OpenStack has been my world for the past 8 months. It started out with the a work project to design and deploy a large-scale VMware Integrated OpenStack environment for internal use. It then became the design I would submit for my VCDX Defense and spend a couple hundred hours pouring over and documenting. Since then it has included helping other get “up-to-speed” on how to operationalize OpenStack. One of the necessary tools is the ability to execute commands against an OpenStack environment from anywhere.

The easiest way to do that?

A short-lived Docker container with the clients installed!

The container is short and to the point — it uses Ubuntu:latest as the base and simply adds the OpenStack clients.

# Docker container with the latest OpenStack clients

FROM ubuntu:latest

MAINTAINER [email protected]

RUN apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade

RUN apt-get -y install python-openstackclient vim

Follow that up with a quick Docker command to launch the instance, and I’m ready to troubleshoot whatever issue may require my attention.

$ docker run -it chrismutchler/vio-client

Where I am not a developer, I find the usefulness of creating these small types of Docker containers really fun. The ability to quickly spin up a container on my laptop or whatever VM I find myself on at the time priceless.

The repo can be seen on hub.docker.com/chrismutchler/vio-client.

If you need a OpenStack Client Docker container, I hope you’ll give this one a try. Enjoy!