tr3buchet / supernova

Use novaclient with multiple OpenStack nova environments the easy way

supernova - use novaclient with multiple nova environments the easy way

You may like supernova if you regularly have the following problems:

• You hate trying to source multiple novarc files when using nova
• You get your terminals confused and do the wrong things in the wrong nova environment
• You don't like remembering things
• You want to keep sensitive API keys and passwords out of plain text configuration files (see the "Working with keyrings" section toward the end)
• You need to share common skeleton environment variables for nova with your teams

If any of these complaints ring true, supernova is for you. supernova manages multiple nova environments without sourcing novarc's or mucking with environment variables.

Installation

git clone git://github.com/rackerhacker/supernova.git
cd supernova
python setup.py install

Configuration

For supernova to work properly, each environment must be defined in ~/.supernova (in your user's home directory). The data in the file is exactly the same as the environment variables which you would normally use when running nova. You can copy/paste from your novarc files directly into configuration sections within ~/.supernova.

Here's an example of two environments, production and development:

[production]
NOVA_URL=http://production.nova.example.com:8774/v1.1/
NOVA_VERSION=1.1
NOVA_USERNAME = jsmith
NOVA_API_KEY = fd62afe2-4686-469f-9849-ceaa792c55a6
NOVA_PROJECT_ID = nova-production

[development]
NOVA_URL=http://dev.nova.example.com:8774/v1.1/
NOVA_VERSION=1.1
NOVA_USERNAME = jsmith
NOVA_API_KEY = 40318069-6069-4d9f-836d-a46df17fc8d1
NOVA_PROJECT_ID = nova-production

When you use supernova, you'll refer to these environments as production and development. Every environment is specified by its configuration header name.

Usage

supernova [--debug] [--list] [environment] [novaclient arguments...]

Options:
-h, --help   show this help message and exit
-d, --debug  show novaclient debug output (overrides NOVACLIENT_DEBUG)
-l, --list   list all configured environments

Passing commands to nova

For example, if you wanted to list all instances within the production environment:

supernova production list

Show a particular instance's data in the preprod environment:

supernova preprod show 3edb6dac-5a75-486a-be1b-3b15fd5b4ab0a

The first argument is generally the environment argument and it is expected to be a single word without spaces. Any text after the environment argument is passed directly to nova.

Debug override

You may optionally pass --debug as the first argument (before the environment argument) to inject the NOVACLIENT_DEBUG=1 option into the process environment to see additional debug information about the requests being made to the API:

supernova --debug production list

As before, any text after the environment argument is passed directly to nova.

Listing your configured environments

You can list all of your configured environments by using the --list argument.

Working with keyrings

Due to security policies at certain companies or due to general paranoia, some users may not want API keys or passwords stored in a plaintext supernova configuration file. Luckily, support is now available (via the keyring module) for storing any configuration value within your operating system's keychain. This has been tested on the following platforms:

• Mac: Keychain Access.app
• Linux: gnome-keyring, kwallet

To get started, you'll need to choose an environment and a configuration option. Here's an example of some data you might not want to keep in plain text:

supernova-keyring --set production NOVA_API_KEY

TIP: If you need to use the same data for multiple environments, you can use a global credential item very easily:

supernova-keyring --set global MyCompanyLDAPPassword

Once it's stored, you can test a retrieval:

# Normal, per-environment storage
supernova-keyring --get production NOVA_API_KEY

# Global storage
supernova-keyring --get global MyCompanyLDAPPassword

You'll need to confirm that you want the data from your keychain displayed in plain text (to hopefully thwart shoulder surfers).

Once you've stored your sensitive data, simply adjust your supernova configuration file:

#NOVA_API_KEY = really_sensitive_api_key_here

# If using storage per environment
NOVA_API_KEY = USE_KEYRING

# If using global storage
NOVA_API_KEY = USE_KEYRING['MyCompanyLDAPPassword']

When supernova reads your configuration file and spots a value of USE_KEYRING, it will look for credentials stored under NOVA_API_KEY for that environment automatically. If your keyring doesn't have a corresponding credential, you'll get an exception.

A brief note about environment variables

supernova will only replace and/or append environment variables to the already present variables for the duration of the nova execution. If you have NOVA_USERNAME set outside the script, it won't be used in the script since the script will pull data from ~/.supernova and use it to run nova. In addition, any variables which are set prior to running supernova will be left unaltered when the script exits.