What you need for this book

This book assumes the reader has a good understanding of the Linux operating system, basic knowledge of cloud computing and big data, and some experience with OpenStack software. The book will go through a simple multi-node setup of the OpenStack environment, which may require a basic understanding of networking and virtualization concepts. If you have experience of Hadoop and Spark processes, this is a big plus. Although the book uses VirtualBox, feel free to use any other lab environment, such as a VMware workstation or other tools.

OpenStack can be installed and runs either on bare metal or a virtual machine. However, this book requires that you have enough resources for the whole setup. The minimum hardware or virtual requirements are as follows:

• CPU: 4 cores
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Disk space: 80 GB

In this book, you will need the following software:

• Linux Operating System: Centos 7.x
• VirtualBox
• OpenStack RDO distribution, preferably the Liberty release. If you intend to use the Juno or Kilo releases, make sure to change the plugin versions when launching clusters to comply with the correct supported OpenStack version.

Internet connectivity is required to install the necessary OpenStack packages, Sahara images and Sahara image packages for specific plugins.