Friday, June 26, 2015

SUSE® OpenStack Cloud 5 Admin Appliance – The Easier Way to Start Your Cloud

If you used the SUSE OpenStack Cloud 4 Admin Appliance, you know it was a downloadable, OpenStack Icehouse-based appliance, which even a non-technical user could get off the ground to deploy an OpenStack cloud. Today, I am excited to tell you about the new Juno-based SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 Admin Appliance.

With the SUSE OpenStack Cloud 4 release we moved to a single integrated version. After lots of feedback from users it was clear that no one really cared that downloading something over 10GB mattered as long as it had everything they needed to start an OpenStack private cloud. In version 5 the download is over 15GB, but it actually has all of the software you might need from SLES 11 or SLES 12 compute infrastructure to SUSE Enterprise Storage integration. I was able to integrate the latest SMT mirror repositories at a reduced size and have everything you might need to speed your deployment.

The new appliance incorporates all of the needed software and repositories to set up, stage and deploy OpenStack Juno in your sandbox lab, or production environments. Coupled with it are the added benefits of automated deployment of highly available cloud services, support for mixed-hypervisor clouds containing KVM, Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, and VMware vSphere, integration of our award winning, SUSE Enterprise Storage, support from our award-winning, worldwide service organization and integration with SUSE Engineered maintenance processes. In addition, there is integration with tools such as SUSE Studio™ and SUSE Manager to help you build and manage your cloud applications.

With the availability of SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5, and based on feedback from partners, vendors and customers deploying OpenStack, it was time to release a new and improved Admin Appliance. This new image incorporates the most common use cases and is flexible enough to add in other components such as SMT (Subscription Management Tool) and SUSE Customer Center registration, so you can keep your cloud infrastructure updated.

The creation of the SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 Admin Appliance is intended to provide a quick and easy deployment. The partners and vendors we are working with find it useful to quickly test their applications in SUSE OpenStack Cloud and validate their use case. For customers it has become a great tool for deploying production private clouds based on OpenStack.

With version 5.0.x you can proceed with the following to get moving now with OpenStack.

Its important that you start by reading and understanding the Deployment Guide before proceeding. This will give you some insight into the requirements and an overall understanding of what is involved to deploy your own private cloud.

As a companion to the Deployment Guide we have provided a questionnaire that will help you answer and organize the critical steps talked about in the Deployment Guide.

To help you get moving quickly the SUSE Cloud OpenStack Admin Appliance Guide provides instructions on using the appliance and details a step-by-step installation.

The most updated guide will always be here

A new fun feature to try out in SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 is the batch deployment capability. The appliance includes three templates in the /root home directory ( NFS.yaml, DRBD.yaml, simple-cloud.yaml )

NFS.yaml will deploy a 2 node controller cluster with NFS shared storage and 2 compute nodes with all of the common OpenStack services running in the cluster.

DRBD.yaml will deploy a 2 node controller cluster with DRBD replication for the database and messaging queue and 2 compute nodes with all of the common OpenStack services running in the cluster.

simple-cloud.yaml will deploy 1 controller and 1 compute node with all of the common OpenStack services running in a simple setup. 

Now is the time. Go out to http://www.suse.com/suse-cloud-appliances and start downloading version 5, walk through the Appliance Guide, and see how quick and easy it can be to set up OpenStack. Don't stop there. Make it highly available and set up more than one hypervisor, and don't forget to have a lot of fun.

Monday, February 23, 2015

openSUSE Tumbleweed; 3.19 kernel; VMware Workstation 11.0.x

Since the release of the 3.19 kernel in openSUSE Tumbleweed the vmnet module will fail to build for VMware Workstation 11.0.x

VMware community message

Credit for the patch

patch available at 1

Execute the following steps to patch your VMware Workstation 11.0.x

Download the patch to /tmp:
# curl -L "https://docs.google.com/a/seader.us/uc?authuser=0&id=0BxMaO3Y-qL_1Z2NMSkxRdndzNlk&export=download" -o /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
Extract the vmnet module from sources:
# cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
# tar -xf vmnet.tar
Apply the patch to the source:
# patch -p0 -i /tmp/vmnet-3.19.patch
Recreate the source archive:
# tar -cf vmnet.tar vmnet-only 
Remove leftover folder:
# rm -r *-only
Rebuild VMware modules:
# vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
Enjoy!

Thursday, February 19, 2015

OpenStack Summit Vancouver 2015 Presentation Votes (ends Feb. 23rd)

Open voting is available for all session submissions until February 23rd at 5pm CST. This is a great way for the community to decide what they want to hear.

 I have submitted a handful of sessions which I hope will be voted for. Below are some short summary's and links to their voting pages.
  • Accelerate OpenStack deployment with OpenStack Admin Appliance ( Speaker: Cameron Seader ) 
In an effort to make OpenStack available to the non-tech user and appear much less of a heavy lifting project, I have created the SUSE OpenStack Cloud Admin Appliance. However, no matter if your an OpenStack Noob, Professional, Expert or Developer...
https://www.openstack.org/vote-vancouver/Presentation/accelerate-openstack-deployment-with-openstack-admin-appliance
  • Deploying SUSE OpenStack Cloud with the Xen Project Hypervisor ( Speakers: Cameron Seader, Russell Pavlicek, Stefano Stabellini ) 
Its all about choice these days when it comes to selecting your OpenStack hypervisor. But what makes for a good choice of hypervisor? And why should you consider the Xen Project Hypervisor when there are other possible selections? ...
https://www.openstack.org/vote-vancouver/Presentation/deploying-suse-openstack-cloud-with-the-xen-project-hypervisor  
  • Hands-On With Heat: Service Orchestration in the Cloud submitted by Rick Ashford ( Speakers: Rick Ashford, Cameron Seader )
 OpenStack Heat provides a framework for predefining a structured service, and allows you instantiate that service in an automated manner. This hands-on lab will walk the participants through the process of creating a Heat template file for a multi-tiered...
https://www.openstack.org/vote-vancouver/Presentation/hands-on-with-heat-service-orchestration-in-the-cloud
  • Planning an Enterprise OpenStack Deployment submitted by Rick Ashford ( Speakers: Rick Ashford, Cameron Seader )
Deploying OpenStack can be a difficult, time-consuming, and complex task. Doing it successfully is even harder. Planning and coordination between groups are the key differences between successful and failed implementations. Come discuss the questions you will need to ask yourself to be able to architect...
https://www.openstack.org/vote-vancouver/Presentation/planning-an-enterprise-openstack-deployment
Thanks for your support.
-CS