openstack-nova-api-kolla

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for openstack-nova-api-kolla

Minimal OpenStack Compute (Nova) image group compatible with the upstream openstack.kolla/nova-* images.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-api-kolla:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Minimal, distroless OpenStack Compute (Nova) images compatible with the upstream openstack.kolla/nova image set.

This is an image group. The published variants mirror the upstream kolla image layout one-to-one:

All of them follow the kolla startup contract: /usr/local/bin/kolla_start reads /var/lib/kolla/config_files/config.json, runs kolla_set_configs, then dispatches to the configured command. They are drop-in replacements for the matching kolla/nova-* images when consumed by kolla-ansible or kayobe.

nova-libvirt is the odd one out: it ships no nova binary and runs as root (libvirtd needs it), dispatching to kolla_nova_libvirt_start. The others run the release-scoped Nova venv — /var/lib/kolla/venv/bin is on PATH, the same shape as the openstack-keystone-kolla and openstack-glance-api-kolla images. As upstream, nova-api and nova-ssh run as root, while nova-conductor, nova-scheduler, nova-novncproxy and nova-compute run as the nova user (uid 42436). nova is a member of the kolla group, which the kolla sudoers rules require for kolla_set_configs, and of the qemu group.

nova-compute does not include some optional tools that the upstream image bundles: libguestfs (file injection and image inspection), rtslib-fb and targetcli (LIO iSCSI target), tpm2-tools and pmdk-tools. libosinfo (guest OS detection) is included from the 2026.2 stream onward. Nova features that depend on these tools are unavailable.

The remaining upstream kolla nova images (nova-serialproxy, nova-spicehtml5proxy) are not published yet. nova-scheduler and nova-novncproxy are not published for the 2025.1 stream.

OpenStack release streams

Each image stream tracks the OpenStack release cycle (e.g. 2026.1 Gazpacho) and corresponds to the openstack-nova-<stream> apk package group, pinning to the libvirt and QEMU versions the upstream Kolla image installs at that release.

Getting Started

The images are configured entirely through kolla's config.json mechanism: mount your rendered configuration under /var/lib/kolla/config_files/ and set KOLLA_CONFIG_STRATEGY to COPY_ONCE (copy at first start) or COPY_ALWAYS (copy on every start). On boot, kolla_set_configs copies each entry to its destination with the requested ownership and permissions, then hands off to the service command.

In a real deployment you drive this through kolla-ansible, pointing each image at the Chainguard build:

# kolla-ansible globals.yml / group_vars
nova_api_image_full:       "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-api-kolla:2026.1"
nova_compute_image_full:   "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-compute-kolla:2026.1"
nova_conductor_image_full: "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-conductor-kolla:2026.1"
nova_libvirt_image_full:   "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-libvirt-kolla:2026.1"
nova_ssh_image_full:       "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-ssh-kolla:2026.1"
nova_scheduler_image_full:  "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-scheduler-kolla:2026.1"
nova_novncproxy_image_full: "cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/openstack-nova-novncproxy-kolla:2026.1"

kolla-ansible's nova-cell role deploys nova-compute and nova-libvirt together on every compute host: the two containers share the host's /run/libvirt/ and /var/log/kolla/libvirt/, so nova-compute connects to libvirtd via qemu+unix:///system and per-VM console logs land under /var/log/kolla/libvirt/qemu/.

There are no upstream openstack-helm charts for these images — kolla-ansible and kayobe deploy them as host-level containers. Consumers needing Kubernetes-native virtualization should look at projects like KubeVirt instead.

Configuration

Supply Nova configuration via the config.json payload described above: the usual nova.conf for the service images, plus libvirtd.conf / qemu.conf (and optional TLS material under /etc/pki/libvirt/) for nova-libvirt. See the upstream kolla-ansible nova-cell role for canonical examples of the rendered configuration, the Nova configuration reference for the service options, and the libvirtd configuration reference for the hypervisor sidecar.

Documentation and Resources

• OpenStack Nova documentation
• Nova libvirt driver guide
• libvirt project documentation
• kolla-ansible nova-cell role
• Upstream Kolla nova Dockerfiles

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.