Jontow Homelab KVM
Ubuntu 15.04 Notes
Overview
This section should get a general build of a VM host running KVM with libvirt (virsh)
and 2TB of RAID1 (softraid) running on Ubuntu 15.04 server. The hardware platform
that this section targets/was tested on is a Sun Fire X2200 M2. There is a hardware
specific notes section below.
The disks will be setup with RAID and LVM, giving a maximum compromise of reliability
and flexibility. Swap partitions are setup outside of softraid to maximize performance.
Disk Config
- (2) x 2.0 TB disks in chassis, built at install time using the following general procedure:
- From aux shell: fdisk /dev/sda and "g" to GPT the disk, repeat for /dev/sdb
- Create a new (bios_grub) partition on each disk: ~256MB is fine
- Create any swap partitions necessary
- Create a new identically sized partition on each disk, "Use as: physical volume for RAID"
- Configure Software RAID: RAID1, 2 devices, 0 spares, select the two identical partitions as members.
- Configure LVM:
- Create VG with PV /dev/md0 (named "vm1-vg")
- Create LV (20G) from VG "vm1-vg" (named "vm1-root")
- Create LV (20G) from VG "vm1-vg" (named "vm1-iso-0")
- Create LV (1T) from VG "vm1-vg" (named "vm1-store-0")
- Setup "vm1-root" as / with ext4 FS
- Setup "vm1-iso-0" as /vm1-iso with ext4 FS
- Setup "vm1-store-0" as /vm1-store-0 with ext4 FS
- When asked, install grub to "/dev/sda" (it'll try to use "/dev/mapper", override this.)
- After firstboot of system, run "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" and choose to install on "/dev/sdb" as well.
Packages
$ sudo apt-get install zsh multitail screen sysstat openssh-server nfs-kernel-server $ sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin openvswitch-switch openvswitch-common $ sudo apt-get install libpolkit-agent-1-0 libpolkit-backend-1-0 policykit-1 $ sudo apt-get install virtinst
System Config
- /etc/network/interfaces :
# The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback ################################################################################ # eth1: management interface (non-VM traffic) auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 10.49.249.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 10.49.249.0 broadcast 10.49.249.255 gateway 10.49.249.1 # dns-* options are implemented by the resolvconf package, if installed dns-nameservers 10.49.249.1 dns-search je ################################################################################ # eth0: vlan-tagged for VM traffic auto eth0 iface eth0 inet manual ################################################################################ # eth2: storage/cross-connect (xc) net, used with a pair of VM hosts auto eth2 iface eth2 inet static address 10.49.254.20 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 10.49.254.0 broadcast 10.49.254.255
- /etc/network/if-up.d/openvswitch :
#! /bin/sh # Setup openvswitch # Don't bother with loopback if [ "$IFACE" = lo ]; then exit 0 fi # Only run from ifup. if [ "$MODE" != start ]; then exit 0 fi if [ "$IFACE" = "eth0" ]; then /usr/bin/ovs-vsctl add-br br0 /usr/bin/ovs-vsctl add-port br0 eth0 fi exit 0
- /etc/hosts :
127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 vm1 10.49.249.20 vm1.je 10.49.249.21 vm2.je 10.49.254.20 vm1.xc vm1 10.49.254.21 vm2.xc vm2 # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
- Setup storage repo:
$ sudo ln -s /vm1-store-0 /vm-store-0
NFS
- /etc/exports (on vm1):
/vm1-store-0 vm2.xc(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash)
- Enable/start NFS:
$ sudo systemctl enable nfs-kernel-server $ sudo systemctl start nfs-kernel-server
Misc bugfixes / errors
"error: Diskfilter writes are not supported"
This occurs around bootup splash screen time, and does not affect system operation, but is ugly. Supposedly fixed in 15.10+.
Ugly quick fix:
$ sudo vi /etc/grub.d/10_linux (Replace 'quick_boot="1"' with 'quick_boot="0"', then...) $ sudo update-grub
PCI-DMA: Out of IOMMU space for...
This SHOULD be platform-specific (Sun Fire X2200 M2). If you begin to see messages like this in your logs:
Oct 16 18:04:55 vm1 kernel: [ 113.785020] sata_nv 0000:00:05.0: PCI-DMA: Out of IOMMU space for 65536 bytes
You ought to consider the following fix:
$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub
Add "iommu=memaper3" to this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Result should be:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash iommu=memaper=3"
Requires a reboot.
KVM Networking
KVM Networking is an odd beast, and I required more flexibility than was natively
included in most prebuilt versions. Ubuntu 15.04 and newer include good support for
binding guests into VLANs and not requiring a physical interface for each VLAN to get
into the machine. This is accomplished with openvswitch and some creativity. Here
are a couple XML files useful to "net-define" in virsh. A few examples should allow
understanding of creating others with unique 802.1Q vlan tags.
If you fancy having an untagged ("native") vlan on the physical port and actually
using it, well, I forget how I did that. I stopped using the method and instead
went for explicitly specifying tags.
ovs-vlan2.xml
<network> <name>ovs-vlan2</name> <forward mode='bridge'/> <bridge name='br0'/> <virtualport type='openvswitch'/> <portgroup name='ovs-vlan2' default='yes'> <vlan> <tag id='2'/> </vlan> </portgroup> </network>
ovs-vlan900.xml
<network> <name>ovs-vlan900</name> <forward mode='bridge'/> <bridge name='br0'/> <virtualport type='openvswitch'/> <portgroup name='ovs-vlan900' default='yes'> <vlan> <tag id='900'/> </vlan> </portgroup> </network>