Cloud In A Box: CentOS OpenStack Remix

OpenStack is the current de facto standard for cloud computing platforms and is supported by all major Linux distributions. Coupled with its role as the base technology in the domains of NFV & SDN, it has become one of the hottest softwares for networking community. It is a combination of numerous components and services, which means that deploying openstack is often complex, time consuming and error prone, especially for beginners. Deployment options vary from manual setup i.e., to install and setup each individual component manually, to use of automated tools such as Devstack, Fuel and Packstack.

The easiest way for getting started with openstack is through automated tools but using them properly requires significant forum/manual scavenging effort. This is too daunting for cloud application developers or anyone whose primary concern is to evaluate the cloud technology.

To ease these deployment concerns, our goal is to provide a robust, pre-configured (yet customizable) and easily installed openstack setup. The result will be a "CentOS Remix" with an option to setup openstack during installation. This is implemented by integrating two efforts by the Red Hat community namely RDO and Packstack into the CentOS installer i.e., Anaconda.

Implementation:

The development involves integrating OpenStack from the CentOS Cloud SIG (which also feeds the Red Hat community's openstack packaging effort, RDO ) and Packstack (openstack deployment tool) with Anaconda. The resulting remix will:

• Install CentOS along with OpenStack in one installation cycle.
• Use packstack to configure & deploy openstack (in post-install phase).

The integration will be achieved by developing an add-on for the Anaconda installer. Anaconda add-ons can be used to add support for custom configurations screens in the graphical and text-based user interface. OpenStack support can also be added to anaconda by modifying its source but add-ons are also extensible, maintainable, easier to debug  and test. They also provide an opportunity to extend openstack support to other Linux distributions that use anaconda.

Current Status:

Anaconda has three modes of operation i.e., Kickstart, Graphical and Text User Interfaces. Hence our add-on development is divided into adding openstack installation support for each of these three modes. Uptill now Kickstart support has been implemented i.e., user is able to install openstack through a kickstart file during setup.

Currently GUI support is being developed. After that TUI support and openstack customization options will be added. Final deliverable will be an "CentOS Openstack remix" ISO (~1.2GB) extending CentOS minimal ISO.

Project source along with testing instructions are available at Github

• Email: asadxflow@gmail.com
• IRC: asad_ (#centos-devel)