This is a continuation of my private cloud project.

Why I changed the hardware

The old Ryzen PC did the job, but it had some drawbacks for a server that runs all the time:

• Cost: it used a lot of power, and that cost adds up every month.
• Efficiency: the new hardware is more efficient, so it does the same work while using less energy.
• Noise: the old PC was loud. The mini PC is much quieter, which matters when it sits in a room where I work or rest.

Those three reasons were enough to replace the old PC with a mini PC, the Prittec F9.

What happens to the old PC

The old Ryzen PC isn’t going away. I’ll use it sporadically as an alternative machine for tests and other tasks, instead of running it all the time.

🛠️ Setup Note: The old Ryzen PC is still useful as a spare machine, even if it’s not running the private cloud anymore.

New hardware

These are the specifications of the mini PC:

The Prittec F9 has a second M.2 slot, so the Cinder disk doesn’t have to share the main SSD with the operating system and the virtual machines.

Why keeping software updated matters

Updating isn’t only about new features. Each release stops getting security fixes after a while, so an old version keeps known vulnerabilities open. A private cloud is still a network service, so it needs the same care as any other server. Kolla-Ansible is also tied to specific OpenStack releases, so staying on a supported version keeps the deployment tools working. Small, regular updates are also easier than one large upgrade later. Besides the hardware upgrade, I also reinstalled the clusters, so they started fresh on supported software.

⚠️ Warning: Read the release notes before every update, because a new release can change defaults and break things that worked before.

Reinstalling the host

Since the hardware changed, I installed the host again following Preparing the host for OpenStack. The only change is the network interface name, which is now enp1s0. I updated the netplan configuration to use it, and then deployed OpenStack again with the same globals.yml values.

Cinder uses its own disk, so the configuration from Storage with Cinder and Nova restarts stays the same. The only step I had to repeat was adding resume_guests_state_on_host_boot to /etc/kolla/nova-compute/nova.conf after the deployment (see the Nova section).

🧠 Lesson learned: Kolla-Ansible can overwrite manual changes, so this setting needs extra care. See the Nova section.

Conclusion

The private cloud is running again on the new mini PC, with Ubuntu 24.04 and OpenStack 2025.1. It costs less to run, it’s more efficient, and it’s much quieter. Stay tuned for the next post!

🎯 Takeaway: Less power, less noise, and up-to-date software make this a better setup for the private cloud.