Apex configuration

Introduction

This document describes the steps to install an OPNFV Bramaputra 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.

Preface

Apex uses the RDO Manager Open Source project as a server provisioning tool. RDO Manager is the RDO Project implementation of OpenStack’s Triple-O project. The Triple-O image based life cycle installation tool provisions an OPNFV Target System (3 controllers, n number of 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-bramaputra.iso) to both install CentOS 7 and the nessesary materials to deploy or the Apex RPM (opnfv-apex.rpm) which expects installation to a CentOS 7 libvirt enabled host. The RPM contains a collection of configuration file, 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) RPM. The RPM is the same RPM included in the ISO and includes 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 an RDO Manager Instack 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.

Installation High-Level Overview - Bare Metal Deployment

The setup presumes that you have 6 bare metal servers and have already setup network connectivity on at least 2 interfaces for all servers via a TOR switch or other network implementation.

The physical TOR switches are not automatically configured from the OPNFV reference platform. All the networks involved in the OPNFV infrastructure as well as the provider networks and the private tenant VLANs needs to be manually configured.

The Jumphost can be installed using the bootable ISO or by other means including the (opnfv-apex) RPMs and virtualization capabilities. The Jumphost should then be configured with an IP gateway on its admin or public interface and configured with a working DNS server. The Jumphost should also have routable access to the lights out network.

opnfv-deploy is then executed in order to deploy the Instack VM. opnfv-deploy uses three configuration files in order to know how to install and provision the OPNFV target system. The information gathered under section Execution Requirements (Bare Metal Only) is put into the YAML file (/etc/opnfv-apex/inventory.yaml) configuration file. Deployment options are put into the YAML file (/etc/opnfv-apex/deploy_settings.yaml). Networking definitions gathered under section Network Requirements are put into the YAML file (/etc/opnfv-apex/network_settings.yaml). opnfv-deploy will boot the Instack VM and load the target deployment configuration into the provisioning toolchain. This includes MAC address, IPMI, Networking Environment and OPNFV deployment options.

Once configuration is loaded and Instack is configured it will then reboot the nodes via IPMI. The nodes should already be set to PXE boot first off the admin interface. The nodes will first PXE off of the Instack PXE server and go through a discovery/introspection process.

Introspection boots off of custom introspection PXE images. These images are designed to look at the properties of the hardware that is booting off of them and report the properties of it back to the Instack node.

After introspection Instack will execute a Heat Stack Deployment to being node provisioning and configuration. The nodes will reboot and PXE again off the Instack PXE server to provision each node using the Glance disk images provided by Instack. These disk images include all the necessary packages and configuration for an OPNFV deployment to execute. Once the node’s disk images have been written to disk the nodes will boot off the newly written disks and execute cloud-init which will execute the final node configuration. This configuration is largly completed by executing a puppet apply on each node.

Installation High-Level Overview - VM Deployment

The VM nodes deployment operates almost the same way as the bare metal deployment with a few differences. opnfv-deploy still deploys an Instack VM. In addition to the Instack VM a collection of VMs (3 control nodes + 2 compute for an HA deployment or 1 control node and 1 compute node for a Non-HA Deployment) will be defined for the target OPNFV deployment. The part of the toolchain that executes IPMI power instructions calls into libvirt instead of the IPMI interfaces on baremetal servers to operate the power managment. These VMs are then provisioned with the same disk images and configuration that baremetal would be.

To RDO Manager these nodes look like they have just built and registered the same way as bare metal nodes, the main difference is the use of a libvirt driver for the power management.

Installation Guide - Bare Metal Deployment

WARNING: Baremetal documentation is not complete. WARNING: The main missing instructions are r elated to bridging the networking for the undercloud to the physical underlay network for the overcloud to be deployed to.

This section goes step-by-step on how to correctly install and provision the OPNFV target system to bare metal nodes.

Install Bare Metal Jumphost

1a. If your Jumphost does not have CentOS 7 already on it, or you would like to do a fresh
install, then download the Apex bootable ISO from OPNFV artifacts <http://artifacts.opnfv.org/>. There have been isolated reports of problems with the ISO having trouble completing installation successfully. In the unexpected event the ISO does not work please workaround this by downloading the CentOS 7 DVD and performing a “Virtualization Host” install. If you perform a “Minimal Install” or install type other than “Virtualization Host” simply run sudo yum groupinstall "Virtualization Host" && chkconfig libvird on and reboot the host. Once you have completed the base CentOS install proceed to step 1b.
1b. If your Jump host already has CentOS 7 with libvirt running on it then install the

opnfv-apex RPMs from OPNFV artifacts <http://artifacts.opnfv.org/>. The following RPMS are available for installation:

  • opnfv-apex - OpenDaylight L2 / L3 and ONOS support **
  • opnfv-apex-opendaylight-sfc - OpenDaylight SFC support **
  • opnfv-apex-undercloud (required)
  • opnfv-apex-common (required)

** One or more of these RPMs is required If you only want the experimental SFC support then the opnfv-apex RPM is not required. If you only want OpenDaylight or ONOS support then the opnfv-apex-opendaylight-sfc RPM is not required.

To install these RPMs download them to the local disk on your CentOS 7 install and pass the file names directly to yum: sudo yum install opnfv-apex-<version>.rpm opnfv-apex-undercloud-<version>.rpm opnfv-apex-common-<version>.rpm

2a. Boot the ISO off of a USB or other installation media and walk through installing OPNFV CentOS 7.

The ISO comes prepared to be written directly to a USB drive with dd as such:

dd if=opnfv-apex.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

Replace /dev/sdX with the device assigned to your usb drive. Then select the USB device as the boot media on your Jumphost

2b. Install the RDO Release RPM and the opnfv-apex RPM:

sudo yum install -y https://www.rdoproject.org/repos/rdo-release.rpm opnfv-apex-{version}.rpm

The RDO Project release repository is needed to install OpenVSwitch, which is a dependency of opnfv-apex. If you do not have external connectivity to use this repository you need to download the OpenVSwitch RPM from the RDO Project repositories and install it with the opnfv-apex RPM.

  1. After the operating system and the opnfv-apex RPMs are installed, login to your Jumphost as root.
  2. Configure IP addresses on the interfaces that you have selected as your networks.
  3. Configure the IP gateway to the Internet either, preferably on the public interface.
  4. Configure your /etc/resolv.conf to point to a DNS server (8.8.8.8 is provided by Google).

Creating a Node Inventory File

IPMI configuration information gathered in section Execution Requirements (Bare Metal Only) needs to be added to the inventory.yaml file.

  1. Copy /usr/share/doc/opnfv/inventory.yaml.example as your inventory file template to /etc/opnfv-apex/inventory.yaml.
  2. The nodes dictionary contains a definition block for each baremetal host that will be deployed. 1 or more compute nodes and 3 controller nodes are required. (The example file contains blocks for each of these already). It is optional at this point to add more compute nodes into the node list.
  3. Edit the following values for each node:
    • mac_address: MAC of the interface that will PXE boot from Instack
    • ipmi_ip: IPMI IP Address
    • ipmi_user: IPMI username
    • ipmi_password: IPMI password
    • pm_type: Power Management driver to use for the node
    • cpus: (Introspected*) CPU cores available
    • memory: (Introspected*) Memory available in Mib
    • disk: (Introspected*) Disk space available in Gb
    • arch: (Introspected*) System architecture
    • capabilities: (Optional**) Intended node role (profile:control or profile:compute)
  • Introspection looks up the overcloud node’s resources and overrides these value. You can

leave default values and Apex will get the correct values when it runs introspection on the nodes.

** If capabilities profile is not specified then Apex will select node’s roles in the OPNFV cluster in a non-deterministic fashion.

Creating the Settings Files

Edit the 2 settings files in /etc/opnfv-apex/. These files have comments to help you customize them.

  1. deploy_settings.yaml This file includes basic configuration options deployment.
  2. network_settings.yaml This file provides Apex with the networking information that satisfies the prerequisite Network Requirements. These are specific to your environment.

Running opnfv-deploy

You are now ready to deploy OPNFV using Apex! opnfv-deploy will use the inventory and settings files to deploy OPNFV.

Follow the steps below to execute:

  1. Execute opnfv-deploy sudo opnfv-deploy [ --flat | -n network_settings.yaml ] -i inventory.yaml -d deploy_settings.yaml If you need more information about the options that can be passed to opnfv-deploy use opnfv-deploy --help –flat will collapse all networks onto a single nic, -n network_settings.yaml allows you to customize your networking topology.
  2. Wait while deployment is executed. If something goes wrong during this part of the process, it is most likely a problem with the setup of your network or the information in your configuration files. You will also notice different outputs in your shell.
  3. The message “Overcloud Deployed” will display when When the deployment is complete. Just above this message there will be a URL that ends in port http://<host>:5000. This url is also the endpoint for the OPNFV Horizon Dashboard if connected to on port 80.