Install OpenStack on your workstation and launch your first instance

1. Overview

Before you get started!

Welcome to OpenStack!

In this series of tutorials, we will walk you through all the necessary steps to install, configure and get started with OpenStack. Using just your workstation, you will learn how to use OpenStack for cloud infrastructure implementation purposes, from a single-node installation to large-scale clusters.

This tutorial is the first in the “Phase I - Single-node OpenStack on your workstation” series.

Explore other tutorials >

What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is the most popular open source cloud platform that aggregates distributed compute, network and storage resources in the data centre and enables on-demand provisioning of virtual machines through a self-service portal. OpenStack powers thousands of public and private clouds all over the world, providing rapid access for greater innovation and better economics.

Learn more about OpenStack >

What is MicroStack?

MicroStack is a micro cloud platform based on OpenStack, designed for the edge and small-scale data centre deployments, that can be installed and maintained with minimal effort. MicroStack eliminates the complexity behind OpenStack, providing an opinionated approach to OpenStack architecture design and a straightforward installation method.

Learn more about MicroStack >

What is Charmed OpenStack?

Charmed OpenStack is an enterprise cloud platform based on OpenStack, designed for large-scale data centre deployments, that provides full automation around the initial installation and day-2 operations. Charmed OpenStack abstracts the complexity behind OpenStack, using a composable approach to OpenStack architecture design with model-driven operators (charms).

Learn more about Charmed OpenStack >

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

Install OpenStack on your workstation
Launch your first instance on OpenStack

You will only need:

One physical machine with:

The latest Ubuntu LTS installed
Multi-core CPU
8 GB of RAM
100 GB of storage

MicroStack
These instructions use MicroStack - OpenStack in a snap. MicroStack is also available on other Linux distros, Windows and macOS. Refer to the MicroStack website for more information on how to install MicroStack on an OS other than Ubuntu.

2. Install OpenStack

We’re going to use MicroStack, since it provides the most straightforward installation experience. First, execute the following command to install the microstack snap:

$ sudo snap install microstack --beta

If you are using an older Ubuntu version or some other Linux distribution, you may have to install snapd first. Refer to snapd documentation for more information on installing snapd on your workstation.

When the installation process has finished, you should see the following message in the terminal:

microstack (beta) ussuri from Canonical✓ installed

Note that at the time of writing this tutorial, the installed version of OpenStack was Ussuri.

MicroStack can be initialised in either single or multi-node mode. Execute the following command to initialise it in the single-node mode:

$ sudo microstack init --auto --control

The command takes ~20 minutes to complete. Once it finishes, OpenStack is up and running.

3. Launch an instance

In order to launch your first instance on OpenStack, execute the following command:

$ microstack launch cirros --name test

The resulting output provides the information you need to SSH to the instance:

Access it with `ssh -i /home/guardian/snap/microstack/common/.ssh/id_microstack cirros@10.20.20.137`

Note that the IP address of the instance (here 10.20.20.137) may be different in your environment. In order to connect to the instance, run the following command from the terminal output. In case you’re asked for the password, the default password for the CirrOS image is gocubsgo.

$ ssh -o "PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa" -i /home/guardian/snap/microstack/common/.ssh/id_microstack cirros@10.20.20.137

That’s it. You’re connected to the instance. You can use regular shell commands to execute various tasks.

Note that the CirrOS image we used in this example provides a minimalistic operating system only, so the list of commands might be limited. For example, we can check the uptime of the instance:

$ uptime
 11:08:36 up 2 min,  1 users,  load average: 0.05, 0.05, 0.01

In the following tutorials, we’ll demonstrate how to use other images and how to customise instances during the provisioning process.

To disconnect from the instance, type exit (or press CTRL+D).

4. Next steps

Congratulations! You have reached the end of this tutorial.

You can now move to the next tutorial - “2. Components” - or explore other tutorials.

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