HP Reference Architecture for OpenStack on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Technical white paper | Product, solution, or service
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Executive summary
This paper provides information about OpenStack clouds, describing a
reference architecture that includes specific HP hardware with
recommendations on how to set it up to implement a medium sized functional
OpenStack cloud on the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS operating system release using
OpenStack Icehouse software from the Ubuntu Cloud repository. We discuss
the architectural and design decisions that were made in arriving at this
implementation.
Acknowledgements
This document is derived in part from the OpenStack Operation Guide with additional material pertaining to HP hardware. It
would not exist however, without the generous licensing of the original work by the OpenStack Foundation. HP wishes to
acknowledge and thank the OpenStack Foundation and the authors who contributed to the original work. By extending and
building on this work we wish to reinforce the best practices it taught while extending it with information pertaining to HP
hardware and software.
Overview
About OpenStack
OpenStack is an open source platform that lets you build an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud that runs on commodity
hardware. OpenStack is designed for scalability, so you can easily add new compute and storage resources to grow your
cloud over time. Organizations such as HP have built massive public clouds on top of OpenStack.
OpenStack is more than a software package that you run “as-is”. It lets you integrate a number of different technologies to
construct a cloud. This approach provides great flexibility, but the number of options might be bewildering at first.
Purpose of this reference architecture
This reference architecture has been created to provide guidance in the deployment of an OpenStack Icehouse cloud on
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS using HP servers. A specific set of hardware components have been chosen and we describe the steps
necessary to successfully install OpenStack on this hardware providing a small cloud which may be scaled up to medium
size by using additional compute nodes. This document presents an architectural view of an OpenStack cloud, and describes
a set of recommended hardware and base systems software when installing on HP hardware.
This document has been written as a companion to the OpenStack documentation.
Intended audience
To be successful with this guide, we assume:
• You are familiar with the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, SQL databases, and virtualization.
• You are comfortable administering and configuring multiple Linux machines for networking.
• You are comfortable installing and maintaining a MySQL database, and occasionally running SQL queries against it.
• You are familiar with concepts such as DHCP, Linux bridges, VLANs, and iptables.
You should also have access to a network hardware expert who can configure the switches and routers required in your
OpenStack cloud.