Chapter 3. Deploying the Undercloud

As a technician, you can deploy an undercloud, which provides users with the ability to deploy and manage overclouds with the Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director interface.

3.1. Prerequisites

  • Have a valid Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Cloud subscription.
  • Have access to Red Hat’s software repositories through Red Hat’s Content Delivery Network (CDN).

3.2. Understanding Ironic’s Disk Cleaning Between Deployments

Enabling Ironic’s disk cleaning feature will permanently delete all data from all the disks on a node before that node becomes available again for deployment.

There are two facts that you should consider before enabling Ironic’s disk cleaning feature:

  • When director deploys Ceph it uses the ceph-disk command to prepare each OSD. Before ceph-disk prepares an OSD, it checks if the disk which will host the new OSD has data from an older OSD and if it does, then it will fail the disk preparation in order to not overwrite that data. It does this as a safety feature so that data is not lost.
  • If a deployment attempt with director fails and is then repeated after the overcloud is deleted, then by default the data from the previous deployment will still be on the server disks. This data may cause the repeated deployment to fail because of how the ceph-disk command behaves.
Note

If an overcloud node is accidentally deleted and disk cleaning is enabled, then the data will be removed and can only be put back into the environment by rebuilding the node with Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director.

3.3. Configuring the Undercloud to Clean the Disks Before Deploying the Overcloud

Updating the undercloud configuration file to clean disks before deploying the overcloud.

Warning

Enabling this feature will destroy all data on all disks before they are provisioned in the overcloud deployment.

Prerequisites

Procedure

  1. Edit the undercloud.conf file, and add the following line: 

    clean_nodes = True

3.4. Installing the Undercloud

Several steps must be completed to install the undercloud. This procedure is installing the Red Hat OpenStack Platform director (RHOSP-d) as the undercloud.

Prerequisites

  • Have access to Red Hat’s software repositories through Red Hat’s Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Procedure

Summary of the steps:

  1. Create an installation user
  2. Create directories for templates and images
  3. Verify/Set the RHOSP-d node name
  4. Register the RHOSP-d node
  5. Install the RHOSP-d software
  6. Configure the RHOSP-d software
  7. Obtain and import disk images for the overcloud
  8. Set a DNS server on the undercloud’s subnet

Do the following steps on the command-line interface of the RHOSP-d node:

  1. The RHOSP-d installation requires a non-root user with sudo privileges to do the installation.

    1. As root, create a user named stack: 

      [root@director ~]# useradd stack

    2. As root, set a password for stack. When prompted, enter the new password: 

      [root@director ~]# passwd stack

    3. As root, configure sudo access for the stack user: 

      [root@director ~]# echo "stack ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:ALL" | tee -a /etc/sudoers.d/stack
[root@director ~]# chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/stack

    4. Switch to the stack user: 

      [root@director ~]# su - stack

      The RHOSP-d installation will be done as the stack user.

  2. Create two new directories in the stack user’s home directory, one named templates and the other named images: 

    [stack@director ~]$ mkdir ~/images
[stack@director ~]$ mkdir ~/custom-templates

    These directories will organize the system image files and Heat template files used to create the overcloud environment later.

  3. The installing and configuring process requires a fully qualified domain name (FQDN), along with an entry in the /etc/hosts file.

    1. Verify the RHOSP-d node’s host name: 

      [stack@director ~]$ hostname -f

    2. If needed, set the host name: 

      sudo hostnamectl set-hostname $FQDN_HOST_NAME
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname --transient $FQDN_HOST_NAME
      Replace…​

      • $FQDN_HOST_NAME with the FQDN of the RHOSP-d node.

        Example

        [stack@director ~]$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname director.example.com
[stack@director ~]$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname --transient director.example.com

    3. Add an entry for the RHOSP-d node name to the /etc/hosts file. Add the following line to the /etc/hosts file: 

      sudo echo "127.0.0.1  $FQDN_HOST_NAME  $SHORT_HOST_NAME  localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4" >> /etc/hosts
      Replace…​
      • $FQDN_HOST_NAME with the full qualified domain name of the RHOSP-d node.

      • $SHORT_HOST_NAME with the short domain name of the RHOSP-d node.

        Example

        [stack@director ~]$ sudo echo "127.0.0.1  director.example.com  director  localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4" >> /etc/hosts

  4. Register the RHOSP-d node on the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN), and enable the required Red Hat software repositories using the Red Hat Subscription Manager.

    1. Register the RHOSP-d node: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager register

      When prompted, enter an authorized Customer Portal user name and password.

    2. Lookup the valid Pool ID for the RHOSP entitlement: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager list --available --all --matches="*Hyperconverged*"

      Example Output

      Subscription Name:   Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Cloud
Provides:            Red Hat OpenStack
                     Red Hat Ceph Storage
SKU:                 RS00160
Contract:            1111111
Pool ID:             a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9
Provides Management: Yes
Available:           1
Suggested:           1
Service Level:       Self-Support
Service Type:        L1-L3
Subscription Type:   Standard
Ends:                05/27/2018
System Type:         Virtual

    3. Using the Pool ID from the previous step, attach the RHOSP entitlement: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager attach --pool=$POOL_ID
      Replace…​

      • $POOL_ID with the valid pool id from the previous step.

        Example

        [stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager attach --pool=a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9

    4. Disable the default software repositories, and enable the required software repositories: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager repos --disable=*
[stack@director ~]$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-rh-common-rpms --enable=rhel-ha-for-rhel-7-server-rpms --enable=rhel-7-server-openstack-13-rpms

    5. If needed, update the base system software to the latest package versions, and reboot the RHOSP-d node: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo yum update
[stack@director ~]$ sudo reboot

      Wait for the node to be completely up and running before continuing to the next step.

  5. Install all the RHOSP-d software packages: 

    [stack@director ~]$ sudo yum install python-tripleoclient ceph-ansible

  6. Configure the RHOSP-d software.

    1. Red Hat provides a basic undercloud configuration template to use. Copy the undercloud.conf.sample file to the stack user’s home directory, named undercloud.conf: 

      [stack@director ~]$ cp /usr/share/instack-undercloud/undercloud.conf.sample ~/undercloud.conf

    2. The undercloud configuration template contains two sections: [DEFAULT] and [auth]. Open the undercloud.conf file for editing. Edit the undercloud_hostname with the RHOSP-d node name. Uncomment the following parameters under the [DEFAULT] section in the undercloud.conf file by deleting the # before the parameter. Edit the parameter values with the appropriate values as required for this solution’s network configuration:

      Parameter

      Network

      Edit Value?

      Example Value

      local_ip

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.1/24

      network_gateway

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.1

      undercloud_public_vip

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.2

      undercloud_admin_vip

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.3

      local_interface

      Provisioning

      Yes

      eth1

      network_cidr

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.0/24

      masquerade_network

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.0/24

      dhcp_start

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.5

      dhcp_end

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.24

      inspection_interface

      Provisioning

      No

      br-ctlplane

      inspection_iprange

      Provisioning

      Yes

      192.0.2.100,192.0.2.120

      inspection_extras

      N/A

      Yes

      true

      inspection_runbench

      N/A

      Yes

      false

      inspection_enable_uefi

      N/A

      Yes

      true

      Save the changes after editing the undercloud.conf file. See Appendix B, Red Hat Hyper-converaged Infrastructure for Cloud Undercloud Configuration Parameters for detailed descriptions of these configuration parameters.

      Note

      Consider enabling Ironic’s disk cleaning feature, if overcloud nodes are going to be repurposed again. See Section 3.2, “Understanding Ironic’s Disk Cleaning Between Deployments” for more details.

    3. Run the RHOSP-d configuration script: 

      [stack@director ~]$ openstack undercloud install
      Note

      This script will take several minutes to complete. This script will install additional software packages and generates two files:

      undercloud-passwords.conf
      A list of all passwords for the director’s services.
      stackrc
      A set of initialization variables to help you access the director’s command line tools.

    4. Verify that the configuration script started and enabled all of the RHOSP services: 

      [stack@director ~]$ sudo systemctl list-units openstack-*

    5. The configuration script gives the stack user access to all the container management commands. Refresh the stack user’s permissions: 

      [stack@director ~]$ exec su -l stack

    6. Initialize the stack user’s environment to use the RHOSP-d command-line tools: 

      [stack@director ~]$ source ~/stackrc

      The command-line prompt will change, which indicates that OpenStack commands will authenticate and execute against the undercloud:

      Example

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$

  7. The RHOSP-d requires several disk images for provisioning the overcloud nodes.

    1. Obtain these disk images by installing rhosp-director-images and rhosp-director-images-ipa software packages: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ sudo yum install rhosp-director-images rhosp-director-images-ipa

    2. Extract the archive files to the images directory in the stack user’s home directory: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ cd ~/images
(undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ for x in /usr/share/rhosp-director-images/overcloud-full-latest-13.0.tar /usr/share/rhosp-director-images/ironic-python-agent-latest-13.0.tar ; do tar -xvf $x ; done

    3. Import the disk images into the RHOSP-d: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack overcloud image upload --image-path /home/stack/images/

    4. To view a list of imported disk images, execute the following command: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack image list

      Image Name

      Image Type

      Image Description

      bm-deploy-kernel

      Deployment

      Kernel file used for provisioning and deploying systems.

      bm-deploy-ramdisk

      Deployment

      RAMdisk file used for provisioning and deploying systems.

      overcloud-full-vmlinuz

      Overcloud

      Kernel file used for the base system, which is written to the node’s disk.

      overcloud-full-initrd

      Overcloud

      RAMdisk file used for the base system, which is written to the node’s disk.

      overcloud-full

      Overcloud

      The rest of the software needed for the base system, which is written to the node’s disk.

      Note

      The openstack image list command will not display the introspection PXE disk images. The introspection PXE disk images are copied to the /httpboot/ directory. 

      (undercloud) [stack@director images]$ ls -l /httpboot
total 341460
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root              root                5153184 Mar 31 06:58 agent.kernel
-rw-r--r--. 1 root              root              344491465 Mar 31 06:59 agent.ramdisk
-rw-r--r--. 1 ironic-inspector  ironic-inspector        337 Mar 31 06:23 inspector.ipxe

  8. Set the DNS server so that it resolves the overcloud node host names.

    1. List the subnets: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack subnet list

    2. Define the name server using the undercloud’s neutron subnet: 

      openstack subnet set --dns-nameserver $DNS_NAMESERVER_IP $SUBNET_NAME_or_ID
      Replace…​
      • $DNS_NAMESERVER_IP with the IP address of the DNS server.

      • $SUBNET_NAME_or_ID with the neutron subnet name or id.

        Example

        (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack subnet set --dns-nameserver 192.0.2.4 local-subnet

        Note

        Reuse the --dns-nameserver $DNS_NAMESERVER_IP option for each name server.

    3. Verify the DNS server by viewing the subnet details: 

      (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack subnet show $SUBNET_NAME_or_ID
      Replace…​

      • $SUBNET_NAME_or_ID with the neutron subnet name or id.

        Example

        (undercloud) [stack@director ~]$ openstack subnet show local-subnet
+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| Field             | Value                                         |
+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| ...               |                                               |
| dns_nameservers   | 192.0.2.4                                     |
| ...               |                                               |
+-------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

Additional Resources

  • For more information on all the undercloud configuration parameters located in the undercloud.conf file, see the Configuring the Director section in the RHOSP Director Installation and Usage Guide.