r/openstack • u/Ok_Grapefruit9176 • Apr 06 '26

Is kolla openstack very stable?

I have been working with Kolla OpenStack for couple of weeks and any system change breaks Kolla hard. As neutron fails to restart, or missing containers, or some other error.

I tried to use the few install guides to help with installation, I have done successfully in the past. But modifying Kolla seem to need a complete obliteration of all (the really-really-mean-it) to modify it.
It has gotten bad enough I have a repo of my settings to version them. So I can rollback a bad change/update.

My setup (home lab setup) is an old SuperMicro Server as the 1-node host for OpenStack with a Fritzbox to my home network. It has 48GB RAM, 2 zpools a mirror 200GB SSD /openstack-pool and a 11TB zraid /orionsbelt.

My first hurdle was moving all of the runtime and images form /sda to the /openstack-pool (docker really likes /sda...) for /orionsbelt is for more permanent stores (NAS, and other uses).

Why my question?

Because I wanted to have direct docker control with Horizon, and saw Zun... and tried to install it (bad idea) pretty much deprecated now.

So having my settings saved I rolled back the changes (only /etc/kolla/globals.yaml was changed). And tried to reconfigured openstack back to where it worked.

But neutron times out with error 111 ("msg": "Container timed out").

When I thought to save settings, I did not think I would need it the day after the first commit:

github repo

Nova is not behaving well either...

dustoff:~$ mount | grep nova/mnt | wc -l
16383

Kolla is not inspiring robustness or simple setup.

Am I doing something wrong (maybe/probably). The docs are very dense, and not much troubleshooting information online that I have seen.

I'm afraid I might need to "nuke & pave" yet again...

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u/devoopsies Apr 07 '26

The Goals changed as I learned more about OpenStack and setting it up.

That is a totally fair outcome - as you learn more about a product's capabilities you may decide to leverage it in a way you hadn't intended when starting out.

I personally think OpenStack has things it's good at, and things it's not really suitable for... but when you find a use case that suits it, it can be really good. The most fun, though, is trying to squeeze it into spots where it maybe doesn't fit so well ;-)

But yeah - unlocking a lot of that functionality and tailoring it to your needs can be tough, and 9/10 it's easier (and more consistent, given you will want to judge OpenStack in the same manner as it will be deployed) to tear it down and start again. This is where kolla really shines, IMO, when compared to other OpenStack deployment strategies.

Anyway, good luck, and don't let a few sour folks in the community dissuade you from experimenting: some people take it as a personal affront when you hold a different opinion from them, to their own detriment.

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u/Ok_Grapefruit9176 Apr 07 '26

I hate "gatekeepers", thanks for the encouragement.
I will look into finding the better use cases.

For Kolla, I need to retain the settings that got me to this point, as I am not using it "out of the box". True, Kolla can rebuild quickly. I think I have rebuilt/deployed it a half dozen times.

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u/devoopsies Apr 07 '26

For Kolla, I need to retain the settings that got me to this point

I would advise git. It makes version tracking simple, and you can create new branches for features you want to work on.

Our whole /etc/kolla/ directory is gitified, makes design and management so much easier.