Compact deployment mode requires fewer hardware resources and less memory than HA mode. All control plane instances are deployed on a single virtual machine, and only one controller, message queue, and database instance are included.

Compact deployment mode is suitable for evaluation and proof of concept testing. If you make regular backups of your virtual machines, it can also be used in production environments.

A compact deployment runs on one ESXi host and includes at least three virtual machines. These include the OpenStack Management Server, the unified control plane node, and at least one compute driver node. An additional compute driver is created for each compute cluster that you add to your deployment.

Figure 1. Management Cluster in Compact Mode
Management cluster in compact mode

To deploy in compact mode, at least four contiguous IP addresses must be available on the management network. Each of the preceding virtual machines requires one IP address, and one additional IP address is required for the private OpenStack endpoint. At least one IP address must be available on the API access network to be used as the public OpenStack endpoint.

Note: If you want to deploy Ceilometer, an additional five virtual machines are required. These virtual machines each require one IP address on the management network.

To ensure that you can upgrade VMware Integrated OpenStack successfully, plan management and API access networks that include twice the number of IP addresses required for your deployment. The extra IP addresses will be used during the upgrade procedure.

HA in Compact Mode

With vSphere HA, VM monitoring, and vSAN, you can enable certain HA features on a compact deployment.

  • By enabling vSphere HA on the management cluster, you can provide fault tolerance in the event that an ESXi host stops functioning, loses network connectivity with the primary host, or enters the Network Isolated state.
  • By enabling vSphere HA and VM monitoring on the management cluster, you can provide fault tolerance in the event that a control plane virtual machine, compute virtual machine, or OpenStack service stops functioning.
  • By using vSAN on the management cluster, you can provide fault tolerance for storage components.

If you want to enable these HA features on a compact deployment, your management cluster must include at least three ESXi hosts.

If you are deploying OpenStack using the public API, you can enable HA by including the following attribute:

"control_plane_ha_enabled": "true"

This attribute will automatically enable vSphere HA and VM monitoring on the management cluster.