OpenStack offers two types of console support, VNC support and SPICE. The VNC protocol is fairly limited, lacking support for multiple monitors, bi-directional audio, reliable cut+paste, video streaming and more. SPICE is a new protocol which aims to address all the limitations in VNC, to provide good remote desktop support. The Controller will have both the proxy for vnc and for spice html5 running. The nova-spicehtml5proxy service communicates directly with the hypervisor process using SPICE. OpenStack's Dashboard uses a SPICE HTML5 widget in its console tab to communicate with the nova-spicehtml5proxy service. Since both proxies are running, the Dashboard will automatically attempt to connect to whichever console is provided by the compute node. Another way to access the spice console is from the controller, run the following command: nova get-spice-console myinstance spice-html5 This will give you an URL which will directly give you access to the console (instead of from Horizon). The enable or disable VNC/SPICE, on the compute node, modify /etc/nova/nova.conf. Options for configuring SPICE as the console for OpenStack Compute can be found below. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Configuration option=Default value (Type) Description agent_enabled=True (BoolOpt)enable spice guest agent support enabled=False (BoolOpt)enable spice related features html5proxy_base_url=http://127.0.0.1:6080/spice_auto.html (StrOpt)location of spice html5 console proxy, in the form "http://127.0.0.1:6080/spice_auto.html" keymap=en-us (StrOpt)keymap for spice server_listen=127.0.0.1 (StrOpt)IP address on which instance spice server should listen server_proxyclient_address=127.0.0.1 (StrOpt)the address to which proxy clients (like nova-spicehtml5proxy) should connect --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Combinations/behaviour from Compute: 1. VNC will be provided vnc_enabled=True enabled=True agent_enabled=True 2. SPICE will be provided vnc_enabled=False enabled=True agent_enabled=True 3. VNC will be provided vnc_enabled=True enabled=False agent_enabled=False 4. No console will be provided vnc_enabled=False enabled=False agent_enabled=False After nova.conf is changed on the compute node, restart nova-compute service. If an instance was running beforehand, it will be necessary to restart (reboot, soft or hard) the instance to get the new console.