We run several KVM servers, which are hosting virtual machines for various infrastructure services and OpenStack APIs. This page describes how to install a physical KVM server.

Install a KVM host

Minimum requirements

  • Server with two or more NICs
    • 1 NIC for management
    • <1 NIC for VM networks. This must be a trunk
  • Minimum 150GB of storage for virtual machines
  • Defined hiera keys for KVM (Hieradata)

PXE / Installation

  1. Define the host in the management dashboard, and specify the MAC-address for the management NIC.
    1. Initially, select Puppet role role::base
    2. Select KVMhost partitioning scheme
  2. Boot the server, and select Network boot / PXE
  3. When the installation is finished, select role::kvm for the host.

The server will be partitioned with:

  • 1G /boot
  • 70G LVM Volume Group "rootvg"
    • 16G swap
    • 10G /
    • 30G /var
    • <rest of rootvg>G /fill
  • <rest of disk>G LVM Volume Group "vmvg"
    • Virtual Machines will have logical volumes inside this volume group as their disk

All network and storage pool configuration are done by puppet and hieradata.

The PXE configuration will create the vmvg volume group, but the name also have to be in profile::kvm::vmvg::name for KVM to define it as a storage pool.

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