chef-bcpc

chef-bcpc is a set of Chef cookbooks that build a highly-available OpenStack cloud.

The cloud consists of head nodes (OpenStack controller services, Ceph Mons, etc.) and work nodes (hypervisors).

Each head node runs all of the core services in a highly-available manner. Each work node runs the relevant services (nova-compute, Ceph OSDs, etc.).

Getting Started

The following instructions will get chef-bcpc up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

• OS X or Linux
• Quad-core CPU that supports VT-x or AMD-V virtualization extensions
• 32 GB of memory
• 128 GB of free disk space
• Vagrant 2.1+
• VirtualBox 5.2+ or KVM + libvirtd
• Packer 1.4+
• git, curl, rsync, ssh, jq, make, ansible

NOTE: It is likely possible to build an environment with 16GB of RAM or less if one is willing to make slight modifications to the virtual topology and/or change some of the build settings and overrides. However, we've opted to spec the minimum requirements slightly more aggressively and target hosts with 32GB RAM or more to provide the best out-of-the-box experience.

Local Build

• Choose the topology and hardware configuration of your cluster. You can choose from existing configurations in

  virtual/topology

  , or build your own. hardware.yml and topology.yml are used by default. To view a list of tested topologies and hardware configurations please see virtual/README.
• Set the variables in

  virtual/vagrantbox.json

  . The variable

  vagrant_box

  specifies the Vagrant box we use to build the virtual environment, and

  vagrant_box_version

  specifies the version of the Vagrant box.
• If one would like to build a pre-provisioned custom Packer box and use it as the base box to create the virtual environment, the steps below should be followed:
  • Create

    virtual/packer/variables.json

    and set the variables. Depends on the virtual machine provider, an example can be found at variables.json.virtualbox.example or variables.json.libvirt.example. This step is essential for building a Packer box that's used as a base box image for building the virtual environment. The variables

    bcc_apt_key_url

    and

    bcc_apt_url

    are optional, while others must be set. The variable

    kernel_version

    specifies the linux kernel version we'd like to have for the Packer box. While

    base_box

    ,

    base_box_version

    , and

    base_box_provider

    specify an official Vagrant box we'd like to use as a baseline for the Packer box, upon which we make further modifications. Last but not least, the variable

    output_packer_box_name

    specifies the name we'd like to use when adding the output Packer box to Vagrant.
  • Run make target

    make create-packer-box

    . This will create a Packer box and add it to Vagrant with the name specified by

    output_packer_box_name

    .
  • Set the variables in

    virtual/vagrantbox.json

    accordingly. When a local custom box built by Packer is used, the variable

    vagrant_box

    needs to be set to the name of the Packer box (aka, the same as

    output_packer_box_name

    in

    virtual/packer/variables.json

    ), and

    vagrant_box_version

    should be set to 0.
  • After these steps,

    make create all

    would always use the Packer box, unless

    virtual/vagrantbox.json

    is specified otherwise.
  • If the Packer box needs to be updated, we recommend first clean up the old Packer box. To clean up a Packer box, one must first make sure there's no VM using the Packer box by running

    make destroy

    , and then run

    make destroy-packer-box

    to clean up the Packer box.
    
• To make changes to the virtual topology without dirtying the tree, copy the hardware.yml and topology.yml to files named

  hardware.overrides.yml

  and

  topology.overrides.yml

  , respectively, and make changes to them instead.
• If a proxy server is required for internet access, set the variables TBD
• If additional CA certificates are required (e.g. for a proxy), set the variables TBD
• From the root of the chef-bcpc git repository run the following command:

Download and install the latest version of Packer

wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/packer/1.6.6/packer_1.6.6_linux_amd64.zip -O ~/packer_1.6.6_linux.zip
sudo apt install unzip
sudo unzip ~/packer_1.6.6_linux.zip -d /usr/local/bin

Create a Python virtual environment (virtualenv) and activate it

python3 -mvenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install 'pip>=19.1.1' wheel
pip install PyYaml ansible netaddr pyOpenSSL pycryptodome

To create a virtualbox build (the default):

make generate-chef-databags
make create-packer-box
make create all

To create a libvirt build:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libvirt-dev qemu-utils libguestfs-tools
vagrant plugin install vagrant-libvirt vagrant-mutate
vagrant box add bento/ubuntu-18.04 --box-version 202005.21.0 --provider virtualbox
vagrant mutate bento/ubuntu-18.04 libvirt
export VAGRANT_DEFAULT_PROVIDER=libvirt VAGRANT_VAGRANTFILE=Vagrantfile.libvirt
make generate-chef-databags
make create-packer-box
make create all

To clean up the build:

shell
make destroy
make destroy-packer-box

You may also want to change cpu model from

qemu64

kvm64

ansible/playbooks/roles/common/defaults/main/chef.yml

chef_environment:
  name: virtual
  override_attributes:
    bcpc:
       nova:
         cpu_config:
           cpu_mode: custom
           cpu_model: kvm64

To revert to the default virtualbox provider, as far as the build is concerned, you can just remove the mutated libvirt box and then unset VAGRANTDEFAULTPROVIDER and VAGRANT_VAGRANTFILE environment variables. However since you must also make sure that the different hypervisors don't both try to control the CPU virtualisation facilities, it is best to remove the mutated box and then simply reboot your development host (assuming no scripts reset the VAGRANT variables).

This would look something like this:

$ rm -rf ~/.vagrant.d/boxes/bento-VAGRANTSLASH-ubuntu-18.04/202005.21.0/libvirt/
$ sudo reboot

Hardware Deployment

TBD

Contributing

Currently, most development is done by a team at Bloomberg L.P. but we would like to build a community around this project. PRs and issues are welcomed. If you are interested in joining the team at Bloomberg L.P. please see available opportunities at the Bloomberg L.P. careers site.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License - see the LICENSE.txt file for details.

Built With

chef-bcpc is built with the following open source software:

• Ansible
• Apache HTTP Server
• BIRD
• Calico
• Ceph
• Chef
• Consul
• etcd
• HAProxy
• Memcached
• OpenStack
• Packer
• Percona XtraDB Cluster
• PowerDNS
• RabbitMQ
• Ubuntu
• Unbound
• Vagrant
• VirtualBox

Thanks to all of these communities for producing this software!