HP Reference Architecture for OpenStack on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

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7
Hardware selection
This section provides an overview of the hardware configuration using SL series hardware. Information about the roles and
configuration of each server are provided.
The SL series hardware we have chosen is ideal for OpenStack. The SL230 server configuration can support sufficient
memory, processor, and storage to virtualize workloads well so we use it for our compute servers in this architecture. It is
also an ideal general purpose server, so we will use the same configuration for providing an OpenStack cloud controller
environment. For simplicity purposes, we set up MAAS and Juju servers on separate SL230’s with the same hardware
configuration, even though this task can be done with less compute power or on VMs.
The SL4540’s density both as a server and for number of disks it supports makes it an ideal choice for our storage
capability. RAID 1 is used for the boot drives to provide resiliency. The drives used for object storage are configured as RAID
0, taking advantage of the replication capability of OpenStack Swift across all of the available disk spindles. The drives used
for block storage are configured as RAID 5.
The tables below provide highlights of the reference architecture configuration. Detailed bills of material can be found in
“Appendix A: Bills of Material.”
The common hardware configuration of the controller and each of the 5 compute nodes is as follows:
Table 1. Controller and compute node hardware highlights
Attribute
Qty
Type
Description and rationale
System type
*
HP ProLiant SL230s Gen8 E5-2670
1 Server for MAAS, 1 server for Juju bootstrap node
and MySQL service, 1 server for the cloud controller
node, 5 servers for the compute nodes.
CPU
2
Intel® Xeon® (2.60GHz/8-
core/20MB/8GT-s QPI/115W, DDR3-
1600, HT, Turbo2- 4/4/5/5/6/6/7/7)
Memory
16
HP 8GB 2Rx4 PC3L-10600R-9 Kit
128 GB total memory.
Storage controller
1
HP Smart Array P222/512MB FBWC
Controller
Disks
4
HP 1TB 6G SATA 7.2k
Configured as a single RAID 5 volume of
approximately 3.5TB.
NIC
1
HP NC552SFP 10GbE 2 port adapter
The reference configuration utilizes three SL4540 servers in an SL4500 chassis for Swift and Cinder storage. The following
table provides highlights of the components used to configure the 3 servers and the chassis.
Table 2. Storage node hardware highlights
Attribute
Qty
Type
Description and rationale
Enclosure
1
HP 3xSL4500 Chassis
Enclosure
Servers
3
HP 3xSL4540 Gen8 Tray Node
Server
3 nodes with 15 LFF drives per node (3x15)
1 node configured for Block Storage (Cinder)
2 nodes configured for Object Storage (Swift)
CPU
2 ea.
Intel® Xeon® E5-2450 (2.1GHz/8-
core/20MB/95W) FIO Processor
Kit