Objectives

After completing this section, you should be able to explain the purpose of a data center for organizing hosts, and create a new data center.

Introduction to Data Centers

The top-level organizational object in Red Hat Virtualization is the data center. A data center contains all the physical and logical resources in a single, managed, virtual environment; it is a collection of resources that includes clusters, hosts, logical networks, and storage domains.

A single Red Hat Virtualization data center is a self-contained virtualization environment. It may consist of:

Figure 3.1: Data centers

A data center can be used to isolate resources belonging to an organization or group from other organizations or groups that normally would not have access to those resources. This feature allows you to restrict access to data and servers to a specific user group.

One characteristic of a Red Hat Virtualization data center is that all hosts and clusters in that data center share the same storage and must be able to access that storage. Therefore, if some hosts cannot or should not be configured to access certain storage resources, then those hosts need to be in clusters in a separate Red Hat Virtualization data center.

A data center named Default is created automatically. Additional data centers can be created using the Administration Portal.

Creating a New Data Center

The following procedure details how to create a new data center using the Administration Portal while logged in as the admin user. This procedure creates a data center that does not yet have any associated resources, such as storage domains or clusters. Resources can be associated with the data center later.

Click the Compute tab, then the Data Centers tab to display the options available to manage data centers. Initially, the Default data center is empty and has no resources assigned. Resources like storage and hosts can be assigned to the data center after you create it.

Figure 3.2: Available data centers

Click New to create a new data center. In the pop-up window New Data Center, enter the name you want to use for the data center in the Name field.

Figure 3.3: Data center's name

Use Storage Type menu to select the storage type to use in the new data center.

There are two options available: Shared and Local. In most cases, you should select Shared, which allows the data center to contain multiple clusters and hosts that can run virtual machines. If you select Local, the data center is restricted to having a single cluster consisting of exactly one host, but the data center's storage may be provided by that host's local file system.

Select the Red Hat Virtualization Compatibility Version supported by the data center. For a new data center, select the latest version available.

When Red Hat Virtualization is upgraded to a new version, existing data centers, clusters, and hosts can still be configured to use an older product protocol. Existing hosts and clusters assigned to the data center must be able to support the selected compatibility version. This ensures that all data center clusters support a particular set of Red Hat Virtualization features.

Red Hat Virtualization supports quotas that you may use to limit usage of memory, CPU, and storage resources. A data center can be configured to use these quota settings using the Quota Mode menu. There are three options available:

Like most data center settings, this selection can be changed after you create the data center. When done, click the OK button. A new pop-up window, titled Data Center - Guide Me displays.

Figure 3.4: Data center's quota mode

The Data Center - Guide Me wizard provides an easy way to configure the other resources that must be assigned to the data center in order for it to be useful. This resources include hosts that run virtual machines, clusters to organize those hosts, and storage domains for virtual machine disks and installation media. Each button opens up a new wizard to configure each resource.

If you are setting up a new data center, then those resources might not yet be configured. In that case, click the Configure Later button to complete configuration of the data center later.

Figure 3.5: Data center resource configuration wizard

When first created, your new data center's status is Uninitialized. This status changes to Up when the resources are assigned to the data center and Red Hat Virtualization confirms that the data center can use them.

Figure 3.6: Uninitialized status