Chapter 3. Parameters

The Heat template for setting the time zone (puppet/services/time/timezone.yaml) contains a TimeZone parameter. If you leave the TimeZone parameter blank, the overcloud sets the time zone to UTC by default. The director recognizes the standard time zone names defined in the time zone database /usr/share/zoneinfo/. For example, if you want to set your time zone to Japan, examine the contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo to locate a suitable entry:

$ ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/
Africa      Asia       Canada   Cuba   EST      GB       GMT-0      HST      iso3166.tab  Kwajalein  MST      NZ-CHAT   posix       right      Turkey     UTC       Zulu
America     Atlantic   CET      EET    EST5EDT  GB-Eire  GMT+0      Iceland  Israel       Libya      MST7MDT  Pacific   posixrules  ROC        UCT        WET
Antarctica  Australia  Chile    Egypt  Etc      GMT      Greenwich  Indian   Jamaica      MET        Navajo   Poland    PRC         ROK        Universal  W-SU
Arctic      Brazil     CST6CDT  Eire   Europe   GMT0     Hongkong   Iran     Japan        Mexico     NZ       Portugal  PST8PDT     Singapore  US         zone.tab

The output listed above includes time zone files and directories containing additional time zone files. For example, Japan is an individual time zone file in this result, but Africa is a directory containing additional time zone files:

$ ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Africa/
Abidjan      Algiers  Bamako  Bissau       Bujumbura   Ceuta    Dar_es_Salaam  El_Aaiun  Harare        Kampala   Kinshasa    Lome        Lusaka  Maseru     Monrovia  Niamey       Porto-Novo  Tripoli
Accra        Asmara   Bangui  Blantyre     Cairo       Conakry  Djibouti       Freetown  Johannesburg  Khartoum  Lagos       Luanda      Malabo  Mbabane    Nairobi   Nouakchott   Sao_Tome    Tunis
Addis_Ababa  Asmera   Banjul  Brazzaville  Casablanca  Dakar    Douala         Gaborone  Juba          Kigali    Libreville  Lubumbashi  Maputo  Mogadishu  Ndjamena  Ouagadougou  Timbuktu    Windhoek

Add the entry in an environment file to set your time zone to Japan:

parameter_defaults:
  TimeZone: 'Japan'

The Heat template for the OpenStack Networking (neutron) API (puppet/services/neutron-api.yaml) contains a parameter to enable and disable Distributed Virtual Routing (DVR). The default for the parameter is false. To enable it, use the following in an environment file:

parameter_defaults:
  NeutronEnableDVR: true

For certain configurations, you might need to increase the file descriptor limit for the RabbitMQ server. The puppet/services/rabbitmq.yaml Heat template allows you to set the RabbitFDLimit parameter to the limit you require. Add the following to an environment file:

parameter_defaults:
  RabbitFDLimit: 65536

You might need to initially set a parameter during a deployment, then disable the parameter for a future deployment operation, such as updates or scaling operations. For example, to include a custom RPM during the overcloud creation, include the following:

parameter_defaults:
  DeployArtifactURLs: ["http://www.example.com/myfile.rpm"]

To disable this parameter from a future deployment, it is not enough to remove the parameter. Instead, you set the parameter to an empty value:

parameter_defaults:
  DeployArtifactURLs: []

This ensures the parameter is no longer set for subsequent deployments operations.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform director provides many parameters for configuration. In some cases, you might experience difficulty identifying a certain option to configure and the corresponding director parameter. If there is an option you want to configure through the director, use the following workflow to identify and map the option to a specific overcloud parameter:

The following table shows the eventual mapping:

You set the KeystoneNotificationFormat in an overcloud’s environment file which in turn sets the notification_format option in the keystone.conf file during the overcloud’s configuration.