Run a Full OpenStack Cloud on Your Mac — No Dedicated Server Required

For years, “trying OpenStack” meant either renting servers or fighting an all-in-one VM that barely fit on a laptop. I wanted something different: a realistic, production-like cloud lab running entirely on an Apple Silicon Mac — same APIs, same workflows, same Terraform code I’d use in production.

The result is now open source: openstack-dev-platform.

🎯 What you get

A complete OpenStack environment running inside a single Multipass ARM64 VM on your Mac:

• ✅ OpenStack 2026.1 deployed via Devstack
• ✅ OVN software-defined networking with real floating IPs on your local network
• ✅ Octavia load balancer (OVN driver — no Amphora VMs needed)
• ✅ Skyline, the modern Vue.js dashboard (alongside Horizon)
• ✅ Infrastructure-as-Code with two Terraform workloads (network + instances)
• ✅ CentOS 9 Stream VMs accessible via SSH and the Cockpit web console
• ✅ Every ARM64-specific quirk documented and fixed
• ✅ Multi-tenancy patterns — from isolated projects to a full reseller portal architecture

🧩 The stack

The lab runs on a Mac Studio M1 Pro with 4 vCPU / 12 GB RAM / 200 GB disk allocated to the VM.

🧠 The ARM64 part nobody warns you about

The trickiest part wasn’t OpenStack itself — it was getting it to behave on Apple Silicon. The repository documents each fix in detail, but here’s the short list:

• Nova CPU model — the default cortex-a15 is 32-bit and triggers No PCI buses available on every VM boot. Switch to cortex-a57.
• OVN agent Python path — the agent uses the system Python and fails with ModuleNotFoundError: neutron. Patch $PYTHON to the venv path.
• br-ex bridge — Devstack won’t attach an interface it doesn’t own. Dedicate enp0s2 to OVS, leave enp0s1 for management, and make the attachment permanent with a systemd service.
• Cloud-init metadata — the OVN metadata proxy drops the X-Instance-ID header, so cloud images never get their SSH keys. Solution: config_drive = true in Terraform.
• Image properties — without hw_machine_type=virt, hw_firmware_type=uefi, and hw_disk_bus=virtio, ARM64 guests boot into nothing.

Each fix is one line. Finding them took days.

🚀 Why I built it

I wanted a sandbox where I could:

• Learn OpenStack internals by actually breaking and fixing things
• Test Terraform modules against the real OpenStack provider before pushing to production
• Validate cloud-init configurations end-to-end
• Experiment with Neutron + OVN networking without a homelab full of switches
• Understand how private clouds work before touching one in production

Everything you’d typically need a rack of servers for — running quietly on a Mac.

🔗 Repository

👉 github.com/colussim/openstack-dev-platform

The README is a full step-by-step guide: Multipass setup, Devstack local.conf, OVN configuration, image upload, both Terraform workloads, and every ARM64 fix.