Installing and configuring a KVM
by Uday R. Sawant, William Leemans, Jonathan Hobson, Oliver Pelz
Linux: Powerful Server Administration
- Linux: Powerful Server Administration
- Table of Contents
- Linux: Powerful Server Administration
- Linux: Powerful Server Administration
- Credits
- Preface
- 1. Module 1
- 1. Managing Users and Groups
- 2. Networking
- Introduction
- Connecting to a network with a static IP
- Installing the DHCP server
- Installing the DNS server
- Hiding behind the proxy with squid
- Being on time with NTP
- Discussing load balancing with HAProxy
- Tuning the TCP stack
- Troubleshooting network connectivity
- Securing remote access with OpenVPN
- Securing a network with uncomplicated firewall
- Securing against brute force attacks
- Discussing Ubuntu security best practices
- 3. Working with Web Servers
- Introduction
- Installing and configuring the Apache web server
- Serving dynamic contents with PHP
- Hosting multiple websites with a virtual domain
- Securing web traffic with HTTPS
- Installing Nginx with PHP_FPM
- Setting Nginx as a reverse proxy
- Load balancing with Nginx
- Setting HTTPs on Nginx
- Benchmarking and performance tuning of Apache
- Securing the web server
- Troubleshooting the web server
- 4. Working with Mail Servers
- 5. Handling Databases
- Introduction
- Installing relational databases with MySQL
- Storing and retrieving data with MySQL
- Importing and exporting bulk data
- Adding users and assigning access rights
- Installing web access for MySQL
- Setting backups
- Optimizing MySQL performance – queries
- Optimizing MySQL performance – configuration
- Creating MySQL replicas for scaling and high availability
- Troubleshooting MySQL
- Installing MongoDB
- Storing and retrieving data with MongoDB
- 6. Network Storage
- 7. Cloud Computing
- 8. Working with Containers
- Introduction
- Installing LXD, the Linux container daemon
- Deploying your first container with LXD
- Managing LXD containers
- Managing LXD containers – advanced options
- Setting resource limits on LXD containers
- Networking with LXD
- Installing Docker
- Starting and managing Docker containers
- Creating images with a Dockerfile
- Understanding Docker volumes
- Deploying WordPress using a Docker network
- Monitoring Docker containers
- Securing Docker containers
- 9. Streaming with Ampache
- 10. Communication Server with XMPP
- 11. Git Hosting
- Introduction
- Installing Git
- Creating a local repository with Git CLI
- Storing file revisions with Git commit
- Synchronizing the repository with a remote server
- Receiving updates with Git pull
- Creating repository clones
- Installing GitLab, your own Git hosting
- Adding users to the GitLab server
- Creating a repository with GitLab
- Automating common tasks with Git hooks
- 12. Collaboration Tools
- 13. Performance Monitoring
- 14. Centralized Authentication Service
- 2. Module 2
- 1. Installing CentOS
- Introduction
- Downloading CentOS and confirming the checksum on Windows or OS X
- Creating USB installation media on Windows or OS X
- Performing an installation of CentOS using the graphical installer
- Running a netinstall over HTTP
- Installing CentOS 7 using a kickstart file
- Getting started and customising the boot loader
- Troubleshooting the system in rescue mode
- Updating the installation and enhancing the minimal install with additional administration and development tools
- 2. Configuring the System
- Introduction
- Navigating text files with less
- Introduction to Vim
- Speaking the right language
- Synchronizing the system clock with NTP and the chrony suite
- Setting your hostname and resolving the network
- Building a static network connection
- Becoming a superuser
- Customizing your system banners and messages
- Priming the kernel
- 3. Managing the System
- Introduction
- Knowing and managing your background services
- Troubleshooting background services
- Tracking system resources with journald
- Configuring journald to make it persistent
- Managing users and their groups
- Scheduling tasks with cron
- Synchronizing files and doing more with rsync
- Maintaining backups and taking snapshots
- Monitoring important server infrastructure
- Taking control with GIT and Subversion
- 4. Managing Packages with YUM
- 5. Administering the Filesystem
- 6. Providing Security
- 7. Building a Network
- 8. Working with FTP
- 9. Working with Domains
- 10. Working with Databases
- 11. Providing Mail Services
- 12. Providing Web Services
- 13. Operating System-Level Virtualization
- 14. Working with SELinux
- 15. Monitoring IT Infrastructure
- 1. Installing CentOS
- 3. Module 3
- 1. Working with KVM Guests
- 2. Deploying RHEL "En Masse"
- 3. Configuring Your Network
- 4. Configuring Your New System
- 5. Using SELinux
- 6. Orchestrating with Ansible
- 7. Puppet Configuration Management
- 8. Yum and Repositories
- 9. Securing RHEL 7
- 10. Monitoring and Performance Tuning
- Bibliography
- Index
This recipe covers the installing of virtualization tools and packages on RHEL 7.
By default, a RHEL 7 system doesn't come with a KVM or libvirt preinstalled. This can be installed in three ways:
- Through the graphical setup during the system's setup
- Via a kickstart installation
- Through a manual installation from the command line
For this recipe, you should know how to install packages using yum, and your system should be configured to have access to the default RHEL 7 repository (refer to Chapter 8, Yum and Repositories, for more information), which is required for the packages that we will use.
Alternatively, you could install packages from the installation media using rpm, but you'll need to figure out the dependencies yourself.
Check the dependencies of an rpm using the following command:
~]# rpm -qpR <rpm file>
This will output a list of binaries, libraries, and files that you need installed prior to installing this package.
Check which package contains these files through this command:
~]# rpm -qlp <rpm package>
As you can imagine, this is a tedious job and can take quite some time as you need to figure out every dependency for every package that you want to install in this way.
To install a KVM, you will require at least 6 GB of free disk space, 2 GB of RAM, and an additional core or thread per guest.
Check whether your CPU supports a virtualization flag (such as SVM or VMX). Some hardware vendors disable this in the BIOS, so you may want to check your BIOS as well. Run the following command:
~]# grep -E 'svm|vmx' /proc/cpuinfo flags : ... vmx ...
Alternatively, you can run the following command:
~]# grep -E 'svm|vmx' /proc/cpuinfo flags : ... svm ...
Check whether the hardware virtualization modules (such as kvm_intel and kvm) are loaded in the kernel using the following command:
~]# lsmod | grep kvm kvm_intel 155648 0 kvm 495616 1 kvm_intel
We'll look at the three ways of installing a KVM onto your system.
This way of installing a KVM is generally done once the base system is installed by some other means. You need to perform the following steps:
- Install the software needed to provide an environment to host virtualized guests with the following command:
~]# yum -y install qemu-kvm qemu-img libvirtThe installation of these packages will include quite a lot of dependencies.
- Install additional utilities required to configure
libvirtand install virtual machines by running this command:~]# yum -y install virt-install libvirt-python python-virthost libvirt-client - By default, the
libvirtdaemon is marked toautostarton each boot. Check whether it is enabled by executing the following command:~]# systemctl status libvirtd libvirtd.service - Virtualization daemon Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/libvirtd.service; enabled) Active: inactive Docs: man:libvirtd(8) http://libvirt.org
- If for some reason this is not the case, mark it for autostart by executing the following:
~]# systemctl enable libvirtd - To manually stop/start/restart the
libvirtdaemon, this is what you'll need to execute:~]# systemctl stop libvirtd ~]# systemctl start libvirtd ~]# systemctl restart libvirtd
Installing a KVM during kickstart offers you an easy way to automate the installation of KVM instances. Perform the following steps:
This is probably the least common way of installing a KVM. The only time I used this was during the course of writing this recipe. Here's how you can do this:
- Boot from the RHEL 7 Installation media.
- Complete all steps besides the Software selection step.
- Go to Software Selection to complete the KVM software selection.
- Select the Virtualization host radio button in Base Environment, and check the Virtualization Platform checkbox in Add-Ons for Selected Environment:
- Finalize the installation.
- On the Installation Summary screen, complete any other steps and click on Begin Installation.
To set up your repositories, check out Chapter 8, Yum and Repositories.
To deploy a system using kickstart, refer to Chapter 2, Deploying RHEL "En Masse".
For more in-depth information about using libvirt, go to http://www.libvirt.org/.
RHEL 7 has certain support limits, which are listed at these locations:
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