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EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

Install Guide

Software Version 0.9.9

Document Version 0.4

© Thinsy Corporation

Introduction
The EnSpeed VM Software provides the capability to run unmodified guest OSes such as Windows, in a cluster of Physical Machines (VMM Servers). The following Enterprise grade features are provided, all on Physical Machines with Direct Attached Storage, i.e. no SAN or NAS hardware is required.

• High Availability Backup for VMs to failover to a secondary VMM, should the primary VMM server fail – all without SAN or NAS external storage.
• Live Migration of powered up VMs from the primary VMM server to the backup VMM server.
• VM Snapshots -- enables full backups, without powering off the VM
• Daily Incremental backup of VMs – without powering off the VM.

The EnSpeed VM Family of software consists of the EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) server and EnSpeed VM Orchestrator.

The EnSpeed VMM server is a Xen based Virtualization server that is installed on bare hardware, i.e. it does not require a hosting OS.

The EnSpeed VM Orchestrator is a web server hosted application accessible using a standard web browser with java. It provides the following functionality:

• Create and load Virtual Machines onto EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor Servers. The Virtual Machines are created using Virtual Appliance Images stored in the Orchestrator’s Virtual Appliance Library
• Power On/Off of Virtual Machines loaded onto the EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor Servers.
• Open a remote console to the Virtual Machine within a web browser window.
• Take a snapshot of a running VM, in order to download a full backup. This is done without powering off the VM.
• Download incremental backup images of the VM

The Orchestrator contains the following major components:

• A database of physical machines (the PhysicalMachine database) running Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) server software
• A Virtual Appliance Library. Each Virtual Appliance is a collection of Virtual Disk files, and an xml file describing the Virtual Machine.
• A database of virtual machines (the VirtualMachine database) created and loaded onto one or more of the Physical Machines in the PhysicalMachine database
  

Hardware and Software Requirements
EnSpeed Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) Server software is delivered as a DVD (or downloadable ISO of the same). It is installed on bare hardware, i.e. it does not require a host Operating System to be installed beforehand.

EnSpeed VMM Server software requires CPUs with Intel VT technology or AMD Pacifica Virtualization technology.

Installation Steps Overview
The EnSpeed VMM Server Software installer goes through the following steps in its installation process.

• Boot Menu
• Disk Partitioning Screen
• Time zone Selection
• Root Password entry
• Reboot after installation
• Bootup screen after reboot is complete

Installation Step 3: Time Zone Selection

SCREEN CAPTURE 3

Click here to view Enlarged Image

• Login as root using the root password you selected earlier
• Type in the following command
  
  1. # cat > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
  2. DEVICE=eth0
  3. ONBOOT=yes
  4. BOOTPROTO=static
  5. IPADDR=192.168.1.227
  6. NETMASK=255.255.255.0
• Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network and add a line such as “GATEWAY=192.168.1.1” to configure the default gateway/router for the VMM Server
• Edit the file /etc/resolv.conf and add a line such as “nameserver 192.168.1.254”. This indicates that the DNS server for this VMM Server is at IP Address 192.168.1.254.
• Bring down and then bring up the eth0 interface by typing in the following commands
  
  1. # ifdown eth0
  
  
  2. # ifup eth0
• Ping the address from elsewhere to ensure that the above worked.
  

At this point, if you browse to the URL where the Webmin is present, you will be presented with the following screen:

SCREEN CAPTURE 7

Click here to view Enlarged Image

• Edit the file /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp using a text editor
• Add a line of the following format to the file. The line includes braces:
  
  1. (network-script 'network-bridge bridge=xenbr0 netdev=eth3')
  
  

In the above line, note that the bridge=xenbr0 should not be changed. The netdev=eth3 should be changed to point to the Ethernet interface of your choice.

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