Getting Started with OpenStack (Grizzly)

Log in via Horizon

One can log in to the Horizon interface at:

The username (typically 'admin' and 'demo') and password can be found within the keystonerc_admin file located on your controller server (e.g /root/keystonerc_admin).

Creating Images and Deploying Images

To deploy an instance, we must first create an image. There are various methods however we only outline two of these here:

1) Openstack-tools: after downloading the tool created by Thomas Oulevey, we issue the following command to create the virtual machine:

sudo ./create-glance-image-el6.sh -u http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/slc6X/x86_64/Packages/sl-release-6.4-1.slc6.x86_64.rpm myslc64

We then register this with the Glance service by:

This image will then appear in the 'Images & Snapshots' section of the Project.

2) Cloud images: various pre-configured images exist and we outline the process when a Fedora 19 virtual machine image is required. We download the image and then simply register it with the Glance service:

wget http://cloud.fedoraproject.org/fedora-19.x86_64.qcow2

Virtual Machine Migration (non-live)

By default, non-live virtual machine does not function when installed by packstack. Typically this is because the SSH keys between hosts are not setup for the user 'nova' and will result in either a 'host key verification failed' or 'Permission denied' error.

Exchange SSH keys between 'nova' users

Use the following commands to solve this:

Add the following to the SSH config file withn the 'nova' user's .ssh directory (/var/lib/nova/.ssh):

Now generate and enter the SSH keys to other 'nova' users authorized_keys file:

Ensure that the /var/lib/nova/.ssh directory as well as the authorized_keys file have the correct permissions and owner:

You now should be able to ssh into the others hosts via the user 'nova' without using any password.

The Migration Process

To migrate a virtual machine from one host to another using the non-live approach, we obtain the ID of the instance we want to migrate, display which host the instance currently resides on and then migrate the virtual machine.

Note that by using non-live migration, the OpenStack user cannot select the host to migrate the virtual machine to; this is performed by the OpenStack scheduler. Check that the migration has successfully moved to another host via the command:

After the migration, the virtual machine's state will read VERIFY_RESIZE.

If the migration was not successful, we can revert the changes made by:

If the migration was successful, we can inform OpenStack of this by issuing:

and the instance state will return to Active. If this command is not performed, the virtual machine's state will return to Active automatically in 24 hours.