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SimpleStack
http://serverascode.com/2014/11/14/simple-openstack-simplestack.html
Simple diagram of.simplestack network setup). Because OpenStack can be so varied and pluggable it means a large number of choices. However, generally speaking, people don't want choices. I read about this paper once a few years ago: Decisions and Revisions: The Affective Forecasting of Changeable Outcomes. In the study, students were asked to pick a photograph. One group had to pick it right away, and the other group could wait for up to four days to decide which print they wanted. Though maybe everyone ...
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ucarp Virtual IP Addresses
http://serverascode.com/2015/04/05/ucarp.html
Ucarp Virtual IP Addresses. I haven't written a blog post for a while; like everyone else I'm working on other things and haven't been able to dedicate any time towards blogging. However, on a slow Sunday morning I thought I'd take a quick look at ucarp. Which is a way to provide virtual IPs, ie. IP addresses that can failover to another server, should the one it's running on stop working. Highly available IP addresses. For my particular purposes, at this time at least, I chose CARP. PS Use more OpenBSD!
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Dealing with Zombie Cinder Volumes
http://serverascode.com/2015/07/15/cinder-zombie-volumes.html
Dealing with Zombie Cinder Volumes. For some reason I ended up with a few volumes that were attached to non-existent virtual machines- ie. the vm had been deleted, but cinder thinks it is still attached to the vm. But the vm doesn't exist so you can't unattach or delete the volume. Maybe it's a chicken-egg volume not a zombie volume. Here's a query to find these "zombie" volumes. I'm building somewhat on this blog post. Blog comments powered by Disqus. Find me on twitter @ccollicutt.
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8 Months with So You Start (OVH) - A review
http://serverascode.com/2014/11/04/review-of-soyoustart-ovh.html
8 Months with So You Start (OVH) - A review. For the last eight months I've had a server at So You Start. SYS) which is a division of OVH. And is meant to be an entry level service. This harware server (not virtual, hardware) costs me about $60 a month, has a eight cores (hyperthreading), 32GB of ECC ram, a 250MB Internet connection, and 2x2TB disks. Also it's in Canada, which, as a Canadian, suits me great. But had to give it up. If you need any help from So You Start, you probably won't get it in any t...
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Tinc VPN (and Ansible)
http://serverascode.com/2015/01/29/tinc-vpn-ansible.html
Tinc VPN (and Ansible). Probably not, but it's still good to take a look at other implementations and see what can be done. I think the most interesting thing about tinc. Is that it sets up a mesh. Regardless of how you set up the tinc daemons to connect to each other, VPN traffic is always (if possible) sent directly to the destination, without going through intermediate hops. Also, it's easy to extend. So those are a couple of good reasons to try out tinc. Curtis@parker: /tinc-testing$ cat hosts trusty...
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Non-Cartesian OpenStack
http://serverascode.com/2015/01/25/non-cartesian-openstack.html
Recently I gave the same talk twice, once at the Calgary OpenStack meetup and the other at a lunch and learn at a Vancouver based IT company. In the talk I discuss quite a few things, from trying to answer the question as to what OpenStack is, to my SimpleStack. Automated deployment, to armchair philosophy. These topics are related to a central theme of simplicty, complication, and complexity, especially around the idea that OpenStack is difficult to define and deploy. First, the integrated release as it...
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Provision and Configure OpenStack Instances in One Ansible Run
http://serverascode.com/2014/08/19/provision-openstack-instances-with-ansible.html
Provision and Configure OpenStack Instances in One Ansible Run. In order to configure servers with tools like Ansible, they need to be up and running. These servers could be hardware systems in your data center, or, more likely, virtual machines running in any number of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, including a private OpenStack cloud (which is what I will be using here). The goal in this blog post is not just to provision the instances, but to provision. One Ansible playbook run. That ha...
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Rabbitmq Server with SSL/TLS
http://serverascode.com/2015/06/23/rabbitmq-server-ssl.html
Rabbitmq Server with SSL/TLS. For some reason I am a glutton for punishment as I try to "TLS enable all the things" which doesn't always work out. Note that the rabbitmq documentation. For SSL/TLS is pretty good; I'm not showing here much more than you can get from that, but I thought I'd post it anyway. :). This is an example configuration for a three node Rabbitmq cluster:. Export RABBITMQ NODENAME=rabbit@node2 export RABBITMQ NODE IP ADDRESS=192.168.0.12. Then rabbitmq will be listening on port 5671.
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Using the Cisco 1000v CSR with Libvirt and KVM
http://serverascode.com/2014/07/14/cisco-1000v-csr-libvirt-kvm.html
Using the Cisco 1000v CSR with Libvirt and KVM. This blog post is going to cover installing and booting the Cisco 1000v Cloud Services Router. With KVM on Ubuntu Trusty 14.04. Getting the Cisco 1000v CSR images and ISOs. First, if you don't have an account with Cisco. Then create one and login. To find the download page, this link. Might work. If if doesn't work:. Right menu, "Download Software for this Product". Right panel, "Cisco Cloud Services outer 1000V". Select "IOS XE Software". Qemu-img create -...
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Why OpenStack Swift is Great for Platform as a Service
http://serverascode.com/2014/08/23/swift-paas.html
Why OpenStack Swift is Great for Platform as a Service. I'm a big fan of object storage. What is object storage? Object storage is a system that allows storing and retrieving files via a HTTP restful interface. Object storage is not a file system and doesn't look anything like one. In terms of this blog post, I think object storage system should also be highly available, scalable, redundant, and durable. (Maybe some of those terms mean the same thing.). So we have these minimal requirements:. And what is...
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