Overview

The Front-end is the central part of an OpenNebula installation and is the very first thing that needs to be deployed (or upgraded). Typically it’s a host where the OpenNebula server-side components are installed and which is responsible for the management of an entire virtualization stack. It can be a physical host or a virtual machine (this decision is left up to the cloud administrator) as long as it matches the requirements.

How Should I Read This Chapter

Before reading this chapter make sure you are familiar with the Architecture Blueprint, and the blueprint most appropriate to your needs.

The aim of this chapter is to give you a quick-start guide to deploying OpenNebula. This is the simplest possible installation, but it is also the foundation for a more complex setup. First, you should go through the Database Setup section, especially if you expect to use OpenNebula for production. Then move on to the configuration of OpenNebula Repositories, from which you’ll install the required components. And finally, proceed with the Front-end Installation section. You’ll end up running a fully featured OpenNebula Front-end.

After reading this chapter, you can go on to add the KVM or LXC hypervisor nodes.

To scale from a single-host Front-end deployment to several hosts for better performance or reliability (HA), continue to the following chapters on Large-scale Deployment, High Availability and Data Center Federation.

Hypervisor Compatibility

This chapter applies to all supported hypervisors.