stoney cloud: Single-Node Installation

Overview

The stoney cloud builds upon various standard open source components and can be run on commodity hardware. The final Multi-Node Setup consists of the following components:

• One Primary-Master-Node with an OpenLDAP Directory Server for the storage of the stoney cloud user and service related data with the web based management VM-Manager interface and the Linux kernel based virtualization technology.
• One Secondary-Master-Node with the Linux kernel based virtualization technology.
• Two Storage-Nodes configured as a replicated and distributed data storage service based on GlusterFS.

The components communicate with each other over a standard Ethernet based IPv4 network.

Prerequisites

The following items and conditions are required to be able to install and configure a stoney cloud environment:

• A dedicated server which fulfils the following requirements:
  • 64-Bit Intel with VT-Technologie (AMD is not tested at the moment, but it should work).
  • 8 Gigabyte Memory (more is better).
  • 130 Gigabyte up to 2 Terabyte disks (for the first RAID-Set, the 2 Terabyte restriction applies).
    • For the mass storage (where the virtual machines are stored) we recommend a second RAID-Set configured as RAID6-Set with battery backup.
  • One or more physical Ethernet Interfaces, which support the same bandwidth (for example 1 Gigabit/s).
• Two Gigabit layer-2 switches supporting IEEE 802.3ad (dynamic link aggregation), IEEE 802.1Q (VLAN tagging) and stacking (optional, but recommended).
• Experience with Linux environments especially with Gentoo Linux.
• Good experience with IP networking, because the Switches need to be configured manually (dynamic link aggregation and VLAN tagging).

Limitations

During the installation of the Gentoo Linux operating system, the first two physical Ethernet Interfaces are automatically configured as a logical interface (bond0) and the four tagged VLANs are set up. If more than two physical Ethernet Interfaces are to be included in to the logical interface (bond0) or the physical Ethernet Interfaces have different bandwidths (for example 1 Gigabit/s and 10 Gigabit/s), the final logical interface (bond0) needs to be configured manually after the installation of the Gentoo Linux operating system. Only the first two GlusterFS Storage-Nodes are set up automatically. More Storage-Nodes need to be integrated manually.

Installation

Booting

Choose 1) FOSS-Cloud Installer: default boot options

Keymap Selection

Set the desired keymap. The following example works for the German speaking part of Switzerland: 46 (de_CH)

Start the Installation

Start the actual installation by typing: yes

Choose the Single-Node Installation

Choose the Single-Node Installation by typing: 2

Device Selection

You'll need to select a SCIS, SATA, PATA or virtual disk. The following installation in done in a virtualized environment, therefore we choose the virtual disk: vda

If you type yes, you'll be deleting all the existing data on the chosen disk: yes

Proceeding ...

The installation proceeds with the partitioning of the disk and the installation of the operating system:

You can ignore the message "Error: /dev/vda: unrecognised disk label" as this is normal for a first installation in a virtual disk.

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Network

Now we configure the network. In this example, we only have one network interface: eth0

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Hostname

Set the desired hostname (not the fully qualified domain name). We'll choose: kvm-0237

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Skipping Checks

To skip checks, type no when asked:

 Do you want to start the installation?
yes or no?: no

Then manually restart the stoney cloud installer with the desired options. For example

/mnt/cdrom/foss-cloud-installer -c

Options:

-c: Skip CPU requirement checks
-m: Skip memory requirement checks
-s: Skip CPU and memory requirement checks