orca¶

OpenStack Rich Command-line Alternative — a unified, batteries-included CLI for managing OpenStack cloud infrastructure.

What is orca?¶

orca is a drop-in alternative to python-openstackclient (OSC). It manages virtual machines, networks, load balancers, secrets, Kubernetes clusters, metrics, DNS, object storage, identity, and more through one consistent interface — with extras OSC doesn't have.

100 % OSC parity on the 10 core services (635/635 verbs). If you have OSC muscle memory, alias openstack=orca and you're done. See Coming from OSC for the handful of differences and orca-exclusive commands.

Highlights¶

80+ top-level command groups covering Keystone, Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Swift, Heat, Designate, Barbican, Placement, Octavia, Magnum, Manila, Gnocchi, Aodh, CloudKitty, Freezer, Federation, and admin top-levels (block-storage, object-store, orchestration, software, coe, …).
635/635 OSC verbs answered word-for-word on the 10 core services (99,4 % path-exact + 4 documented Click leaf-vs-group divergences).
Typed service layer — every resource flows through a *Service class with TypedDict models, catching field-name typos at mypy time.
Rich terminal output — coloured tables, trees, progress bars (Rich).
Multi-account profiles — named profiles, clouds.yaml and OS_* env var support, transparent token caching.
Shell auto-completion — Bash, Zsh, Fish, with per-profile resource caching for IDs and names.
Orca-exclusive commands — overview, find, audit, cleanup, watch, doctor, diff, clone, bulk, port-forward, inspect, tree, topology, … see Coming from OSC.

Supported services¶

Service	Top-level command(s)	Backend
Compute	`server`, `flavor`, `keypair`, `aggregate`, `hypervisor`, `availability-zone`, `compute-service`, `server-group`, `event`, `usage`, `console`	Nova
Image	`image`	Glance
Block Storage	`volume`, `block-storage`, `backup`	Cinder, Freezer
Object Storage	`container`, `object`, `object-store`	Swift
Network	`network`, `port`, `router`, `subnet`, `floating-ip`, `security-group`, `qos`, `subnet-pool`, `trunk`, `address-group`, `address-scope`, `ip-availability`, `local-ip`, `extension`	Neutron
Load Balancer	`loadbalancer`	Octavia
DNS	`zone`, `recordset`, `tld`, `ptr`, `tsigkey`	Designate
Orchestration	`stack`, `orchestration`, `software`	Heat
Clusters	`cluster`, `coe`	Magnum
Shared File Systems	`share`	Manila
Metrics & Alarms	`metric`, `alarm`	Gnocchi, Aodh
Rating	`rating`	CloudKitty
Placement	`placement`, `resource`, `trait`, `allocation`	Placement
Secrets	`secret`, `acl`, `ca`	Barbican
Identity	`user`, `project`, `domain`, `role`, `group`, `policy`, `credential`, `application-credential`, `access-rule`, `trust`, `token`, `auth`, `endpoint`, `endpoint-group`, `region`, `service`, `limit`, `registered-limit`, `versions`	Keystone
Federation	`identity-provider`, `federation-protocol`, `mapping`, `service-provider`	Keystone
Utilities	`ip`, `limits`, `quota`, `catalog`, `completion`	—
Orca-exclusive	`overview`, `find`, `audit`, `cleanup`, `watch`, `doctor`, `export`, `profile`, `setup`	—

Quick start¶

pip install orca-openstackclient
orca setup           # interactive credential setup
orca server list     # list your VMs

If you're coming from OSC, jump to Coming from OSC for a one-page tour of the differences and the orca-exclusive commands.

For full installation, profile management, and shell completion setup, see Getting Started. For per-command documentation generated directly from the running CLI, see the Command Reference.