It felt like I was having to stitch together too many pieces and did not have a front-end that non-*nix admins could utilize.
I looked over the Management Tools page and felt that "Proxmox VE" would be the best solution for a small cluster.
I will start researching and documenting a Proxmox solution.
------------- PROJECT ON INDEFINITE HOLD -------------
WARNING - I have used VMware ESXi for years for all my hypervisor needs and as such, KVM as a replacement will be new to me and this is my "learning area" as I go.
Greetings and salutations,
I hope this thread will be helpful to those who follow in my foot steps as well as getting any advice based on what I have done / documented.
To discuss this thread, please participate here: >> INSERT UBUNTU FORUMS LINK HERE <<
Overview
This thread will cover installation of a KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) on a dedicated Ubuntu server. The server will be installed on bare-metal and the host OS will be as minimal as possible.
This documentation will have some hardware-specific information since it will be installed on a physical machine and as such, your steps may vary due to the hardware present.
Goals
- Setup two KVM servers to host virtual machines and storage
- Setup two KVM servers to host storage only
- Configure access to local storage to hold VMs or ISO images
- Configure access to external storage to hold VMs
- Migrate VMs between different hosts (like vmware vmotion)
- Migrate VM storage between different locations (like vmware vmotion)
- Create Ubuntu template VM for deployment to new VMs
- Create/Delete/RestoreTo snapshots
- Create backups of VMs using snapshots
- Ubuntu Server 18.04.4 LTS, 64-bit
- Ubuntu Server Minimal 18.04.4 LTS, 64-bit
- QEMU KVM Hypervisor 2.11.1
- Portable PuTTY 0.73
- UltraVNC Viewer 1.2.3.0
The list below are sources of information that helped me configure this system as well as some places that might be helpful to me later on as this process continues.
- Ubuntu Documentation
- Install and Configure KVM Ubuntu 1804 Server
- How to install KVM to create and manage virtual machines in Ubuntu
- Setup headless virtualization server using KVM in Ubuntu 18.04
- High Availability Storage with GlusterFS on Ubuntu 18.04
- Manage KVM Storage Volumes and Pools
- Live migration of virtual machines with KVM
This documentation will need to make use of some very-specific information that will most-likely be different for each person / location. And as such, I will note some of these in this section. They will be highlighted in red throughout the document as a reminder that you should plug-in your own value rather than actually using my "place-holder" value.
Under no circumstance should you use the actual values I list below. They are place-holders for the real thing. This is just a checklist template you need to have answered before you start the install process.
The RED variables below are used throughout this document, you need to substitute it for what your company uses. Use the list below as a template you need to have answered before you continue.
- KVM Server #1 name: srv-kvm1
- KVM Server #1 IP address: 192.168.107.61
- KVM Server #2 name: srv-kvm2
- KVM Server #2 IP address: 192.168.107.62
- KVM Server #3 name: srv-stor1
- KVM Server #3 IP address: 192.168.107.63
- KVM Server #4 name: srv-stor2
- KVM Server #4 IP address: 192.168.107.64
- Ubuntu Admin ID: administrator
- Ubuntu Admin Password: myadminpass