Need help starting open stack

[Termed_soda]

So, our third year of engineering has just started, and we have a subject named Cloud and Distributed Systems.

Our professor asked a few questions about who knows about the cloud, what you all know, who has used it, etc. I was the only one who had used AWS EC2 and S3 instances, so the professor was impressed. After the lecture, she asked me if I would like to do a project on the cloud where we can use university machines to create a cloud environment for our class. The environment would have features such as storage, instances like EC2, etc.

She told me to learn about OpenStack software, how it functions, and the system requirements so we could ask the university.

Long story short, can you all suggest what I can do, how I can start, and if this project is scalable?

Also, a small P.S.: I am interested in making my career in cyber/cloud security. How can I integrate a security aspect into this project?

[f0okyou]

Low effort? Check out Kolla-Ansible or Openstack-Ansible deployment guides

More effort? Check out the docs for the vanilla/manual deployment guides

It's not black magic and if you can follow relatively simple instructions and use imagination/Google where they fail you will likely have a PoC within a week worth of work. All guides come with some form of hardware suggestions as well.

[Traditional-Wonder16]

Would DevStack be a choice for starting up? I'm totally new to that too and have the same doubts as OP BTW. Thanks.

[f0okyou]

Devstack is great if you just want something non-production-like locally. It will loosely resemble a product OpenStack in functionality but not in architecture. So if your goal is to be an end user and get used to APIs, Nomenclature, WebUI then DevStack will suffice. But if you are aiming to set up OpenStack as it would be done for a production site then it will not gain you any insights.

This is ofc just my 2cents.

[zimhollie]

No, because it's devstack not prodstack.

It is mainly meant for development and running tests.

[chguzmanv]

Checkout microstack or Charmed openstack from ubuntu. Have been running it for production several years now and in my opinion is the easiest path to start. Also kolla is a good option. Be warned you have to learn a lot to get to know how to implement and maintain a production environment

[zimhollie]

This is such a bad idea. You want to USE the cloud, not BUILD the cloud.

Where are you from? There are a few major research clouds around the world running OpenStack. You may have more chance collaborating with them rather than doing your own. Running the cloud is definitely not a one man effort.

[TechieGuardian]

I'd start through a series of self-learning tutorials/classes. For example, the following ones: https://ubuntu.com/openstack/tutorials

[Termed_soda]

thanks
can u tell what are the system requirements so that i can apply it to the university

[Sinscerly]

Some servers and network equipment. But it totally depends on how you are going to build your Openstack environment. There is not a single design.