Contents
The SUSE® Cloud Dashboard is a Web interface that allows cloud
administrators and users to manage various OpenStack services. It
is based on OpenStack Dashboard (also known under its codename
Horizon
).
After a short introduction to the Dashboard, learn how to execute key administration tasks such as managing projects and users, adding images, adding flavors, and setting quotas.
The following requirements need to be fulfilled to access the SUSE Cloud Dashboard:
The cloud operator has set up SUSE Cloud.
You have a recent Web browser that supports HTML5. It must have cookies
and JavaScript enabled. For using the Dashboard's VNC client, which is
based on noVNC
, your browser needs to support HTML5
Canvas and HTML5 WebSockets. For more details and a list of browsers
that support noVNC
, refer to
https://github.com/kanaka/noVNC/blob/master/README.md,
and
https://github.com/kanaka/noVNC/wiki/Browser-support,
respectively.
Learn how to log in to SUSE Cloud Dashboard and get a short overview of its Web interface.
To access the SUSE Cloud Dashboard, ask the cloud operator for the following information:
Hostname or (public) IP address of the SUSE Cloud Dashboard. (The Dashboard is
available on the node that has the nova-dashboard
server
role.)
Username and password of the cloud administrator or cloud user with which you can log in to SUSE Cloud Dashboard.
Start a Web browser and make sure that JavaScript and cookies are enabled.
As a URL, enter the hostname or IP address that you got from the cloud operator.
https://IP_ADDRESS_OR_HOSTNAME
/
![]() | Certificate Warning |
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Depending on your browser and browser options, you may get a certificate warning when trying to access the URL for the first time. (In case no certificate is provided when setting up the Dashboard, SUSE Cloud uses a self-signed certificate that is not considered trustworthy by default). In this case, verify the certificate. To proceed anyway, you can add an exception in the browser to bypass the warning. |
On the SUSE Cloud Dashboard login screen, enter the
and and click .After logging in, the Dashboard's Main Screen (Administrator's View) appears.
The top-level row of the main screen shows the username with which you are logged in. It also allows you to access the
or to of the Web interface.![]() | Available Functions |
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The visible tabs and functions in the Dashboard depend on the access permissions of the user that is logged in. They are defined by roles. |
If you are logged in as an administrator, the main screen shows the following tabs:
and an .
The tenants
) that the user who is logged in belongs to.
Select a
from the drop-down list on the left-hand side to access the following categories:Shows basic reports on the project.
Lists instances and volumes created by users of the project. From here, you can terminate, pause, or reboot any instances or connect to them via VNC.
Lists images and snapshots created by users of the project, plus any images that are publicly available.
Allows to allocate or release floating IP addresses, manage security groups and keypairs.
On this tab, you can access the following categories:
Shows basic reports.
Lists all currently running instances belonging to various users and tenants. (Not all tenants may be visible to the administrator, though.)
Lists the defined services.
Lists the available “sizes” of the VMs that users may launch.
Shows the custom images that have been uploaded. Lets you edit image properties or delete images, if needed.
Lists the available tenants. From here, you can create new projects and assign users to the projects.
Gives an overview of all users.
Lists the default quota values (hard-coded in OpenStack Nova). Includes parameters such as the number of CPUs, RAM, or instances.
SUSE Cloud allows you to manage projects independently from each other. Projects represent different organizational units in the cloud to which users can be assigned. Both project and user management are cloud administrator's tasks.
During the basic system setup, the cloud operator needs to minimally define one project, one user, and one role to link the project and user. Roles define which actions users are allowed to perform.
As a SUSE Cloud administrator, you can create additional projects and users as needed. The following procedures guide you through the main management tasks like adding, modifying, or deleting projects and users. Learn how to assign users to one or multiple projects, or how to change or remove the assignment.
Procedure 1.1. Creating or Deleting A Project¶
Projects can be created, deleted, or temporarily disabled by cloud administrators. Disabling a project has the following consequences:
Consequences of Disabling a Project¶
In the SUSE Cloud Dashboard, the project can no longer be accessed from the
drop-down list on the tab.Users that are only members of the disabled project can no longer log in.
It is impossible to launch new instances for a disabled project. Instances already running are not automatically terminated though—you have to stop them manually.
All data of a disabled project is kept so that the project can be re-enabled at any time.
On the
tab, select the category.To add a new project:
Click
.In the window that opens, enter a
and for the project and confirm your changes.The Dashboard automatically assigns an ID and shows the newly created project in the
category.To delete one or multiple projects:
Activate the check boxes in front of the projects that you want to delete.
Click
and confirm your choice in the pop-up that appears.A message on the Web page shows if the action has been successful.
To temporarily deactivate a project: Click
and deactivate the check box.Procedure 1.2. Creating Or Deleting Users Accounts¶
Users are members of one or multiple projects. Both project and user management are cloud administrator's tasks. When a new user account is created, the user has to be assigned to a primary project. The user can also be assigned to additional projects.
User accounts can be created, deleted, or temporarily deactivated. If a user account is deactivated, the user can no longer log in, but his data is kept so that the account can be re-enabled at any time. Before a user account can be deleted, the user needs to be removed from his primary project.
On the
tab, select the category.To add a new user account:
Click
.In the window that opens, enter a
and an address for the user.Set a preliminary
for the user and confirm it.Assign the user to a
by selecting the respective project from the drop-down list.Confirm your changes.
The Dashboard automatically assigns an ID and shows the newly created user account in the
category.To delete one or multiple users accounts:
Activate the check boxes in front of the user accounts that you want to delete.
Click
and confirm your choice in the pop-up that appears.A message on the Web page shows if the action has been successful.
![]() | Remove User from Primary Project |
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If a user account cannot be deleted, it is because it is still assigned to its primary project.
|
To temporarily deactivate a user account: Select the user, and from the
drop-down list, select .Procedure 1.3. Modifying User Assignments for a Project¶
When creating new users, you must assign them to a primary project as described in Procedure 1.2, “Creating Or Deleting Users Accounts”. To assign users to additional projects or to modify and remove assignments, proceed as follows:
On the
tab, select the category.Select the project for which to modify user assignments.
From the
drop-down list for the project, select .The Dashboard shows two lists of users:
shows the users assigned to the current project, shows other existing users, which can be assigned to the current project.![]() |
To remove users from the current project, select one or multiple users and click
or .To assign a user to the current project:
Select the user and click
.
In the window that appears, set the user's role with which to add him
to the project and click /etc/[SERVICE_CODENAME]/policy.json
file, for
example in /etc/nova/policy.json
for the Compute
(Nova) service. For details, refer to
http://docs.openstack.org/essex/openstack-compute/install/content/keystone-concepts.html.
In the SUSE Cloud context, images are virtual disk images that represent the contents and structure of a storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, in a single file. Images are used as a template from which a virtual machine can be started. For starting a virtual machine, SUSE Cloud always uses a copy of the image.
User permissions to manage images are defined by the cloud operator during setup of SUSE Cloud. Image upload and management may be restricted to cloud administrators or cloud operators only.
After uploading an image to Nova, it cannot be changed any more (“golden image”).
Whereas nearly all key tasks can either be executed from the SUSE Cloud Web interface or from the command line, images can only be uploaded with a command line tool, glance image-create. For details, refer to Section 2.4.2, “Adding Images”.
Images have both contents and meta-data; the latter are also called properties. The following properties can be attached to an image in SUSE Cloud:
Image Properties
--name
, optional)Specifies a name with which the image will be listed in the SUSE Cloud Dashboard and in the command line interface.
The image's kernel ID. This parameter is only needed if an external Kernel is associated with the image. The ID points to the Kernel glance image.
The image's ramdisk ID. This parameter is only needed if an external ramdisk is associated with the image. The ID points to the ramdisk glance image.
The image's architecture.
--container-format
, optional)
Indicates if the VM image's file format contains metadata about the actual virtual
machine. Set it to bare
as the container format
string is not currently used in any OpenStack components anyway. For
details, refer to
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/glance/formats.html.
--disk-format
, required)
Specifies the image's disk format. Example formats include
raw
, qcow2
, and
ami
. For details, refer to
http://docs.openstack.org/developer/glance/formats.html.
--is-public
, optional)Boolean value, default: false
. If set to
true
, the image is publicly available.
Specify the hypervisor ABI (application binary interface) with the
vm_mode
flag. It can take the values pv
,
hvm
, or xen
. Use vm_mode=xen
for XEN PV image import, or vm_mode=hvm
for XEN HVM image import.
For KVM, the correct mode is selected automatically.
After images have been added from the command line, they appear in the SUSE Cloud Dashboard on the
tab. View them in the category. From there, you can also the image properties.If you need to delete an image, proceed as follows.
Procedure 1.4. Deleting Images¶
On the
tab, select the category.To delete one or multiple images, activate the check boxes in front of the images that you want to delete.
Click
and confirm your choice in the pop-up that appears.A message on the Web page shows if the action has been successful.
In OpenStack, flavors define the compute, memory, and storage capacity of
nova
computing instances. To put it simply, a flavor
is an available hardware configuration for a server. It defines the
“size” of a virtual server that can be launched.
A flavor consists of the following parameters:
Flavor Parameters
Automatically proposed by SUSE Cloud.
Name for the new flavor.
Number of virtual CPUs to use.
Amount of RAM to use (in megabytes).
Amount of disk space (in gigabytes) to use for the root
(/
) partition.
Amount of disk space (in gigabytes) to use for the ephemeral
partition. If unspecified, the value is 0
by
default.
Ephemeral disks offer machine local disk storage linked to the lifecycle of a VM instance. When a VM is terminated, all data on the ephemeral disk is lost. Ephemeral disks are not included in any snapshots.
Amount of swap space (in megabytes) to use. If unspecified, the value
is 0
by default.
The default flavors are:
Default Flavors
m1.tiny (1 VCPU/0 GB Disk/512 MB RAM)
m1.smaller (1 VCPU/0 GB Disk/1024 MB RAM)
m1.small (1 VCPU/10 GB Disk/2048 MB RAM)
m1.medium (2 VCPU/10 GB Disk/3072 MB RAM)
m1.large (4 VCPU/10 GB Disk/8192 MB RAM)
m1.xlarge (8 VCPU/10 GB Disk/8192 MB RAM)
Via the SUSE Cloud Dashboard, you can create new flavors or delete existing ones.
Procedure 1.5. Creating or Deleting Flavors¶
On the
tab, select the category.To create a new flavor:
Click
.In the window that opens, specify the required parameters for the flavor.
Confirm your changes.
The newly created flavor will appear in the list of flavors and can be used when launching new instances.
To delete one or multiple flavors:
Activate the check boxes in front of the flavors that you want to delete.
Click
and confirm your choice in the pop-up that appears.A message on the Web page shows if the action has been successful.
To prevent system capacities from being exhausted without notification, cloud administrators can set up quotas. In OpenStack, quotas are currently defined per project.
Quotas contain the following parameters:
Quota Parameters
ID for the quota settings. Automatically proposed by SUSE Cloud.
Number of metadata items per instance.
Number of injected files.
Number of bytes per injected file.
Number of virtual CPUs that can be allocated in total.
Total number of instances.
Total number of volumes.
Total size of all volumes, measured in gigabytes.
Total RAM size of all instances, measured in megabytes.
Total number of floating IP addresses.
Number of security rules per security group.
Number of security groups.
![]() | Contents of the | Category
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The category does not allow you to set any values, it just shows the global default quota values that are hard-coded in OpenStack Nova. |
Procedure 1.6. Setting Quotas for a Project¶
On the
tab, select the category.Select the project for which to set or change quota values.
From the
drop-down list, select .The window that opens shows the default quota values per project, which are hard-coded in OpenStack Nova.
Change the values for the quota parameters as desired.
![]() |
Confirm your changes.