Difference between Devstack & Microstack

Question

Devstack & Microstack both provide deployment of Openstack on single node.

Is there any fundamental difference between them?

Devstack link: https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/

Microstack link: https://ubuntu.com/openstack/install

Is there any advantage/disadvantage using one over other?

Answer 1

I know nothing about either project, but reading the pages you link to suggests they have fundamentally different implementation and use cases.

DevStack is built from bleeding-edge sources, and is intended exclusively for testing and contributing to the OpenStack technologies themselves:

• "DevStack is a series of extensible scripts ... based on the latest versions of everything from git master."
• "DevStack makes a lot of configuration changes to your system and should not be run in your main development environment."
• "DevStack ... makes many choices that are not appropriate for production systems."

MicroStack is a polished installable package, which can be used for prototyping systems built with OpenStack, and even deployed to production:

• "MicroStack is OpenStack in a snap which means that all services and supporting libraries are together in a single package that can be easily installed, upgraded or removed."
• "You can use [MicroStack] for development, prototyping and testing, but it is also perfectly suitable for the network edge, IoT and appliances."

Answer 2

Devstack is probably the oldest OpenStack deployment tool. It was created to automatically spin up clouds in the OpenStack CI environment, and for OpenStack developers to run their own tests. By now, many use it for training, proof-of-concept and personal education.

A Devstack cloud is deployed by a huge shell script which takes the software directly from OpenStack's Git repos. While you can create a bleeding-edge cloud, you can also select stable versions of OpenStack.

I don't know Microstack but suppose it's a more polished product, with better user-friendliness. Devstack is a bit rough. On the other hand, from the description Microstack seems to be a bit shrink-wrapped with much less configuration options than Devstack.

One detail that has hit many users: Devstack doesn't care for persistence. After a reboot, the Devstack cloud is not in a usable state (though it can be put into a usable state if you know how). You will find plenty of questions regarding this on the old ask.openstack.org site. I don't know if Microstack is better.

Packstack is another deployment option. It only runs on Centos, and it requires at least 16GB RAM (about 8GB for Devstack), but it is easier to use and perhaps more stable than Devstack.

Answer 3

I started to configure Microstack from the beginning of this week. Though I faced some troubles I managed to configure it according to my requirements. What I can see it is more stable than Devstack. I have a very bad experience with Devstack though it is getting used by thousands of people. You can configure and restart Microstack as you want but have to spend some days :) Good Luck wit that!