OpenStack Tutorial – Operate Your Own Private Cloud (Full Course)

Are you looking to deploy your own private cloud to meet your organization‘s unique infrastructure needs? OpenStack is a powerful open source platform that enables you to build and manage private clouds with the flexibility and control of public cloud platforms like AWS and Azure.

In this hands-on OpenStack tutorial, you will learn step-by-step how to install, configure, and operate a production-grade private cloud environment using OpenStack. Whether you are an IT professional looking to bring cloud-like agility to your on-premises infrastructure, or a developer seeking to deploy a personal R&D cloud, this guide will walk you through the process from start to finish.

What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is a collection of open source software projects that provide a framework for deploying Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) private clouds. It is backed by a large community of technology vendors and individual contributors.

The key components of OpenStack include:

• Nova: Manages virtual machine compute instances
• Swift: Provides object storage for files and media
• Cinder: Provides block storage volumes for VMs
• Neutron: Manages virtual networking between cloud resources
• Keystone: Handles identity and access management
• Glance: Stores VM images and snapshots
• Horizon: Provides a web-based user interface for the cloud

Together these services enable self-service, on-demand provisioning of virtualized compute, storage and networking resources through REST APIs and a web portal.

Why Use a Private Cloud?

Private clouds built on OpenStack offer several advantages over traditional virtualized infrastructure and public clouds:

• More control over performance, security, compliance
• Ability to customize hardware and software stack
• No ingress/egress charges to access your own data
• Guaranteed resource availability vs. shared public clouds
• Easier migration of legacy apps vs. rewriting for public cloud
• Potential cost savings at scale vs. public cloud

Of course, private clouds also require you to invest in your own data center space, hardware, and IT skills. The decision ultimately depends on your specific workloads and business requirements.

Planning Your OpenStack Deployment

Before diving into installation, it‘s important to properly scope and design your private cloud environment. Key considerations include:

• Hardware – Evaluate compute, storage, and network requirements and select compatible hardware
• Deployment model – Decide on a single or multi-node deployment architecture based on scale and availability needs
• Networking – Define external network connectivity and map out virtual network topology
• Storage – Select backend storage systems (SAN, NAS, Ceph, etc.) and plan volume/object storage
• Cloud images – Build a library of base OS images for Linux and Windows
• Access control – Define projects, users, roles and quota/usage limits

Step 1: Install OpenStack

With the planning done, you are ready to install OpenStack on your hardware. The installation process varies depending on your chosen Linux distribution and OpenStack version. Popular options include:

• Canonical OpenStack on Ubuntu
• Red Hat OpenStack Platform (OSP)
• SUSE OpenStack Cloud
• Mirantis OpenStack
• DevStack (for testing/development)

In general, the installation involves:

1. Preparing the servers with a base OS
2. Installing the OpenStack packages and dependencies
3. Configuring each OpenStack service (compute, storage, network, etc.)
4. Defining service endpoints and API access
5. Configuring the Horizon web dashboard

Refer to the installation guide for your chosen platform for detailed instructions.

Step 2: Configure Compute (Nova)

Nova is the OpenStack compute service that manages virtual machine instances. After installation, you need to configure key options such as:

• Virtualization hypervisor (KVM, Xen, VMware, etc.)
• CPU and memory allocation ratios
• Virtual CPU models and policies
• PCI passthrough for hardware acceleration

You also need to configure compute nodes that will host the actual VM instances by:

1. Installing the Nova compute and supporting packages
2. Configuring the hypervisor for each node
3. Registering the compute node with the Nova controller
4. Assigning resource metadata (RAM, CPU, etc.) to each node

Step 3: Configure Networking (Neutron)

Neutron handles virtualized networking in the OpenStack cloud, including creation of virtual networks, subnets, routers, and assignment of floating IPs. Common setup tasks include:

• Defining external network connectivity (layer-2/layer-3)
• Creating internal tenant virtual networks and subnets
• Configuring virtual network types (VLAN, VXLAN, GRE)
• Setting up virtual routers for inter-network routing
• Enabling security groups and firewall rules

Advanced networking features like load balancing, VPN, and port mirroring may require additional Neutron plugins and agents.

Step 4: Configure Storage (Cinder/Swift)

OpenStack provides both block storage (Cinder) and object storage (Swift) for use by virtual machines and applications.

For Cinder, you need to configure:

• Backend storage (iSCSI, FC, NFS, Ceph, etc.)
• Volume types and sizes offered to users
• Storage quality-of-service (QoS) policies
• Backup and snapshot settings

For Swift, considerations include:

• Selecting object storage hardware (commodity vs. enterprise)
• Defining storage policies (replication, erasure coding)
• Configuring Swift proxies, account/container servers
• Monitoring and balancing storage capacity

Step 5: Configure Identity (Keystone)

Keystone provides identity and access management for the OpenStack private cloud. It handles authentication of users and services and enforces Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies.

To set up Keystone, you need to:

1. Define the backend identity source (SQL, LDAP, etc.)
2. Create domains, projects, users and groups
3. Assign roles and permissions to users/groups
4. Set up identity federation with external user directories
5. Configure API endpoint and service catalog

Step 6: Launch a VM Instance

At last, your OpenStack private cloud is ready for action! To launch your first VM instance:

1. Upload a VM image or choose from preloaded image library
2. Configure machine flavor (CPU, RAM, disk)
3. Select boot source (image, volume, snapshot)
4. Attach to virtual networks
5. Assign a floating IP for external access
6. Launch and connect to VM via SSH/RDP

You can also create VM snapshots and backups, attach persistent storage volumes, and scale out with additional instances as needed.

Operating Your OpenStack Cloud

Day-2 operations of an OpenStack private cloud include a variety of tasks:

• Adding/removing compute and storage nodes
• Updating and patching OpenStack services
• Managing projects, quota and resource usage
• Creating instance snapshots and backups
• Monitoring utilization and performance metrics
• Troubleshooting issues with VMs, storage, networking

The OpenStack Horizon dashboard provides a user-friendly interface for common cloud management tasks. For more advanced usage, you can leverage the OpenStack CLI and REST APIs. Third-party tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Terraform can help automate deployment and configuration as well.

Securing Your Private Cloud

Security is a top concern for any cloud environment. Key security best practices for OpenStack include:

• Hardening access with multi-factor authentication, password policies, etc.
• Following the principle of least privilege for user roles and permissions
• Enabling security groups and network firewalls to restrict traffic
• Isolating sensitive workloads with tenant network segmentation
• Encrypting data in-transit and at-rest
• Keeping OpenStack software and underlying OS patched/updated
• Monitoring for unauthorized access attempts and anomalous behavior

Regular security audits and penetration testing can help identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the OpenStack private cloud environment.

Scaling Your Private Cloud

As your needs grow, you can expand your OpenStack private cloud with:

• Additional compute nodes for more VM capacity
• New storage nodes and backends for increased volume
• Upgraded network switches/routers for higher throughput
• More powerful controller nodes for larger deployments

OpenStack also supports multi-site deployments for organizations that want to deploy geo-distributed private clouds for high availability and disaster recovery.

Conclusion and Next Steps

In this tutorial, you learned how to design, install, configure, and operate a private cloud powered by OpenStack. With its robust set of infrastructure management tools and vibrant open source community, OpenStack is one of the leading platforms for companies looking to bring public cloud-like capabilities to their own data centers.

Of course, mastering OpenStack in production takes considerable practice and experience. If you‘re serious about leveling up your OpenStack game, I recommend:

• Deploying your own OpenStack lab environment to get hands-on experience
• Pursuing OpenStack Administrator certification from the OpenStack Foundation
• Joining your local OpenStack User Group to learn from other practitioners
• Contributing back to the OpenStack community by reporting bugs, writing docs, etc.

With dedication and effort, you can become an OpenStack private cloud expert in your own right! Feel free to reach out with any questions. Happy cloud building!