diff --git a/functions b/functions
index 6f2164a777..faa6b761ab 100644
--- a/functions
+++ b/functions
@@ -407,6 +407,20 @@ EOF
     return $rval
 }
 
+function wait_for_compute {
+    local timeout=$1
+    time_start "wait_for_service"
+    timeout $timeout bash -x <<EOF || rval=$?
+        ID=""
+        while [[ "\$ID" == "" ]]; do
+            sleep 1
+            ID=\$(openstack --os-cloud devstack-admin --os-region "$REGION_NAME" compute service list --host `hostname` --service nova-compute -c ID -f value)
+        done
+EOF
+    time_stop "wait_for_service"
+    return $rval
+}
+
 
 # ping check
 # Uses globals ``ENABLED_SERVICES``, ``TOP_DIR``, ``MULTI_HOST``, ``PRIVATE_NETWORK``
diff --git a/lib/nova b/lib/nova
index 3fa5de67eb..5a8dc371f3 100644
--- a/lib/nova
+++ b/lib/nova
@@ -795,6 +795,13 @@ function start_nova_compute {
         fi
         run_process n-cpu "$NOVA_BIN_DIR/nova-compute --config-file $compute_cell_conf"
     fi
+    # NOTE(sdague): with cells v2 all the compute services must be up
+    # and checked into the database before discover_hosts is run. This
+    # happens in all in one installs by accident, because > 30 seconds
+    # happen between here and the script ending. However, in multinode
+    # tests this can very often not be the case. So ensure that the
+    # compute is up before we move on.
+    wait_for_compute 60
 
     export PATH=$old_path
 }