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Virtualization Management

Table of Contents
ℹ️
 If you are using the web-console and do not see "Virtual Machines" in the menu, chances are that you need to sign-out and sign-in again.

Provided your hardware is reasonably modern, chances are it supports virtualization. This unit introduces simple virtualization management using kvm and libvirt. You will learn how to: * Install additional necessary software * Enable necessary system services and firewall ports * Use the command line to create and manage a virtual machine * Use the web console (cockpit) to create and manage a virtual machine

1. Getting Started

Starting on the host workstation.example.com, just make sure you’re the root user.

[root@workstation]#
id

uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

Verify that you are on the right host for these exercises.

[root@workstation ~]#
cheat-virt-checkhost.sh

You are now ready to proceed with these exercises.

Log into workstation VM as student and then use sudo to gain root priviledges.

sudo -i

1.1. Requirements

First we need to ensure the system being used supports either:

  • Intel VT-x and Intel 64 virtualization extensions

  • AMD-V and the AMD64 virtualization extensions

This is done with the following simple commands.

You can start by examining the CPU flags (capabilities) advertised by your system.

grep -E 'svm|vmx' /proc/cpuinfo

You are looking for either the Intel flag (vtx) or the AMD flag (svm). A more sophisticated command makes it a little easier to determine.

if grep -qE 'svm|vmx' /proc/cpuinfo ; then echo "Virt Supported" ; else echo "*WARN* Virt NOT Supported"; fi

After you install all the required software, there are some additional tools to provide more detailed reporting on system capabilities.

1.2. Installation

Verifying that yum repos are enabled to install Cockpit and the virtualization tools.

yum repolist

Make sure rhel-7-server-rpms, rhel-7-server-optional-rpms and rhel-7-server-extras-rpms repos are enabled.

Installing Packages for virtualization enablement

yum install -y qemu-kvm libvirt virt-install libvirt-client libguestfs-tools

Installing Packages for webconsole enablement

yum install -y cockpit-machines

To make the creating of custom VM images easy, install the Image-Builder tools

yum install -y lorax-composer composer-cli cockpit-composer

1.3. Enable System Services

# systemctl enable lorax-composer.socket libvirtd
# systemctl start lorax-composer libvirtd

1.4. Verify Virtualization Host Status

virt-host-validate
  QEMU: Checking for hardware virtualization                                 : PASS
  QEMU: Checking if device /dev/kvm exists                                   : PASS
  QEMU: Checking if device /dev/kvm is accessible                            : PASS
  QEMU: Checking if device /dev/vhost-net exists                             : PASS
  QEMU: Checking if device /dev/net/tun exists                               : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'cpu' controller support                         : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'cpuacct' controller support                     : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'cpuset' controller support                      : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'memory' controller support                      : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'devices' controller support                     : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for cgroup 'blkio' controller support                       : PASS
  QEMU: Checking for device assignment IOMMU support                         : WARN (No ACPI IVRS table found, IOMMU either disabled in BIOS or not supported by this hardware platform)

2. Deploy A Virtual-Machine with 'virt-install'

Now you are going to leverage a Red Hat pre-built QCOW image to rapidly load a VM with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

2.1. Retrieve a QCOW Image

First we need to grab a copy of the image

cd /var/lib/libvirt/images

wget -O rhel-8.1-x86_64-kvm.qcow2 http://core.example.com/images/rhel-8.1-x86_64-kvm.qcow2

2.2. Modify the QCOW Image

Now you need to set a root password in the image

virt-customize -a rhel-8.1-x86_64-kvm.qcow2 --root-password password:redhat --uninstall cloud-init

2.3. Deploy the QCOW Image

Finally it’s time to launch the VM

virt-install \
  --import \
  --name vmguest-01 \
  --memory 2048 \
  --vcpus 1 \
  --disk /var/lib/libvirt/images/rhel-8.1-x86_64-kvm.qcow2 \
  --graphics vnc \
  --noautoconsole\
  --os-variant rhel8.1

INFO: If you hop on the Virtual Machines Manager in the Web-Console, you an bring up the VM’s Console and watch the deployment.

2.4. Additional CLI Commands

Some additional simple virtual machine management commands

virsh list
virsh list --all

virsh start vmguest-01
virsh shutdown vmguest-01

3. Explore VM Management with 'Web-Console'

From th menu, select the Machines tab. You will notice that the interface is still pretty rudimentary, but one critical feature is available: the console!

Take some time to explore the capabilities of the Web-Console Machines webui.

4. Shutdown Virtual Machines

WARN: It is IMPORTANT to stop or delete the deployed VMs

Using either the CLI (or the Web-Console), be sure to shutdown the VM(s) you deployed to ensure additional workshop exercises perform reasonably.

virsh list --all

virsh shutdown vmguest-01