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Introduction to the OpenStack Dashboard

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8

An overview of the OpenStack dashboard graphical user interface

OpenStack Documentation Team

Abstract

This guide provides an outline of the options available in the OpenStack dashboard user interface.

Preface
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This document provides an outline of the options available in the OpenStack dashboard graphical user interface.

Chapter 1. The OpenStack Dashboard
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The OpenStack dashboard is a web-based graphical user interface for managing OpenStack services.

To access the browser dashboard, the dashboard service must be installed, and you must know the dashboard host name (or IP) and login password. The dashboard URL is: 

http://HOSTNAME/dashboard/
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Dashboard Login Screen

Chapter 2. The Admin Tab
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The Admin tab provides an interface where administrative users can view usage and manage instances, volumes, flavors, images, projects, users, services, and quotas.

Note

The Admin tab displays in the main window only if you have logged in as a user with administrative privileges.

Admin Tab

The following options are available in the Admin tab:

Expand
Table 2.1. System Panel
Parameter NameDescription

Overview

View basic reports.

Resource Usage

Use the following tabs to view the following usages:

  • Usage Report - View the usage report.
  • Stats - View the statistics of all resources.

Hypervisors

View the hypervisor summary.

Host Aggregates

View, create, and edit host aggregates. View the list of availability zones.

Instances

View, pause, resume, suspend, migrate, soft or hard reboot, and delete running instances that belong to users of some, but not all, projects. Also, view the log for an instance or access an instance using the console.

Volumes

View, create, edit, and delete volumes, and volume types.

Flavors

View, create, edit, view extra specs for, and delete flavors. Flavors are the virtual hardware templates in OpenStack.

Images

View, create, edit properties for, and delete custom images.

Networks

View, create, edit properties for, and delete networks.

Routers

View, create, edit properties for, and delete routers.

Defaults

View and edit the default quotas (maximum limits) for resources in the environment.

Metadata Definitions

Import, view, and edit metadata definition namespaces, and associate the metadata definitions with specific resource types.

System Information

Contains the following tabs:

  • Services - View a list of the services.
  • Compute Services - View a list of all Compute services.
  • Network Agents - View the network agents.
  • Block Storage Services - View a list of all Block Storage services.
  • Orchestration Services - View a list of all Orchestration services.
Note

In Red Hat OpenStack Platform 8, the Resource Usage Ceilometer panel is disabled by default. To enable the panel:

  1. Remove the configuration files that disable the panel. 

    $ sudo rm /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/enabled/_99_disable_metering_dashboard.py*
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  2. Restart the httpd service. 

    $ sudo systemctl restart httpd
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Chapter 3. The Project Tab
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The Project tab provides an interface for viewing and managing the resources of a project. Set a project as active in Identity > Projects to view and manage resources in that project.

Dashboard Tab

The following options are available in the Project tab:

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Table 3.1. The Compute Tab
Parameter NameDescription

Overview

View reports for the project.

Instances

View, launch, create a snapshot from, stop, pause, or reboot instances, or connect to them through the console.

Volumes

Use the following tabs to complete these tasks:

  • Volumes - View, create, edit, and delete volumes.
  • Volume Snapshots - View, create, edit, and delete volume snapshots.

Images

View images, instance snapshots, and volume snapshots created by project users, and any images that are publicly available. Create, edit, and delete images, and launch instances from images and snapshots.

Access & Security

Use the following tabs to complete these tasks:

  • Security Groups - View, create, edit, and delete security groups and security group rules.
  • Key Pairs - View, create, edit, import, and delete keypairs.
  • Floating IPs - Allocate an IP address to or release it from a project.
  • API Access - View API endpoints, download the OpenStack RC file, download EC2 credentials, and view credentials for the logged-in project user.
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Table 3.2. The Network Tab
Parameter NameDescription

Network Topology

View the interactive topology of the network.

Networks

Create and manage public and private networks and subnets.

Routers

Create and manage routers.

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Table 3.3. The Object Store Tab
Parameter NameDescription

Containers

Create and manage storage containers. A container is a storage compartment for data, and provides a way for you to organize your data. It is similar to the concept of a Linux file directory, but it cannot be nested.

Expand
Table 3.4. The Orchestration Tab
Parameter NameDescription

Stacks

Orchestrate multiple composite cloud applications using templates, through both an OpenStack-native REST API and a CloudFormation-compatible Query API.

Chapter 4. The Identity Tab
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The Identity tab provides an interface for viewing and managing projects and users.

Identity Tab

The following options are available in the Identity tab:

  • Projects - View, create, edit, and delete projects/tenants, view project usage, add or remove users as project members, modify quotas, and set an active project.
  • Users - View, create, edit, disable, and delete users, and change user passwords. The Users tab displays only if you are logged in as a user with administrative privileges.

For more information on procedures to manage your cloud using the OpenStack Dashboard, see the following guides:

Chapter 5. Customizing the Dashboard
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After you have the OpenStack dashboard installed, you can customize its look and feel to suit your own needs. The customization options here focuses on the settings included in the local_settings.py file, stored in /openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/local/.

Note

The OpenStack dashboard by default installs the openstack-dashboard-theme package.

If you do not want to use this theme you can remove it and its dependencies using the following command: 

# rpm -e --nodeps openstack-dashboard-theme
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You can customize the following elements of the dashboard. Note that for a Director deployment, you will need to log in to each controller node as heat-admin to make the changes.

  • Logo
  • Site colors
  • HTML title
  • Site branding link
  • Help URL
  • Stylesheets

Logo and Site Colors:

  1. Create two logo files in png format with transparent backgrounds of the following sizes:

    • Login screen (Example: login_logo.png): 365 x 50
    • Logged in banner (Example: banner_logo.png): 216 x 35
  2. Upload your new images to the following location: /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/static/dashboard/img/
  3. Create a SCSS style sheet in the following directory: /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/static/dashboard/scss/

  4. Change the colors and image file names as appropriate. Note that the relative directory paths should be the same. The following example file demonstrates how to customize your SCSS file: 

    /*
* New theme colors for the dashboard that override the defaults:
*  dark blue: #355796 / rgb(53, 87, 150)
*  light blue: #BAD3E1 / rgb(186, 211, 225)
*/

h1.brand {
background: #355796 repeat-x top left;
border-bottom: 2px solid #BAD3E1;
}
h1.brand a {
background: url(../img/login_logo.png) top left no-repeat;
}
#splash .login {
background: #355796 url(../img/banner_logo.png) no-repeat center 35px;
}
#splash .login .modal-header {
border-top: 1px solid #BAD3E1;
}
.btn-primary {
background-image: none !important;
background-color: #355796 !important;
border: none !important;
box-shadow: none;
}
.btn-primary:hover,
.btn-primary:active {
border: none;
box-shadow: none;
background-color: #BAD3E1 !important;
text-decoration: none;
}
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  5. Open the following HTML template in an editor of your choice: /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/templates/_stylesheets.html

  6. Add a line to include your newly created style sheet. For example, custom.scss file: 

     <link href='bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.scss' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
 <link href='dashboard/css/{% choose_scss %}' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
 <link href='dashboard/css/custom.scss' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
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  7. Restart the Apache server: 
# # systemctl restart httpd
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  1. To view your changes simply reload your dashboard. If necessary, go back and modify your SCSS file as appropriate.

HTML Title:

  1. To set the HTML title that appears at the top of the browser window, add the following line to local_settings.py. 

    SITE_BRANDING = "Example, Inc. Cloud"
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  2. Restart the Apache server.

Site Branding Link:

  1. The logo also acts as a hyperlink. The default behavior is to redirect to horizon:user_home. To change this, add the following attribute with the desired URL target to local_settings.py. 

    SITE_BRANDING_LINK = "http://example.com"
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  2. Restart the Apache server.

Help URL:

  1. By default the help URL points to https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_OpenStack_Platform/7/index.html. You can change the help URL by editing the following attribute to the URL of your choice in local_settings.py. 

    'help_url': "http://openstack.mycompany.org",
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  2. Restart the Apache server.

Custom Stylesheets:

It is possible to define custom stylesheets for your dashboard. Dashboard’s base template, openstack_dashboard/templates/base.html, defines multiple blocks that can be overridden. To define custom SCSS files that apply only to a specific dashboard, create a base template in your dashboard’s templates folder, which extends the dashboard’s base template.

Example: openstack_dashboard/dashboards/my_custom_dashboard/templates/my_custom_dashboard/base.html. In this template, you can redefine block CSS: 

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block css %}
  {% include "_stylesheets.html" %}
  {% load compress %}
  {% compress css %}
  <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}my_custom_dashboard/scss/my_custom_dashboard.scss' type='text/scss' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
  {% endcompress %}
{% endblock %}
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Note

Don’t forget to include _stylesheets.html which includes all default stylesheets for the dashboard.

Legal Notice
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Copyright © 2025 Red Hat, Inc.
The text of and illustrations in this document are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
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