You can get a feel for MAAS without committing real hardware by using virtual machines. This article will show you how, focusing on the web UI. You should realise that this is not an exhaustive introduction, but it will set you up with a good MAAS test configuration.
Installation
We recommend testing MAAS with libvirt and its VM/QEMU hypervisor driver. The majority of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, support this tool. It is easy to install, and MAAS natively supports power management of VMs created in libvirt. We also recommend that you install the GUI-based virt-manager to ease configuration, but you can use libvirt from the command line.
MAAS also works in a Linux virtual machine running from Oracle’s VirtualBox. VirtualBox may be useful if you want to test MAAS from a Microsoft Windows or macOS environment.
Snaps are containerised software packages. To install MAAS from a snap simply enter the following:
$ sudo snap install maas --channel=2.8
After entering your password, the snap will download and install from the 2.8 channel. However, MAAS needs initialising before it’s ready to go.
We want to provide a more compact version for those who may be testing MAAS. To achieve this, we’re providing a separate snap, called maas-test-db, which provides a PostgreSQL database for use in testing and evaluating MAAS. The following instructions will help you take advantage of this test configuration.
Once it is installed, you can use the --help flag with maas init to get these instructions:
$ sudo maas init --help
usage: maas init [-h] {region+rack,region,rack} . . .
Initialise MAAS in the specified run mode.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
run modes:
{region+rack,region,rack}
region+rack Both region and rack controllers
region Region controller only
rack Rack controller only
When installing region or rack+region modes, MAAS needs a
PostgreSQL database to connect to.
If you want to set up PostgreSQL for a non-production deployment on
this machine, and configure it for use with MAAS, you can install
the maas-test-db snap before running 'maas init':
sudo snap install maas-test-db
sudo maas init region+rack --database-url maas-test-db:///
We’ll quickly walk through these instructions to confirm your understanding. First, install the maas-test-db snap:
sudo snap install maas-test-db
Note that this step installs a a running PostgreSQL and a MAAS-ready database instantiation. When it’s done, you can double check with a built in PostgreSQL shell:
$ maas-test-db.psql
psql (10.6)
Type "help" for help.
postgres=# \l
This will produce a list of databases, one of which will be maasdb, owned by maas. Note that this database is still empty because MAAS is not yet initialized and, hence, is not yet using the database. Once this is done, you can run the maas init command:
sudo maas init region+rack --database-uri maas-test-db:///
After running for a moment, the command will prompt you for a MAAS URL; typically, you can use the default:
MAAS URL [default=http://10.45.222.159:5240/MAAS]:
When you’ve entered a suitable URL, or accepted the default, the following prompt will appear:
MAAS has been set up.
If you want to configure external authentication or use
MAAS with Canonical RBAC, please run
sudo maas configauth
To create admins when not using external authentication, run
sudo maas createadmin
Let’s assume you just want a local testing user named admin:
$ sudo maas createadmin
Username: admin
Password: ******
Again: ******
Email: admin@example.com
Import SSH keys [] (lp:user-id or gh:user-id): gh:yourusername
At this point, MAAS is basically set up and running. You can confirm this with sudo maas status. If you need an API key, you can obtain this with sudo maas apikey --username yourusername. Now you will be able to test and evaluate MAAS by going to the URL you entered or accepted above and entering your admin username and password.
Next steps
Once you have completed this process, you can access the web UI from the default URL (above) and begin your configuration journey.