Deploy OpenStack on an Azure Cobalt 100 Arm64 virtual machine using DevStack

In this section, you’ll deploy OpenStack using DevStack on the Arm-based Azure virtual machine (VM) running Azure Cobalt 100 that you created in the previous section. DevStack is a script-based installer designed for development and testing. It runs all OpenStack services directly on the host OS and deploys Nova, Keystone, Glance, and Horizon on a single node.

The environment that you’ll create will run OpenStack services on your Azure Cobalt 100 VM, provide access to the Horizon dashboard, and support Arm64 (aarch64) architecture. You’ll be able to access the environment using both browser and CLI.

Clean previous setup

Before starting, remove any previous DevStack or etcd installation:

    

        
        
sudo rm -rf ~/devstack
sudo rm -rf /opt/stack
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/etcd
sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/system/etcd.service

    

This ensures there are no leftover configuration conflicts. It also helps clean the environment for deployment and avoid service startup failures.

System preparation

Update packages and install required tools:

    

        
        
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt install -y \
git curl vim net-tools python3-pip

    

You’ll use git for cloning the DevStack repository, curl for downloading dependencies, vim for editing configuration files, and net-tools for network debugging.

Configure hostname

Setting a hostname avoids registration issues where OpenStack services identify themselves by hostname. To configure a hostname, run:

    

        
        
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname devstack-arm
exec bash

    

Install stable etcd package

DevStack uses etcd internally for service coordination. The etcd package included in Ubuntu 24.04 is not built for Arm and is unstable in this environment. Install a stable Arm64 binary directly from the etcd GitHub releases instead:

    

        
        
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/etcd-io/etcd/releases/download/v3.5.13/etcd-v3.5.13-linux-arm64.tar.gz
tar -xvf etcd-v3.5.13-linux-arm64.tar.gz
cd etcd-v3.5.13-linux-arm64
sudo cp etcd etcdctl /usr/local/bin/

    

Configure etcd service

Update the configuration file for the etcd service:

    

        
        
sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/etcd.service

    

    

        
        
[Unit]
Description=etcd
After=network.target

[Service]
User=azureuser
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/etcd \
  --data-dir=/var/lib/etcd
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

    

This configuration ensures that etcd starts automatically on boot and data is stored persistently. The service is managed via systemd.

Start etcd

To start etcd, run:

    

        
        
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/etcd
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/lib/etcd

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable etcd
sudo systemctl start etcd

    

Verify that etcd is running:

    

        
        
sudo systemctl status etcd

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        Active: active (running)

        
    

Install DevStack

Clone the DevStack repository that contains the scripts that install and configure all OpenStack services:

    

        
        
cd ~
git clone https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack
cd devstack

    

Get private IP

DevStack binds OpenStack services to the VM’s private IP.

Retrieve the private IP:

    

        
        
hostname -I

    

If the output shows two addresses, use the first one. The second is usually an Azure secondary IP configuration.

Configure DevStack

Create a local.conf file in the DevStack directory. This file controls which services are installed and how they are configured.

    

        
        
vi local.conf

    

    

        
        
[[local|localrc]]
ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin
DATABASE_PASSWORD=admin
RABBIT_PASSWORD=admin
SERVICE_PASSWORD=admin

HOST_IP=<Private_IP>
SERVICE_HOST=<Private_IP>

enable_service horizon

disable_service neutron
disable_service q-agt
disable_service q-dhcp
disable_service q-l3
disable_service q-meta
disable_service q-svc
disable_service ovn-controller
disable_service ovs-vswitchd
disable_service ovsdb-server

disable_service etcd3

KEYSTONE_USE_MOD_WSGI=False
ENABLE_HTTPD_MOD_WSGI_SERVICES=False

LIBVIRT_TYPE=qemu

disable_service tempest

GIT_DEPTH=1

    

Replace <Private_IP> with the IP address from the previous step.

The following are some of the key configuration choices:

• disable_service neutron — simplifies the deployment by removing advanced networking, which has compatibility issues on Arm Azure VMs
• disable_service etcd3 — delegates etcd to the version you installed manually and disables DevStack’s built-in etcd setup that doesn’t work reliably on Arm
• LIBVIRT_TYPE=qemu — ensures Nova uses Quick Emulator (QEMU) software emulation because Azure Cobalt 100 VMs don’t support nested Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization
• enable_service horizon — enables the web dashboard
• GIT_DEPTH=1 — performs shallow clones to reduce download size and avoid failures on slow or rate-limited connections

Deploy OpenStack

Run the following script to install all OpenStack services, configure database and messaging, and start services:

    

        
        
./stack.sh | tee stack.log

    

The deployment can take about 15–25 minutes.

When the deployment completes successfully, the output is similar to:

    

        
        This is your host IP address: 10.3.0.5
This is your host IPv6 address: ::1
Horizon is now available at http://10.3.0.5/dashboard
Keystone is serving at http://10.3.0.5/identity/
The default users are: admin and demo
The password: admin

Services are running under systemd unit files.
For more information see: 
https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/systemd.html

DevStack Version: 2026.2
Change: 03ece8f88040be9b0b14dd1cfe93076ad2419a80 Merge "[neutron] Configure ovn-bgp service-plugin" 2026-04-10 12:15:11 +0000
OS Version: Ubuntu 24.04 noble

2026-04-23 16:30:00.225 | stack.sh completed in 464 seconds.

        
    

Access Horizon dashboard

Access the Horizon dashboard in a browser by pasting a link similar to the following:

    

        
        
http://<PUBLIC_IP>/dashboard

    

Example:

    

        
        
http://4.186.31.18/dashboard

    

OpenStack Horizon login screen

Enter the username and password as follows:

    

        
        
Username: admin
Password: admin

    

    

        
        
sudo tee -a /opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/local/local_settings.py << 'EOF'

OPENSTACK_NEUTRON_NETWORK = {
    'enable_router': False,
    'enable_quotas': False,
    'enable_distributed_router': False,
    'enable_ha_router': False,
    'enable_fip_topology_check': False,
}
EOF
sudo systemctl restart apache2

    

Verify via CLI

Activate the admin credentials, then list the registered services and compute services:

    

        
        
source openrc admin admin

openstack service list
openstack compute service list

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        +----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+
| ID                               | Name        | Type           |
+----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+
| 0a0554a3a6bf45e8937fa389ab559be3 | glance      | image          |
| 448f4e62b7344cac969c9ec18af4048d | nova        | compute        |
| 5cf7336818784a4383c0a543303ab4d7 | keystone    | identity       |
| 6ebdc6a1d7814f138f59ac5719bb4394 | cinder      | block-storage  |
| b86d2058e0604db6bcc9b12f3d2b16b4 | nova_legacy | compute_legacy |
| fd998beaffe64e2191795082470d03c0 | placement   | placement      |
+----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+

+--------------------------------------+----------------+--------------+----------+---------+-------+----------------------------+
| ID                                   | Binary         | Host         | Zone     | Status  | State | Updated At                 |
+--------------------------------------+----------------+--------------+----------+---------+-------+----------------------------+
| 46946541-a6c1-4b8c-92e3-5d037bb2d577 | nova-scheduler | devstack-arm | internal | enabled | up    | 2026-04-14T08:14:42.000000 |
| e1aa2f20-3f39-4d12-9702-4b144a739f56 | nova-conductor | devstack-arm | internal | enabled | up    | 2026-04-14T08:14:46.000000 |
| caeab24b-a938-420b-9ae0-e335ed8acfea | nova-conductor | devstack-arm | internal | enabled | up    | 2026-04-14T08:15:56.000000 |
| b612363d-b7ad-4c9e-93b8-afd20fb9b863 | nova-compute   | devstack-arm | nova     | enabled | up    | 2026-04-14T08:15:05.000000 |
+--------------------------------------+----------------+--------------+----------+---------+-------+----------------------------+

        
    

All services should show status enabled and state up. If you see import eventlet lines before the table, these are Python deprecation warnings from older OpenStack libraries and can be ignored.

(Optional) Stop DevStack

Before moving on to the Kolla-Ansible deployment, stop all DevStack services to free up the ports and resources they hold:

    

        
        
cd /home/azureuser/devstack && ./unstack.sh 2>&1 | tail -10

    

The Kolla-Ansible deployment must run on a separate VM, so this step is optional if you’re done with DevStack. Run it if you want to reuse this VM later or clean up resources.

What you’ve accomplished and what’s next

In this section, you deployed OpenStack using DevStack on an Azure Cobalt 100 Arm64 VM. You then verified the deployment using the CLI and accessed the Horizon dashboard using a browser.

In the next section, you’ll create a VM for deploying OpenStack using Kolla-Ansible.