How to install OpenStack on Ubuntu 20.04 with MicroStack

Openstack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is deployed as an infrastructure-as-service in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users.

I love how Ubuntu puts it “Imagine a data centre with hundreds of physical machines, racked, powered and connected to each other. One tool turns this data centre into a cloud and enables on-demand resource provisioning through a self-service portal. That’s OpenStack “.

MicroStack is a micro cloud platform based on OpenStack. It is designed for small scale data centre deployments. It eliminates the complexity behind OpenStack. MicroStack answers the need for edge computing, providing reliable and secure cloud platforms.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04 workstation
• Multicore CPU
• 8 GB RAM
• 100 GB of storage

Install OpenStack on Ubuntu 20.04

1. Run System updates

As the first step, we are going to run system updates. We need to update our repositories to make them up to date.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Install MicroStack

Next we will install MicroStack in our Ubuntu system with Snap. Open your terminal and run the following command to install MicroStack.

$ sudo snap install microstack --beta --devmode

You will get the following as the output

microstack (beta) ussuri from Canonical✓ installed

3. Initialized MicroStack

MicroStack can be initialized in either single or multinode mode. To initialize in a single node run the following command.

$ sudo microstack init --auto --control

This process will initialize many components including, RabitMQ, MYSQL, initializing TL certificate, configuring keystone, nova, etc.

This process will take some time to complete. so grab a cup of coffee as you wait to finish.

Output
2022-01-02 19:27:47,014 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring clustering ...
2022-01-02 19:27:47,237 - microstack_init - INFO - Setting up as a control node.
2022-01-02 19:27:51,143 - microstack_init - INFO - Generating TLS Certificate and Key
2022-01-02 19:27:52,599 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring networking ...
2022-01-02 19:28:01,792 - microstack_init - INFO - Opening horizon dashboard up to *
2022-01-02 19:28:03,018 - microstack_init - INFO - Waiting for RabbitMQ to start ...
Waiting for 192.168.43.237:5672
2022-01-02 19:28:11,787 - microstack_init - INFO - RabbitMQ started!
2022-01-02 19:28:11,788 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring RabbitMQ ...
2022-01-02 19:28:12,952 - microstack_init - INFO - RabbitMQ Configured!
2022-01-02 19:28:12,983 - microstack_init - INFO - Waiting for MySQL server to start ...
Waiting for 192.168.43.237:3306
2022-01-02 19:28:26,721 - microstack_init - INFO - Mysql server started! Creating databases ...
2022-01-02 19:28:29,135 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring Keystone Fernet Keys ...
2022-01-02 19:28:59,019 - microstack_init - INFO - Bootstrapping Keystone ...
2022-01-02 19:29:16,054 - microstack_init - INFO - Creating service project ...
2022-01-02 19:29:24,724 - microstack_init - INFO - Keystone configured!
2022-01-02 19:29:24,763 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring the Placement service...
2022-01-02 19:29:55,749 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Placement DB migrations...
2022-01-02 19:30:02,482 - microstack_init - INFO - Configuring nova control plane services ...
2022-01-02 19:30:22,798 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Nova API DB migrations (this may take a lot of time)...
2022-01-02 19:30:59,583 - microstack_init - INFO - Running Nova DB migrations (this may take a lot of time)...
......

4. Launch an OpenStack instance

An instance is a virtual machine that runs inside the cloud. We are going to launch a VM with an image called cirrOS.

$ microstack launch cirros --name test

You will get the following output

Output
Creating local "microstack" ssh key at /home/nextgentips/snap/microstack/common/.ssh/id_microstack
Launching server ...
Allocating floating ip ...
Server test launched! (status is BUILD)

Access it with `ssh -i /home/nextgentips/snap/microstack/common/.ssh/id_microstack cir[email protected]`
You can also visit the OpenStack dashboard at https://10.20.20.1:443

Proceed to your favorite browser to launch the OpenStack dashboard

Conclusion

We have successfully learn how to install Openstack on Ubuntu 20.04. If faced with any challenge please comment and we will be happy to help, also check the documentation for further reading.