<p>Things are about to get real! Using OpenStack in containers or VMs is nice for kicking the tires, but doesn't compare to the feeling you get with hardware.</p>
<p>You need to have a system with a fresh install of Linux. You can download the <ahref="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD">Minimal CD</a> for Ubuntu releases since DevStack will download & install all the additional dependencies. The netinstall ISO is available for <ahref="http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/18/Fedora/x86_64/iso/Fedora-20-x86_64-netinst.iso">Fedora</a> and <ahref="http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/6.5/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.5-x86_64-netinstall.iso">CentOS/RHEL</a>. You may be tempted to use a desktop distro on a laptop, it will probably work but you may need to tell Network Manager to keep its fingers off the interface(s) that OpenStack uses for bridging.</p>
<p>We need to add a user to install DevStack. (if you created a user during install you can skip this step and just give the user sudo privileges below)</p>
<p>Now to configure <code>stack.sh</code>. DevStack includes a sample in <code>devstack/samples/local.conf</code>. Create <code>local.conf</code> as shown below to do the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>Set <code>FLOATING_RANGE</code> to a range not used on the local network, i.e. 192.168.1.224/27. This configures IP addresses ending in 225-254 to be used as floating IPs.</li>
<li>Set <code>FIXED_RANGE</code> and <code>FIXED_NETWORK_SIZE</code> to configure the internal address space used by the instances.</li>
<li>Set <code>FLAT_INTERFACE</code> to the Ethernet interface that connects the host to your local network. This is the interface that should be configured with the static IP address mentioned above.</li>
<li>Set the administrative password. This password is used for the <b>admin</b> and <b>demo</b> accounts set up as OpenStack users.</li>
<li>Set the MySQL administrative password. The default here is a random hex string which is inconvenient if you need to look at the database directly for anything.</li>
<li>Set the RabbitMQ password.</li>
<li>Set the service password. This is used by the OpenStack services (Nova, Glance, etc) to authenticate with Keystone.</li>
</ul>
<p><code>local.conf</code> should look something like this:</p>
<pre>[[local|localrc]]
FLOATING_RANGE=192.168.1.224/27
FIXED_RANGE=10.11.12.0/24
FIXED_NETWORK_SIZE=256
FLAT_INTERFACE=eth0
ADMIN_PASSWORD=supersecret
MYSQL_PASSWORD=iheartdatabases
RABBIT_PASSWORD=flopsymopsy
SERVICE_PASSWORD=iheartksl</pre>
<p>Run DevStack:</p>
<pre>./stack.sh</pre>
<p>A seemingly endless stream of activity ensues. When complete you will see a summary of
<code>stack.sh</code>'s work, including the relevant URLs, accounts and passwords to poke at your
shiny new OpenStack.</p>
<h3>Using OpenStack</h3>
<p>At this point you should be able to access the dashboard from other computers on the
local network. In this example that would be http://192.168.1.201/ for the dashboard (aka Horizon).