Installing and running DevStack

Introduction

DevStack is like a small preconfigured OpenStack cloud.
To run it, you don't need to have your own datacenter, the average laptop would be enough for this purpose.

You can install DevStack just to taste OpenStack services, but it's mainly intended to be used in development process by OpenStack developers.
In this guide I will help you to install DevStack in a way suitable with further development process. After completing the guide you will know how to start and stop DevStack cloud and access it via OpenStack Dashboard web interface.

Instead of just providing instructions, I'll also tell you some important details and describe the obstacles you might be facing during the process of installing DevStack. When I was getting started with DevStack, I was in need of such guide. So now I'm writing this guide like for the past me.

Hello

I'm so happy I made it to Outreachy program!

Today is the official start of my internship period.

Participation in the program might be a great opportunity for me to turn my programming hobby into a career, grow professionally, learn new wonderful technologies, steal some best practices and make new friends.
I'm dreaming about migrating somewhere warmer and safer away from my country.
I believe the internship can bring this dream a bit closer to realizing.

Also I think it's a good start for me to begin programming commercially.
Selling homework projects written on Pascal in university few years ago doesn't count. =)

And what I find most cool about all of this is that I'll be working on free and open source software. Sounds like a dream.

Actually I already started working two months ago on Zaqar project, which is a part of OpenStack cloud-computing platform.
OpenStack is mostly written in Python and honestly, I really miss static typing like in Java, especially when it comes to debugging.

I made some friends in Zaqar team.
One of them is my mentor Victoria (vkmc). I met her in Zaqar chat. She was very friendly and helped me by pushing me towards making my first tiny patch. I was scared to do so, because I was still figuring out how Zaqar internally works. After the push I quickly got into the swing of making patches and reporting bugs, and by the way I finally learned how Zaqar works. Zaqar team was thankful for every patch I made, even for the first silly one.

So far all people I met in OpenStack were nice and welcoming to me. And everyone is kind to each other. I like it very much.

In this blog I'll describe my adventures and will also try to provide useful tips and guides for the future OpenStack developers.

I'm not a native English speaker, so please let me know if you notice some grammar or orthographic mistakes in my writings.
I'd really appreciate that! ♥