Can bundle https://jujucharms.com/openstack-base/39 be used for ppc64el environment

Question

Introduction

My IBM team is about to finish setup of 4 server VMs and the maas (and juju) deployment server. The next step is to build out the OpenStack-Base (39) environment via juju as specified here:

https://jujucharms.com/u/james-page/openstack-base/bundle/39/

Question

The openstack-base/39 bundle defines arch=amd64. I assume this is the tested environment for this bundle of charms. Now OpenStack and other componentry should be able to run on ubuntu 14.04 ppc64le. I wanted to ask ubuntu if changing the bundle.yaml archtecture to ppc64 if they knew of anything in the charms layered from the bundle.yaml that would preclude this from working in ppc64le. I know we need to test this out but just wanted to know up front if there was any charms setup that would not run ppc64le in this bundle. Obviously if ubuntu thinks the charm layout should in theory work then we can lay it out and test it.

machines:
  '0':
    constraints: arch=amd64  (change this to ppc64 not ppc64le ?)
    series: trusty
  '1':
    constraints: arch=amd64  (change this to ppc64 not ppc64le ?)
    series: trusty
  '2':
    constraints: arch=amd64  (change this to ppc64 not ppc64le ?)
    series: trusty
  '3':
    constraints: arch=amd64  (change this to ppc64 not ppc64le ?)
   series: trusty

What is being tested:

I work for IBM and trying to prototype netboot (pxe) for ubuntu. The goal is to have a maas deployment server deploy out to 4 VMs managed under ubuntu 14.0.4 to test out juju bundle #39 (openstack base). Since my team does not have 4 physical servers we are attempting this using VMs. Note this is ppc64el environment. Note that in current environment I did create a x86 PXE and had it commissioned from maa. So we know ubuntu can build x86 PXE, bridge to maas and mass find the node and commission it. IBM is trying to do this for the ppc64 image now. Once that works intend to move to ppc64le image (our goal).

Answer 1

If the machines are already enlisted and commissioned in MAAS, the arch value presented by MAAS will be ppc64el.

I have had success in doing OpenStack (Kilo) testing and validation on Power8 hardware, running Ubuntu Server as the native operating system (14.04).

It should not be necessary to modify the Ubuntu Server images or pxe files, as long as the appropriate images are in MAAS, and the virtual machine nodes are configured to be controlled by MAAS.

The Kilo cloud archive, or later, is necessary in order to consume a compatible version of libvirt.

The HWE-U 3.16 kernel ("ppc64el/hwe-u") or later is necessary for hardware-enablement. This can be specified in MAAS via the Machine-->Architecture attribute.

The nova-compute units will need post-deployment tuning to set cpu-mode=host-passthrough. There is a charm config option currently in development to make this option easier to set via the nova-compute charm.