Support for OpenStack

Discussion in 'Feature Requests' started by Wander Grevink, Jul 27, 2018.

  1. Wander Grevink

    Wander Grevink New Member

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    Hi,

    Currently there is no support for OpenStack (https://www.openstack.org/)

    Functionally LiquidFiles is exactly what we need but our (virtual) servers are all hosted at a public cloud provider that runs OpenStack.

    This would be yet another target platform on https://man.liquidfiles.com/install/

    Regards,
    Wander Grevink
    Software Improvement Group (www.sig.eu)
     
  2. David

    David Administrator
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    In the Openstack you have to use the generic installation from the LF's ISO installer.
    You will need to upload the LF's ISO installer to the image store and then boot and install from it similarly like on a physical server:
    https://man.liquidfiles.com/install/iso.html
     
  3. Wander Grevink

    Wander Grevink New Member

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    Thanks for the reply, I have already tried that and indeed the ISO image boots, however the setup wizard turns to a graphical interface after the initial 'are you sure?' question and then it breaks. Unfortunately our cloud provider does not offer the functionality to present me a graphical UI at this point.

    If the setup wizard were text (console) only I probably could proceed to the end however for us it is important that this process can be done unattended. There are standard solutions for this like cloud-init (https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) that let you provide bootstrap 'user data' that is only picked up at first boot.

    To summarise: the choice to distribute LiquidFiles as a machine image that contains everything is fine, provided that we can script the initial creation of the server:
    - upload ISO to image store
    - launch instance based on that image while providing user-data that is passed to cloud-init which takes care of the initial setup steps

    I hope that I was able to make clear what we need, we really like the functionality that LF offers but without this we cannot use it in production and we'll have to look for something less good.
     
  4. David

    David Administrator
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    Practically if you run the default installation and hit "yes" to install, then the default installer does not need any further interaction from the admin.
    If you did not see anything on the screen the installation could be done after a while. But a bottleneck could be a drive controller and drive mappings.
    If the drive was mapped differently than /dev/sda or /dev/hda as the default auto installer is expecting, then it could stuck at this point where the partition should prepared.
    Did you try the alternative way, the installation from ovf source? This should deploy a preconfigured LF machine without any interaction.
     
  5. Wander Grevink

    Wander Grevink New Member

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    Hi David,

    I managed to get a bit further in the process and run into an error that indeed suggests a problem with drive mapping as you suggest.

    These are my steps:
    1- Upload LF ISO to image store
    2- Launch instance based on that image
    3- Open console of instance
    3.1- choose 'Install a new system'
    3.2- proceed with install -> 'yes'
    -> Now I see an error 'Disk "sda" given in clearpart command does not exist', see screenshot

    Alternatively if I:
    3.1- choose 'Install a new system (custom disk)'
    3.2- proceed with install -> 'yes'
    -> I see a CentOS installation screen with 'Installation destination' -> 'No disks selected'
    I can click around in this UI (I found a trick) but it is not possible to find a disk (Add a disk..., etc)

    FYI: Parallel to our discussion my colleague is discussing the same subject with one of your colleagues (Johan Allard) and they made some progress on the automation part, see screenshot 2

    I’m leaving for holiday next week so I propose to merge the 2 discussions and move to mail if that’s OK with you: ( we are w.grevink@sig.eu and l.makkinje@sig.eu)

    To reiterate: functionally LF is exactly what we need, if we manage to find a solution to these technical problems we will start using it as the official channel for sending documents to our clients, this means order of magnitude 150 licences at this moment.

    cheers,
    Wander

    Screen Shot 2018-08-02 at 13.46.08.png Screen Shot 2018-08-02 at 14.06.08.png
     
  6. David

    David Administrator
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    So seems you were able to display the installation UI. Yes, similarly it looks like when installing on Xen, the drive there is mapped as /dev/xvda so the custom installer must be used. In the Centos installer it's bit tricky because you have tick up the drive first and choice "I will configure partition" ratiobutton, and finally click up "+" to configure the partition schema (/boot, /, /swap). Please check this howto for Xen I think it will be very similar for Openstack: https://man.liquidfiles.com/install/xen.html
    If we added the json configurator would be nice to have there also the target drive option.
     

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