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GSD Skill Creator
Sysadmin Guide

Documentation > Specialized Systems > OpenStack Cloud Platform > Sysadmin Guide

Sysadmin Guide

The GSD Skill Creator OpenStack deployment applies NASA Systems Engineering methodology to cloud platform administration. This guide follows the 7-phase SE lifecycle — Pre-Phase A through Phase F — to provide a structured, auditable approach to cloud platform management. Each phase gate includes TAID verification criteria, traceability identifiers, and rollback procedures aligned with NASA NPR 7123.1 standards. The methodology ensures every administrative action is traceable to a requirement and verifiable against an acceptance criterion.

NASA SE Phase Lifecycle

The 7-phase NASA SE lifecycle structures all OpenStack administration work. Reference the CAP-137 NASA SE Documentation capability page for full methodology detail, traceability matrix templates, and TAID classification rules.

  • Pre-Phase A: Concept Studies — Requirements gathering and feasibility analysis. Define platform scope, tenant requirements, resource constraints, and compliance boundaries. Deliverable: Mission Concept Review (MCR) document with initial requirements set.
  • Phase A: Concept and Technology Development — Architecture selection and technology validation. Evaluate OpenStack service topology options, select controller/compute/storage node distribution, validate network plugin choice (OVN vs OVS). Deliverable: System Requirements Review (SRR) baseline.
  • Phase B: Preliminary Design and Technology Completion — Service topology finalization and dependency mapping. Complete network topology diagrams, storage backend selection (Ceph vs LVM), and HA architecture decisions. Deliverable: Preliminary Design Review (PDR) package.
  • Phase C: Final Design and Fabrication — Deployment planning and configuration preparation. Finalize Kolla-Ansible inventory, write globals.yml, prepare certificates, and stage container images. Deliverable: Critical Design Review (CDR) and deployment runbook.
  • Phase D: System Assembly, Integration, and Test — Deployment execution and integration validation. Execute kolla-ansible deploy, run smoke tests, validate inter-service connectivity, and complete TAID verification suite. Deliverable: System Acceptance Review (SAR) evidence package.
  • Phase E: Operations and Sustainment — Day-2 operations and continuous improvement. Monitor service health, apply security patches, rotate credentials, expand capacity, and respond to incidents. Ongoing deliverable: Operations log with TAID verification records.
  • Phase F: Closeout — Decommissioning and data migration. Evacuate workloads, archive tenant data, document lessons learned, and execute controlled shutdown of services. Deliverable: Closeout Review (CR) report with data disposition record.

Related Operational Documentation

  • Operations Manual — Per-service operational procedures for all 8 core OpenStack services (Keystone, Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Swift, Heat, Horizon) following the OPS-SERVICE-NNN procedure format with TAID verification steps.
  • Runbooks — 44 step-by-step operational runbooks indexed by service and by symptom. Covers incident response, planned maintenance, and recovery procedures with preconditions, rollback plans, and verification criteria.
  • Verification & Validation — NASA NPR 7123.1 compliance verification infrastructure with 55-requirement matrix, 22 safety-critical tests, and multi-stage E2E deployment verification procedures.
  • OpenStack Reference — Quick-reference card with service names, default ports, log paths, and CLI commands for fast operational lookup.

Best for: SysAdmins deploying and managing OpenStack infrastructure with NASA SE methodology