⁠2.5. Installation Prerequisites Checklists

The following tables describe prerequisites for successfully installing a Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform cloud. Checklist items are the minimum that should be known or verified before the installation is started.
The Value/Verified column can be used to provide the appropriate value or a 'check' that the item has been verified.

Note

If installing single components after the initial Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform installation, ensure that you have:
  • root access to the host machine (to install components, as well other administrative tasks such as updating the firewall).
  • Administrative access to the Identity service.
  • Administrative access to the database (ability to add both databases and users).
⁠

Table 2.13. OpenStack Installation-General

Item Description Value/Verified
Hardware Requirements
Requirements in Section 2.2.1, “Compute Node Requirements”, Section 2.2.2, “Network Node Requirements”, and Section 2.2.3, “Block Storage Node Requirements” must be verified.
Yes | No
Operating System
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Server
Yes | No
Red Hat Subscription
You must have a subscription to:
  • Receive package updates from Red Hat Network or an equivalent source such as a Red Hat Network Satellite server.
  • Receive software updates for both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform
Yes | No
Administrative access on all installation machines Almost all procedures in this guide must be performed as the root user, so the installer must have root access. Yes | No
Red Hat Subscriber Name/Password
You must know the Red Hat subscriber name and password.
  • Name:
  • Password:
Machine addresses
You must know the host IP address of the machine or machines on which any OpenStack components and supporting software will be installed.
Provide host addresses for the following:
  • Identity service
  • OpenStack Networking service
  • Block Storage service
  • Compute service
  • Image service
  • Object Storage service
  • Dashboard service
  • MariaDB server (default database for this guide)
⁠

Table 2.14. OpenStack Identity service

Item Description Value
Host Access
The system hosting the Identity service must have:
  • Access to Red Hat Network or equivalent service.
  • Network interface addressable by all OpenStack hosts.
  • Network access to the database server.
  • If using LDAP, network access to the directory server .
Verify whether the system has:
  • Yes | No
  • Yes | No
  • Yes | No
  • Yes | No
SSL Certificates
If using external SSL certificates, you must know where the database and certificates are located, and have access to them.
Yes | No
LDAP Information If using LDAP, you must have administrative access to configure a new directory server schema. Yes | No
Connections The system hosting the Identity service must have a connection to all other OpenStack services. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.15. OpenStack Object Storage service

Item Description Value
File System
Red Hat currently supports the XFS and ext4 file systems for object storage; one of these must be available.
  • XFS
  • ext4
Mount Point
The /srv/node mount point must be available.
Yes | No
Connections For the cloud installed in this guide, the system hosting the Object Storage service will need a connection to the Identity service. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.16. OpenStack Image Service

Item Description Value
Backend Storage
The Image service supports a number of storage backends. You must decide on one of the following:
  • file (local directory)
  • OpenStack Object Storage service
Storage:
Connections The system hosting the Image service must have a connection to the Identity, Dashboard , and Compute services, as well as to the Object Storage service if using OpenStack Object Storage as its backend. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.17. OpenStack Block Storage service

Item Description Value
Backend Storage
The Block Storage service supports a number of storage backends. You must decide on one of the following:
  • LVM
  • NFS
  • Red Hat Storage
Storage:
Connections The system hosting the Block Storage service must have a connection to the Identity, Dashboard, and Compute services. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.18. OpenStack Networking service

Item Description Value
Plugin agents
In addition to the standard OpenStack Networking components, a wide choice of plugin agents are also available that implement various networking mechanisms.
You'll need to decide which of these apply to your network and install them.
Circle appropriate:
  • Open vSwitch
  • Cisco UCS/Nexus
  • Linux Bridge
  • VMware NSX virtualized network platform
  • Ryu OpenFlow Controller
  • NEC OpenFlow
  • Big Switch Controller Plugin
  • Cloudbase Hyper-V
  • MidoNet
  • Brocade Neutron Plugin
  • PLUMgrid
Connections The system hosting the OpenStack Networking service must have a connection to the Identity, Dashboard, and Compute services. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.19. OpenStack Compute service

Item Description Value
Hardware virtualization support
The OpenStack Compute service requires hardware virtualization support. Note: a procedure is included in this Guide to verify this (refer to Section 8.2.1, “Check for Hardware Virtualization Support”).
Yes | No
VNC client
The Compute service supports the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) console access to instances through a web browser. You must decide whether this will be provided to your users.
Yes | No
Resources: CPU and Memory
OpenStack supports overcommitting of CPU and memory resources on Compute nodes (refer to Section 8.4.5.4, “Configure Resource Overcommitment”).
  • The default CPU overcommit ratio of 16 means that up to 16 virtual cores can be assigned to a node for each physical core.
  • The default memory overcommit ratio of 1.5 means that instances can be assigned to a physical node if the total instance memory usage is less than 1.5 times the amount of physical memory available.
Decide:
  • CPU setting:
  • Memory setting:
Resources: Host
You can reserve resources for the host, to prevent a given amount of memory and disk resources from being automatically assigned to other resources on the host (refer to Section 8.4.5.5, “Reserve Host Resources”).
Decide:
  • Host Disk (default 0MB):
  • Host Memory (default 512MB):
libvirt Version You will need to know the version of your libvirt for the configuration of Virtual Interface Plugging (refer to Section 8.4.5.6.4, “Configure Virtual Interface Plugging”). Version:
Connections The system hosting the Compute service must have a connection to all other OpenStack services. Yes | No
⁠

Table 2.20. OpenStack Dashboard service

Item Description Value
Host software
The system hosting the Dashboard service must have the following already installed:
  • httpd
  • mod_wsgi
  • mod_ssl
Yes | No
Connections
The system hosting the Dashboard service must have a connection to all other OpenStack services.
Yes | No

Note

To install mod_wsgi, httpd, and mod_ssl, execute as root: 
# yum install -y mod_wsgi httpd mod_ssl