Front-end Installation on

Overview

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The OpenNebula Front-end serves as the control plane for your entire cloud infrastructure. It is the central orchestrator responsible for deploying and managing the lifecycle of Cluster nodes, Virtual Machines (VMs), Virtual Networks, and storage datastores. The Front-end Hosts the core OpenNebula services and provides the interfaces — a REST API, a CLI and the Sunstone user interface — through which administrators and users interact with the cloud.

The Front-end can be deployed using an on-premises server, a Virtual Machine, or bare-metal instance from an IaaS cloud provider such as AWS or Scaleway. This decision is governed by the intended cloud architecture and available resources. Ensure that the virtual or physical machine on which you intend to deploy the Front-end meets the minimum requirements given below.

Automatic Installation with miniONE

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Automatic installation of an OpenNebula Front-end can be achieved using the miniONE quick installation script. The miniONE installation script automatically configures the target server to deploy a stripped-down version of OpenNebula with the essential modules to run a cloud Cluster. After installing miniONE, you will be able to deploy Virtual Machines, provision Clusters with on-premises or cloud resources and manage your cloud using the command line, the API or the Sunstone user interface.

Manual Installation - Database Setup

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The OpenNebula Front-end uses a database to persist the complete state of the cloud. It supports several database solutions and each option is recommended for different use cases. It’s necessary to decide carefully which solution is the best for your needs, as the migration of an existing installation to a different database type is complex or impossible (depending on the backend). The following options are available:

Default embedded SQLite for small workloads
Recommended MySQL/MariaDB for production

It’s recommended to install the database backend now. Later, while completing the Front-end Installation, return back here and only update the OpenNebula configuration for specific backend based tasks (ideally) prior to starting OpenNebula for the first time.

Manual Installation - OpenNebula Repositories for Community Edition

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Edition of OpenNebula offers the full functionality of the Cloud Management Platform. You can configure the Community Edition repositories as follows:

AlmaLinux/RHEL

Some dependencies require enabling the CodeReady Linux Builder repository:

crb enable

To add the OpenNebula repositories, execute the following commands as user root:

RHEL 9, 10

cat << "EOT" > /etc/yum.repos.d/opennebula.repo
[opennebula]
name=OpenNebula Community Edition
baseurl=https://downloads.opennebula.io/repo/7.2/RedHat/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgkey=https://downloads.opennebula.io/repo/repo2.key
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
EOT
yum makecache

AlmaLinux 9, 10

Manual Installation - OpenNebula Repositories for Enterprise Edition

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

OpenNebula Systems provides the OpenNebula Enterprise Edition (EE) to customers with an active support subscription. To distribute the packages of the Enterprise Edition there is a private repository accessible only to Enterprise Edition customers that contains all packages (including major, minor, and maintenance releases). You only need to change your repository configuration on your OpenNebula Front-end once per major release and you’ll have access to every package in that series. OpenNebula’s private repositories contain all OpenNebula released packages.

OpenNebula Repositories

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Before you can proceed with installation, you must configure the packaging tools on your Front-end Host to include OpenNebula repositories. OpenNebula software is provided via two distinct distribution channels depending on whether you wish to use the Community Edition or the Enterprise Edition.

Choose the page matching the OpenNebula edition you intend to deploy:

Manual Single Front-end Installation

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This page describes how to install a complete OpenNebula Front-end from binary packages available in the software repositories configured in the previous section. We recommend using a Host with the supported operating system as installation from packages provides the best experience and is referenced in other places of this documentation. If there are no packages for your distribution, you might consider reading the Building from Source Code guide to build OpenNebula for your chosen distribution.