Hardware: OpenStack components are intended to run on standard hardware. Recommended hardware configurations for a minimum production deployment are as follows for the cloud controller nodes and compute nodes for Compute and the Image Service, and object, account, container, and proxy servers for Object Storage.

Hardware Recommendations

Server	Recommended Hardware	Notes
Cloud Controller node (runs network, volume, API, scheduler and image services)	Processor: 64-bit x86 Memory: 12 GB RAM Disk space: 30 GB (SATA, SAS or SSD) Volume storage: two disks with 2 TB (SATA) for volumes attached to the compute nodes Network: one 1 Gbps Network Interface Card (NIC)	Two NICS are recommended but not required. A quad core server with 12 GB RAM would be more than sufficient for a cloud controller node.
Compute nodes (runs virtual instances)	Processor: 64-bit x86 Memory: 32 GB RAM Disk space: 30 GB (SATA) Network: two 1 Gbps NICs	With 2 GB RAM you can run one m1.small instance on a node or three m1.tiny instances without memory swapping, so 2 GB RAM would be a minimum for a test-environment compute node. As an example, Rackspace Cloud Builders use 96 GB RAM for compute nodes in OpenStack deployments. Specifically for virtualization on certain hypervisors on the node or nodes running nova-compute, you need a x86 machine with an AMD processor with SVM extensions (also called AMD-V) or an Intel processor with VT (virtualization technology) extensions. For XenServer and XCP refer to the XenServer installation guide and the XenServer hardware compatibility list. For LXC, the VT extensions are not required.

While certain parts of OpenStack are known to work on various operating systems, currently the only feature-complete, production-supported host environment is 64-bit Linux. Operating System: OpenStack currently has packages for the following distributions: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE, SLES, and Ubuntu. These packages are maintained by community members, refer to http://wiki.openstack.org/Packaging for additional links. The Grizzly version is available on the most recent LTS (Long Term Support) version which is 12.04 (Precise Pangolin), via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive. At this time, there are not packages available for 12.10. It is also available on the current Ubuntu development series, which is 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). The Grizzly release of OpenStack Compute requires Fedora 16 or later. Packages for openSUSE are available in the Open Build Service. Database: For OpenStack Compute, you need access to either a PostgreSQL or MySQL database, or you can install it as part of the OpenStack Compute installation process. Permissions: You can install OpenStack services either as root or as a user with sudo permissions if you configure the sudoers file to enable all the permissions. Network Time Protocol: You must install a time synchronization program such as NTP. For Compute, time synchronization avoids problems when scheduling VM launches on compute nodes. For Object Storage, time synchronization ensures the object replications are accurately updating objects when needed so that the freshest content is served.