IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack technical overview

The IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack solution, provides the architecture, software, and mechanisms that deliver OpenStack clouds to your environment quickly.

By installing the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack product, you receive the tools to easily deploy an OpenStack cloud, made up of an OpenStack controller node and one or more compute hosts. There are various topologies that are provided to help you deploy the nodes, which create your cloud.

The general flow for setting up your cloud includes the following steps:
  1. Install IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack on the deployment server.
  2. Deploy the cloud topology that includes the controller node and any compute nodes that you want to include.
    Note: Depending on the topology, there might be more than one controller node. For example, if you are implementing high availability (HA) into your cloud environment.
  3. Complete additional configuration steps such as creating initial networks and defining secure access to virtual machines.
After you install and deploy a cloud, the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack solution includes the following management tools.
  • IBM Cloud Manager - Dashboard: Intended for use by cloud administrators only.
  • IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack APIs and knife commands: Intended for use by cloud administrators only.
  • IBM Cloud Manager - Self Service: Intended for users performing operations with the User role.
You must understand the concepts and terminology of OpenStack and Chef server technology. There is significant documentation that is provided in the community. Review some of the key concepts like cookbooks, recipes, environments, and roles. For more information, see the following terminology resources:

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack is designed to get you started quickly, yet provide you flexibility for production level installations. It uses Chef server technology to provide a robust installation and configuration method by using cookbooks, recipes, environments, and roles. Chef provides a client that communicates with the deployment server to install software on remote nodes as well.

This image shows the communication between the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack components in your cloud.

Communication between the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack components

The deployment server is where you install the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack solution. This server becomes your Chef server and it stores cookbooks and templates (for example) that are applied to nodes. The nodes use the recipes, templates, and file distributions to do as much of the configuration work as possible on the nodes themselves (and not on the Chef server).

For more detail about specific deployment options, see Selecting a topology.

You can also configure multiple regions for your cloud environment. For better performance and easy management, you can configure each region to use the same type of machines or hypervisors. For example, configure VMware systems to exist in one region; configure PowerVC systems to exist in another region. The following image shows an example of a multi-region environment.
Communication between the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack components in a multi-region environment
Note: You can use the Chef server that is provided with IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack to upload your own cookbooks, roles, and data bags. These Chef resources can then be used along with the IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack Chef resources to further customize your cloud deployments. Your customization must be compatible with IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack.