diff --git a/devstack/local.conf.compute b/devstack/local.conf.compute
index 24ec44b28..c7fb54279 100644
--- a/devstack/local.conf.compute
+++ b/devstack/local.conf.compute
@@ -45,3 +45,9 @@ LOGDAYS=2
 [[post-config|$NOVA_CONF]]
 [DEFAULT]
 compute_monitors=cpu.virt_driver
+[notifications]
+# Enable both versioned and unversioned notifications. Watcher only
+# uses versioned notifications but ceilometer uses unversioned. We
+# can change this to just versioned when ceilometer handles versioned
+# notifications from nova: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ceilometer/+bug/1665449
+notification_format=both
diff --git a/devstack/local.conf.controller b/devstack/local.conf.controller
index 51ac5c396..eb46f63d0 100644
--- a/devstack/local.conf.controller
+++ b/devstack/local.conf.controller
@@ -49,3 +49,9 @@ LOGDAYS=2
 [[post-config|$NOVA_CONF]]
 [DEFAULT]
 compute_monitors=cpu.virt_driver
+[notifications]
+# Enable both versioned and unversioned notifications. Watcher only
+# uses versioned notifications but ceilometer uses unversioned. We
+# can change this to just versioned when ceilometer handles versioned
+# notifications from nova: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ceilometer/+bug/1665449
+notification_format=both
diff --git a/devstack/override-defaults b/devstack/override-defaults
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7ae8f38a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/devstack/override-defaults
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+# Plug-in overrides
+# https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/latest/plugins.html#plugin-interface
+
+# Enable both versioned and unversioned notifications. Watcher only
+# uses versioned notifications but ceilometer uses unversioned. We
+# can change this to just versioned when ceilometer handles
+# versioned notifications from nova:
+# https://bugs.launchpad.net/ceilometer/+bug/1665449
+NOVA_NOTIFICATION_FORMAT=both
\ No newline at end of file