Prepare Azure Arm64 virtual machine for Kolla-Ansible

In the previous section, you completed the DevStack deployment on the first VM. The Kolla-Ansible deployment runs on a separate Azure VM with two network interfaces (NICs) and a dedicated data disk.

Create a new VM using the same base process as the first VM with the following specifications:

After the new VM is running, follow these steps to add the required networking and storage.

Add a second network interface in Azure

Kolla-Ansible requires two NICs: eth0 and eth1. eth0 is a management network that carries API traffic between OpenStack services. eth1 is an external/provider network that carries traffic to and from virtual machine instances.

To add a second NIC to the VM, follow these steps:

Stop the VM

Azure does not allow NIC attachment to a running VM. To add an NIC, you’ll need to first stop the VM.

Navigate to Virtual Machines, select your VM, and click Stop.

Stop the VM before attaching a network interface

Create and attach a new network interface

After stopping the VM, to attach a new NIC, follow these steps:

1. In the Azure portal, navigate to Networking and then Network settings
2. Click Attach network interface
3. Click Create new NIC

Create a new NIC for the OpenStack external network

4. Enter a Name for the NIC
5. For Virtual Network, keep the NIC in the same Virtual Network
6. For Subnet, select the same subnet
7. For Public inbound ports, select None
8. Click Create

Attach network interface in Azure Networking settings

Restart the VM

To restart the VM, go back to the VM overview and then click Start.

Create and attach a data disk in Azure

After restarting the VM, attach a data disk to it by following these steps:

1. In the Azure Portal, navigate to Virtual Machines
2. Click Disks
3. Click Create and attach a new disk
4. For Disk name, enter openstack-disk
5. For Size, enter 32 GB, which is the recommended minimum
6. For Storage type, select Standard SSD
7. Click Apply

32 GB data disk attached for OpenStack storage

Why this disk is required

Kolla-Ansible uses a dedicated disk for Cinder and Docker volumes. Cinder provides block storage volumes to OpenStack instances. Docker volumes store container data for all OpenStack services.

Using a separate disk keeps OpenStack data off the OS disk and avoids filling it during deployment.

What you’ve accomplished and what’s next

In this section, you configured a second Azure Arm64 VM for Kolla-Ansible. The VM has a second NIC (eth1) for OpenStack’s provider network, and a dedicated 32 GB data disk for Cinder and Docker volumes.

In the next section, you’ll install Kolla-Ansible and deploy OpenStack as containers on this VM.