For years, many have still considered OpenStack a difficult software to install, but that is no longer the case. With the emergence of projects like Kolla-Ansible, TripleO, and OpenStack-Ansible, installing and configuring OpenStack has actually become quite easy. Today, I want to introduce a project that simplifies OpenStack installation even further: MicroStack.

Contents

What is MicroStack?

An OpenStack Environment in Just 2 Commands

MicroStack is a project that allows you to generate a basic OpenStack environment with just two commands. It significantly lowers the barrier to entry for using OpenStack.
It has the following features:

Fast Installation

I have personally tested it: on a machine with 4 cores, 16GB RAM, and a 100GB SSD, it took only about 30 minutes in total to complete a MicroStack installation. The installation speed is very fast.

Upstream

The OpenStack installed by MicroStack uses unmodified upstream source code, so you don't have to worry about system instability caused by proprietary vendor additions.

Comprehensive

The environment created by MicroStack includes most major OpenStack components, including:

Keystone
Nova
Glance
Neutron
Cinder
Horizon

Basically, most OpenStack features are fully supported.

Why Use MicroStack?

If you have ever tried using OpenStack, you'll realize it is actually a very complex system.
The reasons are as follows:

Composed of several different services
Each service has its own configuration file
Each configuration file contains multiple parameters

This makes OpenStack deployment and configuration extremely complex, but MicroStack solves exactly this problem. MicroStack's installation is very simple and fast, containing only the most essential OpenStack services and using default settings for most configurations, which simplifies the overall complexity.
Of course, this has its pros and cons. I believe MicroStack is quite suitable for the following scenarios:

Prototyping
Home lab
Edge Cloud
Development and Testing

In these situations, you usually don't need to adjust many complex settings; the default values and core OpenStack services are sufficient. Since you won't be running heavy workloads, a simple, lightweight OpenStack cluster is quite appropriate.

How to Install MicroStack

The installation process is very simple. Just enter the following commands on a system with snap installed:

sudo snap install microstack --edge --devmode
sudo microstack.init --auto --control

After waiting about 15-30 minutes, you will have a basic OpenStack environment ready to use.

For a live demo, you can refer to the video recorded during my presentation at the Cloud Native Taiwan User Group.

Conclusion

MicroStack significantly lowers the barrier to entry for OpenStack. If you're interested in cloud IaaS, I highly recommend giving it a try. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement.

MicroStack — Set Up an OpenStack Environment in Under 30 Minutes