FluidVM installation
From The FluidVM Wiki
Contents |
Overview of the installation process
There are 2 different ways to install FluidVM.
- If you use the PXE booting method, there is only one physical server on which you need to install FluidVM. This involves the installation of a base operating system and the actual installation of the FluidVM Management server.
- If you choose not to use FluidVM's PXE booting method for some reason, then you will need to install the FluidVM Management server and then go on and install a base operating system on each compute node and then install the FluidVM Agent Services on to each of them as well.
Supported base operating systems
| Software Component | Base OS Version | Package groups needed |
|---|---|---|
| FluidVM Management Server | CentOS 5.3 32-bit OS | Clustering and Storage Clustering |
| FluidVM OpenVZ Agent Services | CentOS 5.3 32-bit or 64-bit OS | Clustering and Storage Clustering |
| FluidVM Xen Agent Services | CentOS 5.3 32-bit or 64-bit OS | Clustering, Storage Clustering and Virtualization |
Only the package groups mentioned in the tables are needed, you need to de-select other package groups that are selected by default!
See also: Supported base operating systems
Installing the FluidVM Management Server
The base operating system needs to be installed as described above. There is no special partitioning scheme for the FluidVM Management server, but you'll need to keep in mind that the "/" partition is used to store Xen and OpenVZ OS templates. If you are in the practice of allocating as little space for "/" as possible, allow a few GB extra so that you can fit as many OS templates as you want. These templates are exported automatically to all compute nodes where they are available during virtual server creation.
IMPORTANT: You will need to disable SELinux and the firewall and reboot the server for these changes to take effect! When you boot CentOS for the first time, you will be presented with the setup menu. If you miss it, you can invoke is by typing "setup" as root.
Once the base OS installation and setup is complete, you'll need to download the FluidVM Management server tar ball and copy it to the physical machine dedicated for this purpose. As root, untar the tar ball and run the installation script you'll find in the resulting directory:
./install.py
The installation is fully automatic and will ask you for confirmation only once in the beginning. You will need an Internet connection during installation, but it is not necessary once the installation is complete. The installer does not contact K7 Computing in any way, it uses the Internet connection to install any dependencies via YUM.
Reboot the server and remember to update FluidVM by running "update_fluidvm.py" as ROOT user. This will update FluidVM and restart the services and then FluidVM will be up and running.
Installing FluidVM Services on the Compute Nodes (optional)
If you do not choose to use the PXE/network booting method for some reason, you can manually install the base OS on all compute nodes and then install the FluidVM Agent Services on to them. You can then "Add" these compute nodes manually via the FluidVM browser based interface.
Partitioning: FluidVM uses LVM to store your virtual machines on local storage present on compute nodes. Since LVM setup can be difficult for admins new to Linux, all you need to do is to create a special partition called "/bk" and the FluidVM Agent Services installer will take care of converting that into LVM with enough snapshotting space for you automatically.
| Partition | Space to allocate |
|---|---|
| "/" | Disk size of your largest VM + 20 GB |
| swap | double the size of your RAM |
| "/bk" | rest of the space on device |
IMPORTANT: You will need to disable SELinux and the firewall and reboot the server for these changes to take effect! When you boot CentOS for the first time, you will be presented with the setup menu. If you miss it, you can invoke is by typing "setup" as root.
Once the base OS installation and setup is complete, you'll need to download the FluidVM Xen or OpenVZ services tar ball and copy it to the physical machine dedicated for this purpose. As root, untar the tar ball and run the installation script you'll find in the resulting directory:
./install.py
The installation is fully automatic and will ask you for confirmation only once in the beginning. You will need an Internet connection during installation, but it is not necessary once the installation is complete. The installer does not contact K7 Computing in any way, it uses the Internet connection to install any dependencies via YUM. You will be finally asked to enter a password that the management server will use to communicate securely with the compute node. When you manually add this compute node to the FluidVM cluster via the browser based GUI, you will be asked for this password.
