Configure Supermicro Solution for Red Hat® OpenStack®

Supermicro offers optimized solutions for Red Hat OpenStack Platform, designed to simplify and accelerate private cloud deployment. These solutions are designed to be turnkey systems, preconfigured and validated with Supermicro servers, storage, and networking.

Here's a general guide and key points to consider when setting up a Supermicro solution for Red Hat OpenStack:

1. Understand the Supermicro Solution for Red Hat OpenStack:

• Integration and Validation: Supermicro works with Red Hat to deliver solutions where the hardware (servers, storage, network) and software (Red Hat OpenStack Platform) are fully validated and optimized to work together.
• Simplified Deployment: Integration with Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director and Red Hat Ansible Automation enables rapid deployments, patch updates, version upgrades, and post-deployment configuration changes seamlessly and without downtime.
• Scalable Storage: The combination of Red Hat OpenStack Platform with Red Hat Ceph Storage delivers a highly scalable, production-ready object, block, and file storage solution.
• Hardware Optimizations: Supermicro offers a wide range of rack servers (1U, 2U, multi-processor), GPU servers, storage servers (All-Flash NVMe, Top-Loading Storage, JBOF) and networking components (40Gbps/100Gbps Ethernet switches) that can be part of these solutions.

2. Configuration Phases (General):

Since Supermicro offers turnkey solutions, configuration largely involves following their specific guides and those of Red Hat. However, general steps include:

• Planning and Design:
• Define your cloud architecture: Determine the compute, storage, and control nodes you need based on your workload and scalability requirements.
• Supermicro Hardware Selection: Choose the server, storage, and switch models that best fit your design, considering CPUs, GPUs, RAM, storage type (NVMe, SSD, HDD), and network capabilities. Supermicro offers "starter kits" based on Ready Server platforms that optimize resources for different sizes (small, medium, large).
• Network Requirements: Plan the network topology, including management, data, and storage networks. Supermicro switches with regular/reverse airflow options and redundant power supplies are common in these solutions.
• Power and Cooling Considerations: Plan data center infrastructure to support power and heat dissipation requirements.
• Hardware Preparation:
• Rackmount: Install Supermicro servers and switches in racks.
• Cabling: Connect network components (Ethernet, InfiniBand if necessary) and power cabling.
• BIOS/UEFI Configuration: Ensure that BIOS/UEFI settings on servers are optimized for virtualization and OpenStack workloads.
• Installing and Configuring Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP):
• Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director: This is Red Hat's key component for deploying and managing an OpenStack cloud. Supermicro integrates it into its solutions to facilitate the process.
• Director Preparation: Install and configure the RHOSP Director node on a dedicated server.
• Overcloud Deployment: Use Director to deploy the compute, storage (Ceph), and control nodes that will make up your OpenStack cloud. This involves:
• Operating System Images: Prepare Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and OpenStack images.
• Defining node profiles: Create profiles for different node roles (controller, compute, storage).
• Overcloud Network Configuration: Define internal OpenStack networks (provider, management, tunnels, etc.).
• Automated Deployment: Director, often combined with Ansible, will automate the installation and configuration of all OpenStack services (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Keystone, etc.) on Supermicro hardware nodes.
• OpenStack Post-Deployment Configuration:
• Creating Flavors: Define resource profiles (vCPU, RAM, disk) for the virtual machine instances that users will deploy.
• Network Configuration (Neutron): Create external and internal networks, subnets, routers, and security groups (firewalls).
• Image Upload (Glance): Import operating system images (e.g. RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu) for users to use when launching instances.
• Volume Configuration (Cinder): Configure block storage for instances.
• User and Project Management (Keystone): Create users, projects (tenants) and assign roles to control access and resources.
• Security: Implement OpenStack security best practices, such as:
• Data encryption.
• Strong password policies.
• Regular OpenStack updates.
• API access restrictions.
• Configuring security groups and firewalls.
• Establishing resource quotas per user/project.
• Red Hat CloudForms Integration (Optional but recommended):
• For more advanced management, usage monitoring, quotas, and financial chargeback, Supermicro solutions often integrate with Red Hat CloudForms.

3. Key Resources and Best Practices:

• Supermicro Documentation: See Supermicro's documentation for its Red Hat OpenStack Ready Server Platforms. Their website ( supermicro.com/solutions/red-hat-openstack ) is a good starting point.
• Red Hat OpenStack Platform Documentation: Official Red Hat documentation is essential for each RHOSP release (e.g., Director configuration, OpenStack services).
• Optimization Practices:
• Glance Images: Use optimized image formats (QCOW2 for space savings, RAW for critical I/O performance). Make sure your images include cloud-init and cloud-utils-growpart for automatic configuration and disk resizing.
• QEMU Guest Agent: Enable the QEMU guest agent (hw_qemu_guest_agent=yes) on your guest images for graceful shutdowns and consistent snapshots.
• Tuned: Use the tuned service on compute nodes and guest instances with profiles such as virtual-guest to optimize operating system performance for virtualized workloads.
• IRQBalance: Ensure irqbalance is installed and enabled for efficient interrupt distribution.
• NIC Configuration: Adjust the number of NIC queues (ethtool -L eth0 combined <nr-of-queues>) to match the number of vCPUs on the instances if needed.

The complexity of the configuration will depend on the size and customization of your deployment. For production solutions, it is always recommended to follow the deployment guides and best practices provided by Supermicro and Red Hat.