea is to have a Management system to be able to quickly deploy OpenStack Controllers or OpenStack Compute nodes.

OpenStack Components

An Openstack Controller Server regroups the following OpenStack modules:

OpenStack Nova Keystone, the identity server
OpenStack Nova Glance, the image repository
OpenStack Nova Scheduler
OpenStack Nova Horizon, the dashboard
OpenStack Nova API
QPID the AMQP Messaging Broker
Mysql backend
An OpenStack-Compute

An OpenStack Compute consists of the following modules:

OpenStack Nova Compute
OpenStack Nova Network
OpenStack Nova API
Libvirt and dependant packages

Environment

The following environment has been tested to validate all the procedures described in this document:

Management System: both physical or virtual machine
OpenStack controller: physical machine
OpenStack compute nodes: several physical machines

Note
Each physical machine has two NICs, respectively for the public and private networks. That is not required for the Management host.

This is important

In a production environment we recommend a High Availability solution for the OpenStack Controllers
OpenStack modules could be used on virtual machines but we have not tested it yet.
One NIC per physical machine with simulated interfaces (VLANs or alias) should work but has not been tested.

Workflow

The goal is to achieve the OpenStack deployment in four steps:

Deploy the system management solution Foreman
Prepare Foreman for OpenStack
Deploy the RHEL core definition with Puppet agent on participating OpenStack nodes
Manage each OpenStack node to be either a Controller or a Compute node

RHEL Core: Common definitions

The Management server itself is based upon the RHEL Core so we define it first.

In the rest of this documentation we assume that every system:

Is using the latest Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6.x. We have tested with RHEL6.4.
Be registered and subscribed with an Red Hat account, either RHN Classic or RHSM. We have tested with RHSM.
Has been updated with latest packages
Has the been configured with the following definitions

This is a tip
IPV6 is not required. Meanwhile for kernel dependencies and performance reasons we recommend to not deactivate the IPV6 module unless you know what you're doing.

NTP

The NTP service is required and included during the deployment of OpenStack components.

Meanwhile for Puppet to work properly with SSL, all the physical machines must have their clock in sync.

Make sure all the hardware clocks are:

Using the same time zone
On time, with less than 5 minutes delay from each others

Yum Repositories

Activate the following repositories:

RHEL6 Server Optional RPMS
PuppetLabs
EPEL6

rpm -Uvh http://yum.puppetlabs.com/el/6/products/i386/puppetlabs-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
yum-config-manager --enable rhel-6-server-optional-rpms --enable epel --enable puppetlabs-products --enable puppetlabs-deps
yum clean expire-cache

We need the Augeas utility for manipulating configuration files:

yum -y install augeas

SELinux

At the time of writing, SELinux rules have not been fully validated for:

Foreman using the automated installation
OpenStack

This is an ongoing work.

Note
if you plan do to the manual installation of the management server (further down) then you can skip this.

So in the meantime, we need to activate SELinux in permissive mode:

setenforce 0

And make it persistent in /etc/selinux/config file:

SELINUX = permissive
SELINUXTYPE = targeted

FQDN

Make sure every host can resolve the Fully Qualified Domain Name of the management server is defined in available DNS or alternatively use the /etc/hosts file.

Puppet Agent

The puppet agent must be installed on every host and be configured in order to:

Point to the Puppet Master which is our Management server
Have Puppet plug-ins activated

The following commands make that happen:

PUPPETMASTER="puppet.example.org"
yum install -y puppet

# Set PuppetServer
augtool -s set /files/etc/puppet/puppet.conf/agent/server $PUPPETMASTER

# Puppet Plugins
augtool -s set /files/etc/puppet/puppet.conf/main/pluginsync true

Afterwards, the /etc/puppet/puppet.conf file should look like this:

[main]
# The Puppet log directory.
# The default value is '$vardir/log'.
logdir = /var/log/puppet

# Where Puppet PID files are kept.
# The default value is '$vardir/run'.
rundir = /var/run/puppet

# Where SSL certificates are kept.
# The default value is '$confdir/ssl'.
ssldir = $vardir/ssl

pluginsync=true

[agent]
# The file in which puppetd stores a list of the classes
# associated with the retrieved configuratiion. Can be loaded in
# the separate ``puppet`` executable using the ``--loadclasses``
# option.
# The default value is '$confdir/classes.txt'.
classfile = $vardir/classes.txt

# Where puppetd caches the local configuration. An
# extension indicating the cache format is added automatically.
# The default value is '$confdir/localconfig'.
localconfig = $vardir/localconfig

server=puppet.example.org

Automated Installation of Management Server

Let's get started with the automated deployment of Puppet-Foreman application suite in order to manage our OpenStack infrastructure.

Note
The manual installation method is described here: How_to_Deploy_Puppet_Foreman_on_RHEL6_manually

The Automated installation of the Management server provides:

Puppet Master
HTTP service with Apache SSL and Passenger
Foreman Proxy (Smart-proxy) and Foreman
No SELinux

Before starting, make sure the "RHEL Core: Common definitions" described earlier have been applied.

In case there are several network interfaces on the Management machine, Foreman HTTPS service is to be activated on the desired interface by either:

Deactivate all interfaces but the desired one. Be careful not to cut yourself out!

or

After the installation, replace with IP of choice the "<VirtualHost IP:80>" and "<VirtualHost IP:443>" records in the /etc/httpd/conf.d/foreman.conf file

Using Puppet itself onto the Management machine to install the Foreman suite:

# Get packages
yum install -y git 

# Get foreman-installer modules
git clone --recursive https://github.com/theforeman/foreman-installer.git /root/foreman-installer

# Install
puppet apply -v --modulepath=/root/foreman-installer -e "include puppet, puppet::server, passenger, foreman_proxy, foreman"

At this stage, Foreman should be accessible on your Management host on HTTPS: https://host1.example.org. You will be prompted to sign-on: use default user “admin” with the password “changeme”.

Note: If you're using a Firewall you must open HTTPS(443) port to access the GUI.

Optional Database Backend

Please refer to this page if you'd like to use mysql or postgresql as backend for Puppet and Foreman:

How_to_Puppet_Foreman_Mysql_or_Postgresql_on_RHEL6

Foreman Configuration

For OpenStack deployments, we need Foreman to:

Setup smart-proxy (Foreman-proxy)
Define globals variables
Download Puppet Modules
Declare hostgroups

Those steps have been scripted using Foreman API.

Important
The script must be run (for now) from the Management server itself, as root

Download the script:

git clone https://github.com/gildub/foremanopenstack-setup /tmp/setup-foreman
cd /tmp/setup-foreman

Then edit foreman-params.json file to and change the following to needs:

The host section with your foreman hostname and user/passwd if you have changed them
The proxy name can be anything you'd like, the host is the same as foreman FQDN name, with ssl and port 8443.
The globals are your OpenStack values, adjust all passwords, tokens, network ranges and NICs values to you needs.

Notes: Be careful with JSON syntax - It doesn't like a colon at the wrong place!

Lets launch the script to configure Foreman with our parameters:

./foreman-setup.rb -l logfile all

Check the log file to confirm there wasn't any error.

Note
The above process can also be done manually using Foreman GUI, it's described here: How_to_Deploy_Openstack_Setup_Foreman_on_RHEL6_manually

Manage Hosts

To make a system part of our OpenStack infrastructure we have to:

Make sure the host follows the Common Core definitions – See RHEL Core: Common definitions section above
Have the host's certificate signed so it's registered with the Management server
Assign the host either the openstack-controller or openstack-compute Host Group

Register Host Certificates

Using Autosign

With autosign option, the hosts can be automatically registered and visible from Foreman by adding the hostnames to the /etc/puppet/autosign.conf file.

Signing Certificates

If you're not using the autosign option then you will have to sign the host certificate, using either:

Foreman GUI

Get on the Smart Proxies window from the menu "More -> Configuration -> Smart Proxies". And select the "Certificates" from the drop-down button of the smart-proxy you created:

From there you can manage all the hosts certificates and get them signed.

The Command Line Interface

Assuming the Puppet agent (puppetd) is running on the host, the host certificate would have been created on the Puppet Master and will be waiting to be signed: From the Puppet Master host, use the “puppetca” tool with the command “list” to see the waiting certificates, for example:

# puppetca list
"host3.example.org" (84:AE:80:D2:8C:F5:15:76:0A:1A:4C:19:A9:B6:C1:11)

To sign a certificate, use the “sign” command and provide the hostame, for example:

puppetca sign host3.example.org

Assign a Host Group

Display the hosts using the “Hosts” button at the top Foreman GUI screen.

Then select the corresponding “Edit Host” drop-down button on the right side of the targeted host.

Assign the right environment and attach the appropriate Host Group to that host in order to make it a Controller or a Compute node.

Save by hitting the “Submit” button.

Deploy OpenStack Components

We are done!

The OpenStack components will be installed when the Puppet agent synchronises with the Management server. Effectively, the classes will be applied when the agent retrieves the catalog from the Master and runs it.

You can also manually trigger the agent to check with the puppetmaster, to do so deactivate the agent on the targeted controller node run:

service puppet stop

And run it manually:

puppet agent –verbose --no-daemonize

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