3. Introduction

This document describes the steps to install an OPNFV Colorado reference platform, as defined by the Genesis Project using the Apex installer.

The audience is assumed to have a good background in networking and Linux administration.

4. Preface

Apex uses Triple-O from the RDO Project OpenStack distribution as a provisioning tool. The Triple-O image based life cycle installation tool provisions an OPNFV Target System (3 controllers, 2 or more compute nodes) with OPNFV specific configuration provided by the Apex deployment tool chain.

The Apex deployment artifacts contain the necessary tools to deploy and configure an OPNFV target system using the Apex deployment toolchain. These artifacts offer the choice of using the Apex bootable ISO (opnfv-apex-colorado.iso) to both install CentOS 7 and the necessary materials to deploy or the Apex RPMs (opnfv-apex*.rpm), and their associated dependencies, which expects installation to a CentOS 7 libvirt enabled host. The RPM contains a collection of configuration files, prebuilt disk images, and the automatic deployment script (opnfv-deploy).

An OPNFV install requires a “Jumphost” in order to operate. The bootable ISO will allow you to install a customized CentOS 7 release to the Jumphost, which includes the required packages needed to run opnfv-deploy. If you already have a Jumphost with CentOS 7 installed, you may choose to skip the ISO step and simply install the (opnfv-apex*.rpm) RPMs. The RPMs are the same RPMs included in the ISO and include all the necessary disk images and configuration files to execute an OPNFV deployment. Either method will prepare a host to the same ready state for OPNFV deployment.

opnfv-deploy instantiates a Triple-O Undercloud VM server using libvirt as its provider. This VM is then configured and used to provision the OPNFV target deployment (3 controllers, n compute nodes). These nodes can be either virtual or bare metal. This guide contains instructions for installing either method.