Preparing an environment for using the OpenStack API

You can manage Public Cloud services using commands sent from the system console, once you have downloaded and installed OpenStack tools.

With the OpenStack API, you can automate your management by generating scripts.

Requirements

• Root access to the environment you want to configure

Instructions

On Debian

Open the terminal, and connect to the environment you want to prepare via SSH.

Update the packet cache using the apt update command:

apt update

Use the command below to install the OpenStack client:

$ apt install python3-pip python3-venv -y
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
(env)$ pip3 install --upgrade pip
(env)$ pip3 install python-openstackclient

After you have completed this step, we recommend creating a special user without root access.

To access the help tools, run the following command:

openstack --help

On CentOS

Open the terminal and connect to the environment you want to prepare via SSH.

Update the packet cache using the following command:

yum update -y

Use the command below to install the OpenStack client:

yum install python3-pip -y
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
(env)$ pip3 install --upgrade pip
(env)$ pip3 install python-openstackclient

After you have completed this step, we recommend creating a special user without root access.

To access the help tools, run the following command:

openstack --help

The documentation for the OpenStack API is available here.

On Windows

Download and install Python version 2.7.14. You can choose to add the Python programming language automatically to Path by ticking this option during installation configuration:

You can also install it yourself. To do this, follow the actions described below.

Step 1: Edit the system’s environment variables.

Search for the system’s environment variable settings, and select Edit the system environment variables.

Step 2: Edit the system settings.

Go to the Advanced tab, and click Environment Variables to edit the settings.

Step 3: Configure the environment variables.

In the ‘System variables’ section, select ‘New’, attribute the name “PYTHON_HOME”, and add the access path to Python. By default, it will be: ‘C:\Python27’.

Step 4: Add the path for the variables.

Once you have added Python, edit the ‘Path’ field in the system variables, and add the following to the end of the path:

...;%PYTHON_HOME%\;%PYTHON_HOME%\Script

Step 5: Restart Windows.

The changes you have made will become effective after the system has been rebooted.

Step 6: Install the OpenStack client.

As an administrator, open the program in the command line (CMD), and install the OpenStack client using the following command:

pip install python-openstackclient

If the operation is completed properly, you will see a summary:

You can check the installation version in the CMD (command line) window that has just opened, by entering ‘python-V’ from any system location.

On MacOS

You can use HomeBrew, a package manager for MacOS.

Open the terminal and execute the following command:

brew install openstackclient

To access the help tools, run the following command:

openstack --help

Go further

For more information and tutorials, please see our other Public Cloud Services support guides or explore the guides for other OVHcloud products and services.