OPENSTACK FOR VSPECIALISTS

MODULE 3: OPENSTACK DASHBOARD

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MODULE 3: OPENSTACK DASHBOARD (HORIZON)

Upon completion of this module, you should be able

to:
• Navigate the OpenStack dashboard principal views
• Explain the relationship between the dashboard and
the OpenStack APIs
• Understand the UI customization paths for
OpenStack

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 BASIC CONCEPT: GUI AS API CLIENT
• Horizon dashboard is a unified web
HTTP client for OpenStack
• Typically deployed as part of the cloud,
Horizon but theoretically could be anywhere
• All operations delegated to OpenStack
HTTP APIs, e.g. authentication via Keystone
Service APIs
API • Stateless – all displayed data retrieved
API
API
API from OpenStack APIs
• Config option to support management
of multiple OpenStack regions from
single GUI (AVAILABLE_REGIONS)

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BASIC CONCEPT: ADMIN & USER VIEWS
Admin User
Manage projects and users, volume types, Manage instances, volumes, snapshots,
images, instance flavors, quotas, etc. keypairs, security groups, networks, etc.

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KEY SERVICE OPERATIONS
• Exposes most basic management functions
for users and cloud admins
– Instance Management
– Image Management
– Network Management
– Block Storage Management
– Object Storage Management
– Security & Access Management
– Identity Management
• Also displays basic service health status
and resource usage metrics
• Does not necessarily expose all API
functions for cloud services – not a full CLI
replacement (ex. Ceilometer)
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SERVICE ARCHITECTURE
• Horizon provides a registration pattern
for projects to plug dashboards into
HTTP
• Implemented using Python Django MVC
web framework, deployed as WSGI
application
httpd2 • Typically deployed in Apache2 running
mod_wsgi
mod_wsgi
• Discovers available services in Keystone
catalog and loads relevant dashboards
• Recommended to deploy requiring
secure connections (HTTPS), but up to
deployer to configure
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CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS
• Kilo added theme support to change
colors and styles simply via SCSS
– Ex. Changing site logo

• Custom Python modules can be used

to alter dashboards
– Register/unregister panels
– Change panel names
– Reorder panels

• Can also add custom stylesheets,

Javascript, and meta attributes
• Could also add own custom
dashboards or combine with custom
Django applications

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DEMO – LET’S EXPLORE A BIT!

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