Objectives

After completing this section, students should be able to describe how to install Red Hat Virtualization Host (RHV-H).

Deploying Red Hat Virtualization

Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) can be deployed as a self-hosted engine, or as a standalone Red Hat Virtualization Manager (RHV-M). Red Hat Virtualization can also be deployed as hyper-converged with Red Hat Gluster Storage using the Red Hat Hyper-converged Infrastructure for Virtualization (RHHI-V) product, which is another self-hosted option. RHHI-V is discussed later in this course. Because the self-hosted engine is Red Hat's recommended deployment option, the self-hosted deployment is used in this course.

Choosing a deployment option is one of multiple planning and preparation steps that are required before installing RHV components. The Planning and Prerequisites Guide, introduced earlier in this course, covers the prerequisites in detail.

Figure 2.1: RHV Infrastructure Deployment Options

In a standalone deployment, the Manager runs on a physical server, or a virtual machine hosted in a separate virtualization environment. A standalone Manager is easier to deploy and manage, but requires an additional physical server. The Manager is only highly available when managed externally with a product such as Red Hat’s High Availability Add-On.

In a self-hosted deployment, the Manager runs as a virtual machine on self-hosted engine nodes (specialized hosts) in the same environment it manages. A self-hosted engine environment requires one less physical server, but requires more administrative overhead to deploy and manage. The Manager is highly available without external HA management.

The Pre-built Classroom RHV Deployment

This course teaches the recommended self-hosted deployment, pre-installed on an engine host using the web console method. The classroom RHV deployment includes:

Referring to the Documentation

Multiple RHV 4.3 installation guides are available on the Documentation page at the Red Hat Customer Portal, and are also provided with this course. These guides cover the deployment options, high availability requirements, local and remote database options, initial data storage service integration, and the calculated hardware requirements for RHV hosts and the workloads they will manage. Refer to the online documents for current procedures and recommendations.

Describing Red Hat Virtualization Hosts

Hosts, also known as hypervisors, are the physical servers on which virtual machines run. Red Hat Virtualization hosts use the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology. RHV supports two types of host: Red Hat Virtualization Host (RHV-H) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The two host types can be mixed in your RHV environment, depending on your requirements.

RHV-H is a minimal version of the RHEL operating system, containing only the packages needed to act as a hypervisor and integrate with the RHV Manager. RHV-H includes a web console with extensions specific to Red Hat Virtualization, including virtual machine monitoring tools and a GUI installer for the self-hosted engine.

RHV hosts can also be installed using a normal RHEL distribution and adding the required Red Hat Virtualization repository packages and modules. RHEL hosts are highly customizable, so this host type may be preferable if, for example, your hosts require a specific file system layout.

Hosts that can run the Manager virtual machine are referred to as self-hosted engine nodes. At least two self-hosted engine nodes are required to support the high availability feature for the Manager engine. Hosts that service virtual machine guests are referred to as guest hosts or Virt Service hosts. Red Hat recommends that you install at least two guest hosts in your RHV environment, which is the minimum required to enable the migration and high availability features.

The Virtual Desktop and Server Manager (VDSM) is a RHV host service and API for communication between host nodes and the RHV Manager. The service is responsible for monitoring the memory, storage, and networks and to create, migrate, and destroy virtual machines.

System Requirements

Host hardware must meet the following requirements before installing Red Hat Virtualization Host (RHV-H). The requirements listed here are for Red Hat Virtualization 4.3.

Hardware certification for Red Hat Virtualization Host is essentially the same as the hardware certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. See the Knowledgebase article "Does Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization also have hardware certification?".

RHV-H Hardware Requirements

RHV-H and RHEL use the kernel-based KVM hypervisor, which requires hardware virtualization extensions. Systems supporting the Intel 64 or AMD64 (x86-64) architecture must have 64-bit native CPUs and support the Intel VT-x or AMD-V virtualization extensions and the No eXecute (NX) flag. IBM POWER8 architecture systems are also supported.

Hosts must have at least 2 GB of RAM to be installed, and supports up to 4 TB of RAM. The amount of RAM required varies depending on the guest virtual machines operating system, applications and level of activity. KVM can over-commit physical RAM for virtual machines, allowing guests to be provision with greater memory allocations than is physically present. Sufficient swap space must be configured to provide sufficient virtual memory to permit such allocations. Memory over-commit is valid when guests do not operate at full capacity at once, but must be architected accurately.

RHV-H Storage Requirements

Hosts require storage to store configuration, logs, kernel dumps, and for use as swap space. The minimum storage requirements of RHV-H is 55 GB. However, Red Hat recommends using the default allocations, which use more storage space. If you are also installing the RHV-M appliance for self-hosted engine installation, then /var/tmp must be at least 5 GB.

RHV-H Network Requirements

Each host should have a minimum of one network interface card (NIC) with a bandwidth of at least 1 Gbps. Higher bandwidth NICs, such as 10 or 40 Gbps, are recommended. It is also recommended to use at two or more network interface cards, one dedicated to management traffic, and one or more additional NICs supporting network-intensive activities such as virtual machine migration and data domain storage access. Network operation performance will be affected by the bandwidth available.

RHV hosts must have a fully qualified domain name and correctly configured forward and reverse DNS name resolution that is shared with all other RHV host and the RHV Manager. DNS and NTP services for the RHV environment must be hosted outside the RHV environment, not on any host or guest of Red Hat Virtualization.

RHV-H automatically configures its local firewall to allow connections to required network services.

Installing Red Hat Virtualization Host

The RHV-H software is provided as an ISO image from the Red Hat Customer Portal at (https://access.redhat.com/). After locating the product using the Downloads link, the Get Started tab explains the installation requirements and provides the ISO file. The ISO file can be used to create bootable media to install the operating system.

RHV-H uses the same Anaconda installer as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can install RHV-H interactively, or you can perform a Kickstart-based automatic installation. This section focuses on the manual installation process.

The installer displays a graphical interface when started in manual interactive mode. The first screen asks to select the installation language, defaulting to English (United States). Select the preferred language and click the Continue button.

The main screen displays several configuration options in a "hub-and-spoke" model. You can select options in any order to configure aspects of the installation, then return to the main screen to configure others. Options that are grayed may require other configurations to be completed first, such as configuring the network before an installation will allow access to an installation server to choose software to install, when installing by network.

Figure 2.2: RHV-H Anaconda Installer Main Screen

The installation begins when the Begin Installation button is selected, and progress bar screen displays. The screen displays two additional configuration items:

Click Reboot to complete the installation. Log into the console as root using the password set during installation. The node displays the current operating status and the web console URL.

Red Hat Virtualization Host 4.3.0 (el7.6)
Kernel 3.10.0-957.el7.x86_64 on an x86_64

rhvh login: root
Password: 

  node status: OK
  See `nodectl check` for more information

Admin Console: https://172.25.250.10:9090

[root@rhvh ~]# 

Managing Red Hat Virtualization Host

Red Hat Virtualization Host 4.3 includes a web console for host administration and for managing the host's VMs from a remote browser.

The RHV Administration Portal, discussed later in this course, and the RHV-H host's web console are two of the available interfaces for managing a RHV-H host. The web console can display a variety of information including the host's health status, self-hosted engine status, virtual machines, and virtual machine statistics.

Some other administrative operations that can be performed through the web console on a Red Hat Virtualization Host includes:

The web console is accessed through a HTTPS connection to port 9090 on the Red Hat Virtualization Host. The web console URL is displayed when you log in to the host's physical console as root.

To log in to web console, use the root user and password set when you installed the host.

Figure 2.3: Virtualization Dashboard on a Red Hat Virtualization Host

Registering the Host

After a manual installation of a RHV-H host, the host must be register to have access to current software updates. Registration can be accomplished through the web console as the root user.