OpenStack Instances are created from OpenStack cloud images. Many modern Linux distribution organizations and companies create and distribute their own official OpenStack cloud images, but for those that do not, it is entirely possible to create your own.
cloud-init is a key part of creating any OpenStack cloud image and will be found in most of the ready-made images.
This post will be an ever growing list of operating systems that have ready-made OpenStack cloud images and instructions on how to create your own if they do not.
CirrOS
CirrOS is a very small Linux distribution with the sole intent of quickly spinning up an OpenStack Instance.
Official CirrOS OpenStack cloud images can be found here.
Ubuntu
Canonical does the best job providing their current and historical releases in OpenStack cloud image format. Their oldest OpenStack cloud image is Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS.
Official Ubuntu OpenStack cloud images can be found here.
Instructions on how to create your own Ubuntu OpenStack cloud image can be found here.
Debian
Historically, Debian has not created or distributed their own OpenStack cloud images, but that has finally changed.
Official Debian OpenStack cloud images, starting with Debian 8.0.0, can be found here.
Instructions on how to create your own Debian 7 OpenStack cloud image.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
RHEL 7.x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux must be licensed to use. Once you have a support contract and account with Red Hat, ready-made official Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x OpenStack cloud images can be found here.
RHEL 6.x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux must be licensed to use. Once you have a support contract and account with Red Hat, ready-made official Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x OpenStack cloud images can be found here.
RHEL 5.x
Red Hat does not provide Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x OpenStack cloud images. Red Hat never ported cloud-init to RHEL 5.x, but HP may have (I will link to the source once I find it, but don’t get your hopes up).
CERN appears to have cloud-init running on RHEL 5 and cloud-init looks to be available in EPEL5 as well.
In addition, it may be possible to create a RHEL 5.x OpenStack cloud image with software from the Fedora Project.
It could be argued that if your software requires RHEL 5.x, it probably does not belong in a cloud environment.
CentOS
CentOS 7.x
The latest official CentOS 7.x OpenStack cloud image can be found here.
CentOS 6.x
The latest official CentOS 6.x OpenStack cloud image can be found here.
Historical official CentOS 6.x OpenStack cloud images can be found here.
Instructions on how to create your own CentOS 6 OpenStack cloud image can be found at the following links:
CentOS 5.x
Refer to the RHEL 5.x section.
Fedora
Fedora has been creating and distributing their own OpenStack cloud images since Fedora 19.
The latest official Fedora OpenStack cloud image can be found here.
Historical official Fedora OpenStack cloud images can be found here (as mentioned, Fedora 19 is the oldest release with an OpenStack cloud image).
SUSE
SUSE does not create or distribute their own OpenStack cloud images. However, they do have a web-based OpenStack cloud image creation tool called SUSE Studio to create your own.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD does not create or distribute their own OpenStack cloud images. However, cloud-init was ported to FreeBSD, so you should be able to create your own.
The following links are the best documentation I have come across on creating your own FreeBSD OpenStack cloud image:
- Build a FreeBSD 10.0-release Openstack Image with bsd-cloudinit
- Bundling FreeBSD 9.x image for OpenStack
- Bundling FreeBSD Image for OpenStack
Windows
Windows does not create or distribute their own OpenStack cloud images. In addition, cloud-init does not work on Windows. However, cloud-init was ported to Windows by cloudbase solutions and named cloudbase-init. They have created a Windows wizard that will install the necessary hypervisor drivers and sysprep the Windows image.
Their tool is open source under the Apache 2 license. You can find their GitHub repo here.
cloudbase solutions has created a Windows Server 2012 RS Evaluation OpenStack cloud image that can be found here.
Instructions on how to get started creating your own Windows OpenStack cloud image can be found at the following links:
- Example: Microsoft Windows image.
- Creating a Windows Server 2012 QCOW2 image (OpenStack/KVM)
- Running Windows 7 guests on OpenStack Icehouse
