Configuring a Standalone VCL Environment using VMware Server 2.0

DISCLAIMER!

This document provides instuctions for configuring a standalone VCL environment running on a single computer which is able to provision VCL reservations using VMware. It is only provided to help you understand how the various components of VCL operate. This document DOES NOT describe how to configure a production VCL environment. The environment described in this document can however be used to learn, test, and help develop VCL.

Gather Required Files & Information

Requirements

• VMware Server 2.x RPM Installer - These instructions assume the VMware Server RPM has been downloaded to the following location on the management node:
  /root/VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.rpm
• VMware Server 2.x serial number - A serial number can be obtained when you download VMware Server 2.0 from vmware.com. You will need to register.

Assumptions

• These instructions assume you are logged in to the management node as root
• These instructions assume you are using a bash shell.

Networking

The computer used to host the standalone VCL environment described in these instructions only needs a single network interface. These instructions will also work if it has multiple interfaces. The computer used to create these instructions had the following interfaces:

• eth0 - connected to the private VCL network (not used or referenced in these instructions)
• eth1 - connected to the public network

Install VCL Components

Begin by completing the VCL installation instructions. Install all of the components on the same computer:

1. VCL 2.2.1 Database Installation
2. VCL 2.2.1 Web Code Installation
3. VCL 2.2.1 Management Node Installation

Remove Existing Virtualization Components

Make Sure The Host Computer Is Not Running A Xen Kernel

VMWare Server cannot be installed on a computer running a Xen kernel. To determine if a Xen kernel is being used:

The following output indicates a Xen kernel is being used:

If "xen" appears in the output of the previous command, replace the Xen kernel:

Check the grub.conf file to make sure it is not configured to boot using the Xen Kernel

The grub.conf file should NOT look like this:

After removing the Xen kernel, reboot the computer:

Install VMware Server

Download the latest VMware Server 2.0 RPM from http://www.vmware.com

Install VMware Server:

Configure VMware Server:

Answer the questions asked by vmware-config.pl as follows:

• Do you accept? (yes/no) yes
• Do you want networking for your virtual machines? (yes/no/help) yes
  • Configuring a bridged network for vmnet0. Please specify a name for this network. Bridged
  • Your computer has multiple ethernet network interfaces available: eth0, eth1. Which one do you want to bridge to vmnet0? eth1 (this should be set to the public interface)
    The following bridged networks have been defined:
    . vmnet0 is bridged to eth1
  • Do you wish to configure another bridged network? (yes/no) no
  • Do you want to be able to use NAT networking in your virtual machines? (yes/no) no
  • Do you want to be able to use host-only networking in your virtual machines? yes
  • Configuring a host-only network for vmnet1. Please specify a name for this network. HostOnly
  • Do you want this program to probe for an unused private subnet? (yes/no/help) no
  • What will be the IP address of your host on the private network? 192.168.0.1
  • What will be the netmask of your private network? 255.255.0.0
    The following host-only networks have been defined:
    . vmnet1 is a host-only network on private subnet 192.168.0.0.
  • Do you wish to configure another host-only network? (yes/no) no
• Please specify a port for remote connections to use: 902
• Please specify a port for standard http connections to use: 8222
• Please specify a port for secure http (https) connections to use: 8333
• The current administrative user for VMware Server  is ''.  Would you like to specify a different administrator? no
  Using root as the VMware Server administrator.
• In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files? /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines
• The path "/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines" does not exist currently. This program is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want? yes
• Please enter your 20-character serial number. <Enter the serial number you received from VMware>
• In which directory do you want to install the VMware VIX API binary files? /usr/bin
• In which directory do you want to install the VMware VIX API library files? /usr/lib/vmware-vix/lib
• The path "/usr/lib/vmware-vix/lib" does not exist currently. This program is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want? yes
• In which directory do you want to install the VMware VIX API document pages? /usr/share/doc/vmware-vix
• The path "/usr/share/doc/vmware-vix" does not exist currently. This program is going to create it, including needed parent directories. Is this what you want? yes

Verify the host-only network was configured correctly:

You should see a vmnet1 interface using IP address 192.168.0.1:

You should see the following:

Fix VMware Server 2.0 glibc Problem

VMware Server 2.0 will not run reliably if the version of glibc installed on the host is newer than 2.5-34. This problem is known to affect recent versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS. If not corrected, VMware Server will crash intermittently and the VMware administration web pages will lock up or fail to load.

Check the version of glib installed on the VMware host:

You will need to configure VMware to use glibc 2.5-34 if the version installed on the host is newer than 2.5-34:

Installed Packages
glibc.i686       2.5-42      installed
glibc.x86_64     2.5-42      installed

For CentOS, you will need to download the glibc RPM included with CentOS 5.3. This is available from vault.centos.org:

• For 32-bit CentOS installations: http://vault.centos.org/5.3/updates/i386/RPMS/glibc-2.5-34.el5_3.1.i686.rpm
• For 64-bit CentOS installations: http://vault.centos.org/5.3/updates/x86_64/RPMS/glibc-2.5-34.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm

Create a temp directory and cd to it:

Download the glibc RPM (change the URL accordingly):

Extract the cpio archive from the glibc RPM:

Create the following directory:

Copy the following file to the new directory:

Make a backup of the original vmware-hostd file:

Edit vmware-hostd:

Navigate to the bottom of the file. You should see the following as the last line:

eval exec "$DEBUG_CMD" "$binary" "$@"

Add the following export line immediately before the last eval line in vmware-hostd:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/vmware/lib/libc.so.6:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
eval exec "$DEBUG_CMD" "$binary" "$@"

The following sed command can also be used to add the line to vmware-hostd:

Restart the vmware service:

Configure /etc/hosts

Modify the /etc/hosts file to include entries for the VM host and guest computers:

Add the entries in bold:

Configure the sshd Service to Listen on the Virtual Private Network

Add the following line to the end of the file:

Restart the sshd service on the management node:

Configure The VM Host To Be Able To SSH To Itself

If you have not already generated an SSH identity key on the management node to be used to login to the computers the management node controls, run the following command to generate a new key:

Add the VM host's public key to its own authorized_keys file to allow it to SSH to itself without a password prompt:

The following command should execute without having to enter a password:

Configure The DHCP Service

Install dhcp if it is not already installed:

Save a copy of the original dhcpd.conf file:

Configure the dhcpd.conf file:

The dhcpd.conf file should contain the following:

ddns-update-style none; shared-network vmnet1 {
   subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 {
      ignore unknown-clients;
      option routers 192.168.0.1;
      host vmguest-1 {
         option host-name "vmguest-1";
         hardware ethernet 00:50:56:1a:01:01;
         fixed-address 192.168.1.1;
         filename "/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";
         option dhcp-server-identifier 192.168.0.1;
         next-server 192.168.0.1;
      }
   }
}

The DHCP daemon should only listen on the virtual private network (vmnet1) to avoid conflicts with other production VCL networks. Configure the dhcpd service startup script to only listen on the vmnet1 interface:

Add vmnet1 the to the DHCPDARGS line:

# Command line options here
DHCPDARGS=vmnet1

Configure the dhcpd service to automatically start at runlevels 3-5:

Start the dhcpd service:

Configure the VCL Database for the VM Guest and Host

• Create the following computer groups:
  Go to Manage Groups -> Resource Groups -> Add
  • all vm host computers
  • all vm guest computers

• Map all computer groups to management node group
  • Management Nodes -> Edit Management Node Mapping

• Configure the management node to check in with the database
  • Management Nodes -> Edit Management Node Information -> Add
    • Hostname: localhost
    • IP Address: 127.0.0.1
    • Owner: admin
    • State: available
    • Predictive Loading Module: Predictive Loading Level 0 Module
    • Check-in Interval: 5
    • Install Path: /install
    • End Node SSH Identitiy Key Files: /etc/vcl/vcl.key
    • SSH Port for this node: 22
    • Enable Image Library: no
• Add VM host computer:
  • Manage Computers -> Edit Computer Information -> Submit -> Add
    • Hosthame: localvmhost
    • IP Address: 192.168.0.1 (NOTE: there is currently a bug restricting the size of the field, so hopefully one octet has less than 3 digits.)
    • State: available
      Note: do not attempt to add the computer in the maintenance state because of the following issue:
      https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VCL-189
    • Owner: admin
    • Platform: i386
    • Schedule: VCL 24x7
    • RAM: 1024
    • No Processors: 1
    • Processor Speed: 2000
    • Network Speed: 100
    • Type: blade
    • Provisioning engine: xCAT 1.x
      Note: the Type and Provisioning engine values don't matter for the localvmhost computer in this test environment because vcld isn't provisioning it
    • Computer Groups: all vm host computers
• Add VM guest computer:
  • Manage Computers -> Edit Computer Information -> Submit -> Add
    • Hosthame: vmguest-1
    • IP Address: current public ip address used by Windows XP VM
    • State: available
    • Owner: admin
    • Platform: i386
    • Schedule: VCL 24x7
    • RAM: 1024
    • No Processors: 1
    • Processor Speed: 2000
    • Network Speed: 100
    • Type: virtualmachine
    • Provisioning engine: VMWare
    • Computer Groups: all vm guest computers
• Note the fix for the IP address bug is recorded here: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VCL-193
• Configure the VM guest's MAC address in the computer table in the database (as there currently does not seem to be a way to do this through the UI):
  • eth0: 00:50:56:1a:01:01
  • eth1: 00:50:56:1a:01:02
• Configure the VM host profile:
  • Virtual Hosts -> VM Host Profiles tab -> VMware Server 2.x - local storage -> configure Profile
    • Virtual Switch 0: HostOnly
    • Virtual Switch 1: Bridged
• Change state of localvmhost to vmhostinuse (edit the database directly, do not use the Virtual Hosts utility on the website)
• Assign vm guests to localvmhost
• Create node in priviledge tree
  • Name: VM image access
  • Add resource groups:
    • all vm guest computers
    • all vm guest images