Help us improve your experience.

Let us know what you think.

Do you have time for a two-minute survey?

 
 

Installing Contrail Command

Use this example to install the Contrail Command Docker container images.

Contrail Command is the GUI for Contrail Cloud and Contrail Enterprise Multicloud solutions. It represents the single management touchpoint for the fabric underlay, the overlay networks and virtual endpoints, and the AppFormix performance and resource monitoring application for cloud services.

Contrail Command also simplifies the configuration of OpenStack clusters and the integration of Contrail within those clusters. By providing a workflow to facilitate integration with orchestrators, initially providing support for OpenStack Kolla, Contrail Command makes integration a straightforward task.

After you integrate Contrail Command with your orchestrator, you can use Contrail Command to perform typical tasks such as creating overlay networks, creating flavors, spinning up workloads, attaching workloads to overlay networks, and setting up firewall permissions to control communication paths. For these typical tasks, it is not necessary for you to use the orchestrator’s UI (e.g. OpenStack dashboard).

In general, you can use Contrail Command to perform automated workflows such as the following:

  • deploy Contrail and Kolla-based OpenStack clusters.

  • monitor and manage underlay and physical devices, overlays and virtual endpoints, end to end policy and control.

  • orchestrate workloads running on bare metal servers, virtual machines, and containers.

  • discover and manage the data center IP fabric.

Most workflows are intent-based, meaning that you configure the workflows using templates and wizards where applicable.

Requirements

The system requirements for the Contrail Command server are:

  • A VM or physical x86 server with:

    • 4 vCPUs

    • 32 GB RAM

    • 100 GB disk with all user storage in the “/” partition (that is, remove the “/home” partition if it exists, and increase the “/” partition by the amount of freed storage)

  • Internet access to and from the VM or physical server, hereafter referred to as the Contrail Command server

  • Runs a version of CentOS that supports your version of Contrail Networking.

    We perform regular testing of Contrail Command on CentOS 7 but Contrail Command should work on other common versions of Linux. For a list of CentOS versions that are supported with Contrail Networking and orchestration platform combinations, see Contrail Networking Supported Platforms List.

    You can install CentOS with updated packages using the yum update command.

  • An IP interface attached to the management network. Contrail Command manages Contrail and OpenStack clusters over this interface.

  • SSH access

  • Access to the hub.juniper.net registry. See README Access to Contrail Registry 19XX for more information.

  • <container_tag> See README Access to Contrail Registry 19XX for more information..

Overview

Installation

Contrail Command deploys as a pair of Docker containers. You install Contrail Command by downloading and running the contrail-command-deployer image, which runs in its own container and exits when the Contrail Command installation is complete.

Before you begin, set up a CentOS 7 server that meets the specified requirements. For a list of supported platforms, see https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independent/contrail/topics/reference/contrail-supported-platforms.pdf.

Additionally, remove any installed Python Docker (docker and docker-py) libraries from the server. The contrail-command-deployer automatically installs all necessary libraries. If you are using a freshly installed minimal CentOS 7 server, then these Python Docker libraries do not yet exist on the server and you do not have to take any action.

There is no harm if you issue the above command when no Python Docker libraries are installed.

Procedure

Step-by-Step Procedure

Perform the following steps on a CentOS 7 server to configure and install Contrail Command.

  1. Install and start the Docker Engine. The following set of commands adds the Docker repository and installs and starts Docker Community Edition version 18.06 as an example.

  2. Pull the contrail-command-deployer Docker image from hub.juniper.net.

    See README Access to Contrail Registry 19XX for information on how to get credentials to access the secure hub.juniper.net registry and for the name of the container tag to use.

    1. Log in to the hub.juniper.net registry.

    2. Retrieve the contrail-command-deployer Docker image.

      where <container_tag> is the container tag for the Contrail Command (UI) container deployment for the release that you want to install. See README Access to Contrail Registry 19XX to obtain the <container_tag> for any Contrail Networking Release 19 software.

  3. Create the command_servers.yml configuration file.

    The command_servers.yml file contains information of the server where you plan to install Contrail Command as well as information of the container registry and other configuration parameters. Contrail Command runs on a single server, typically the same server where you run the contrail-command-deployer (that is, the server used in this procedure).

    When you run the contrail-command-deployer, it reads and processes the command_servers.yml file. Examples of this file are shown in #sample-command-servers__sample-command-servers-51 and #sample-command-servers__sample-command-servers-50.

    Note:

    If you want to deploy AppFormix, add the following two lines to the command_servers.yml file. They must be placed outside of the “command_servers” hierarchy, either immediately after the "---" at the very top of the file or as the last two lines at the very bottom of the file. The following shows an example where the two lines are added at the top of the file:

  4. Run the contrail-command-deployer container to deploy Contrail Command.

    To perform a fresh installation:

    where <ABSOLUTE_PATH_TO_command_servers.yml_FILE> is the absolute path to the command_servers.yml file that you created in step 3, and <container_tag> is the container tag for the Contrail Command (UI) container deployment for the release that you want to install.

  5. (Optional) Track the progress of step 4.

  6. After the installation is complete, verify that the Contrail Command containers are running.

    The contrail_command container is the GUI and the contrail_psql container is the database. Both containers should have a STATUS of Up.

    The contrail-command-deployer container should have a STATUS of Exited because it exits when the installation is complete.

  7. Log in to Contrail Command using https://<Contrail-Command-Server-IP-Address>:9091. Use the username and password that you specified in the command_servers.yml file in step 3. If you use the sample command_servers.yml files in Sample command_servers.yml Files, the username is admin and the password is contrail123.

Sample command_servers.yml Files

Minimal command_servers.yml file

The following sample file has the minimum configuration that you need when you install Contrail Command.

Note: Passwords are provided in this output for illustrative purposes only. We suggest using unique passwords in accordance with your organization’s security guidelines in your environment.

Complete command_servers.yml File

The following sample file has an exhaustive list of configurations and supporting parameters that you can use when you install Contrail Command.

Note: Passwords are provided in this output for illustrative purposes only. We suggest using unique passwords in accordance with your organization’s security guidelines in your environment.