Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat OpenStack Platform

Chapter 1. OpenStack Command-line Clients

1.1. Overview

You can use the OpenStack command-line clients to run simple commands that make API calls. You can run these commands from the command line or in scripts to automate tasks. If you provide OpenStack credentials, you can run these commands on any computer.
Internally, each client command runs cURL commands that embed API requests. The OpenStack APIs are RESTful APIs that use the HTTP protocol, including methods, URIs, media types, and response codes.
These open-source Python clients run on Linux or Mac OS X systems and are easy to learn and use. Each OpenStack service has its own command-line client. On some client commands, you can specify a debug parameter to show the underlying API request for the command. This is a good way to become familiar with the OpenStack API calls.
The following table lists the command-line client for some of the OpenStack services.

Table 1.1. OpenStack services and clients

Service Client Package Description
Bare Metal ironic python-ironicclient Manage and provision physical machines.
Block Storage cinder python-cinderclient Create and manage volumes.
Compute nova python-novaclient Create and manage images, instances, and flavors.
Director tripleoclient python-tripleoclient Manage a director-based cloud.
Identity keystone python-keystoneclient Create and manage users, tenants, roles, endpoints, and credentials.
Image Service glance python-glanceclient Create and manage images.
Hardware Introspection for Bare Metal ironic-inspector openstack-ironic-inspector An auxiliary service for discovering hardware properties for the Bare Metal service.
Hardware Introspection for Bare Metal openstack baremetal introspection python-ironic-inspector-client A client for the bare metal hardware introspection.
Networking neutron python-neutronclient Configure networks for guest servers. This client was previously called quantum.
Object Storage swift python-swiftclient Gather statistics, list items, update metadata, and upload, download, and delete files stored by the Object Storage service. Gain access to an Object Storage installation for ad hoc processing.
Orchestration heat python-heatclient Launch stacks from templates, view details of running stacks including events and resources, and update and delete stacks.
Telemetry ceilometer python-ceilometerclient Create and collect measurements across OpenStack.
For client installation instructions, see Section 1.2, “Install the OpenStack Command-line Clients”.