openstack team mailing list archive

[Kevin Jackson <kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,
I had my first sleepless night last night after a conversation I had in
work regarding an OpenStack installation.  We are a planning an OpenStack
install but I've failed to demonstrate OpenStack running in our environment
and yet packages are now being tagged up with RC.  As big a supporter as I
am, I'm struggling with the justifications when I have nothing tangible to
show.  The real questions are being posed to me on why we're looking at
OpenStack and not CloudStack or Eucalyptus - they have installations that
we can turn to.  I was hoping Essex would help answer these questions
relatively simply, but the opposite has happened - I am struggling to get
OpenStack Essex working under Ubuntu - 11.10 and 12.04.  There are a few
issues I am hoping the community can address:

1) What is the preferred/recommended version of OpenStack to install if
we're looking at production (and lets say production involves a plan of
running a number of instances of a low impact application somewhere in the
next few months - if there are a few bugs, that's ok).
2) What is the preferred/recommended Linux Distribution to install this on?

OpenStack is  fast approaching RC status.  Release Candidate to me means
that its nearly ready, but there could be some bugs that haven't been
raised yet.  I haven't had a working Essex since Essex-1 - it isn't a
release candidate for me.

I have tried the following package/scripted installations:

1) Ubuntu 11.10 with Diablo (Nova PPA) - some degree of success - failures
around Keystone and EC2 API
2) Ubuntu 11.10 with Managedit PPA - better degree of success, but no
EC2 compatibility and some bug fixes not back-ported
3) Ubuntu 12.04 (various releases) with Ubuntu packages - no success apart
from getting Keystone to do some things, but failing to get services to use
Keystone.
4) Ubuntu 11.10 with Devstack (tried yesterday - unfortunately failed
[specific reason escapes me, I'll try another install today, but was around
nova compute failing to start])

I nearly got 12.04 working with Essex but then Keystone changed to Keystone
light.  This also raised concerns with us that between Essex-3 and Essex-4
something as fundamental as Keystone changed and ever since then has formed
the crux of my problems.
It doesn't help that the documentation @
http://keystone.openstack.org/differs from
http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-compute/install/content/identity-configure-keystone.html.
 I also see conflicting advice on where Keystone fits - not only is the
documentation different depending on where you enter the websites/search
but even the Forum has Keystone mentioned under "Futurestack".  Is Keystone
pinnacle to an Essex release?

I even tried the devstack method of installation thinking this should be
the safest option and this failed.  I'll try this again though to help here
rather than just say it failed.  On looking at how Keystone is implemented,
I see differences in configuration which I'm unsure what they are (e.g. the
service catalog - devstack has a text based catalog and referenced directly
in keystone.conf, Ubuntu's are SQL based - on trying the devstack config,
Keystone fails to start under Ubuntu 12.04 for example).  I also noticed
the nova.conf in devstack differs wildly in format to that of Ubuntu
following the format for the rest of the configs - is this something nova
is moving to?

Now I'm pretty sure that OpenStack hasn't got RC status without it running
in other people's environments - so I'd just love for you to share your
details on how you have done this.  Is it all pull from source, install
from source?  If that's the case - that's great as it means I can use the
software, but it wouldn't be something I'd be doing in production on a
modest number of machines - so the installation must come from packages
eventually, somehow.

Are my problems OpenStack's or Ubuntu's packaging?  I would love to speak
to someone who has this running and direct my questions to the right place.
 My aim is simple: I want a running OpenStack environment.

I appreciate that my concerns are possibly more to do with Ubuntu packaging
- but given that I was led to believe that a target in production would be
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS + OpenStack suggests that I'm hoping I'm in the right area
at least - and as an end user, not developer, it seems the correct place to
be - but its that last bit I'm struggling with - how to get OpenStack
running in the best way in a target production environment.

Cheers,

Kev
-- 
Kevin Jackson
@itarchitectkev