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XenServer/VirtualBox

< XenServer
Revision as of 13:23, 18 January 2013 by JohnGarbutt (talk)

Installing XenServer / XCP on Virtual Box

This is a really useful development environment when you want everything running on a single box.

The setup includes:

  • Virtual Box on your laptop or desktop
    • Note Virtual box runs well on many platforms: Linux, MacOS X and Linux
  • XCP running in a Virtual Box VM
  • OpenStack running in a VM on XCP
  • Launching a VM on XCP using OpenStack

Install Virtual Box

You can get virtual box here: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Networking

As with any XenServer + OpenStack + DevStack deployment, it is worth getting your head strait around the networking.

While there are many options that could work, please try the recommended approach first. It will really help you understand what is possible.

The XCP VM running on Virtual box:

  • a single bridged adapter onto your primary network
    • NAT is default, but not as useful
    • This will make XenServer appear on your network
  • the above network is assumed to have DHCP (like that provided by a home router)

The Ubuntu VM running on XCP:

  • Always gets four interfaces
    • eth0: private networking with the XenServer, best to ignore this one
    • eth1: VM traffic network
    • eth2: management network (rabbit, mysql, keystone, etc)
    • eth3: public network (floating ip traffic, external access to APIs)

For a nice picture see the official docs: http://docs.openstack.org/folsom/openstack-compute/admin/content/introduction-to-xen.html#xenapi-deployment-architecture

Installing XCP

First download the XCP ISO onto the machine running virtual box from xen xcp 1.6 download site

Once complete you need to create a virtual box VM with:

  • cd drive attached to the XCP ISO
  • a bridged network interface onto a network (ideally with a DHCP server and an internet connection, just like most home networks)
  • enable the following motherboard options:
    • Enable IO APIC
    • Hardware clock in UTC
  • enable the following processor and Acceleration options:
    • PAE, VT-x, Nested Paging
  • Add a single hard disk of at least 50 GB
  • Audio and USB can be disabled

Now you have the VM, start up the VM and you should go into the XCP installer:

  • Ensure you select "XenServer optimised" storage when prompted
  • Configure the networking as you desire, but a static address in the same subnet as your host machine is best
  • Remove the ISO from the VM's cd drive, when requested

Running DevStack on the XCP VM

If everything has gone to plan, you should now have a working XCP server in a Virtual Box VM, running on your PC. Moreover, that XCP server should be able to connect to the internet.

We are now ready to configure and run the xen tools part of DevStack. This will create an Ubuntu VM, and run stack.sh when the VM boots, and install and configure the latest OpenStack code in that VM. We now follow the instructions from the DevStack XenServer ReadMe: https://github.com/openstack-dev/devstack/blob/master/tools/xen/README.md

Getting DevStack downloaded onto XCP's Dom0

At this stage you can ssh into the XCP box. You are now on "Dom0", the XCP control VM. It is worth adding your SSH key as an authorized key, in the usual way, to make this easier. DevStack will also copy that configuration into the DevStack VM. Ideally also create a new SSH key, and authorize that too, to enable the DevStack script to access the VM it creates.

Now we can follow step 2 of the Readme:

Configuring DevStack

The tricky part of configuration is the Network configuration. Lets step through all of the example configuration options, and add a few extras that will help in this particular case.


#!highlight bash
#
# Defaults taken from the Readme to stop any devstack prompts for passwords
#
MYSQL_PASSWORD=my_super_secret
SERVICE_TOKEN=my_super_secret
ADMIN_PASSWORD=my_super_secret
SERVICE_PASSWORD=my_seper_secret
RABBIT_PASSWORD=my_super_secret
# This is the password for your guest (for both stack and root users)
GUEST_PASSWORD=password
# IMPORTANT: The following must be set to your dom0 root password!
XENAPI_PASSWORD=my_password
# Do not download the usual images yet!
IMAGE_URLS=""
# Explicitly set virt driver here
VIRT_DRIVER=xenserver
# Explicitly set multi-host
MULTI_HOST=1
# Give extra time for boot
ACTIVE_TIMEOUT=45
# First time Ubuntu network install params
NETINSTALLIP="dhcp"
NAMESERVERS=""
NETMASK=""
GATEWAY=""

#
# Here we attach the public interface
# to the network the XenServer is sitting on
#

HOST_IP_IFACE=eth3
PUB_IP="dhcp"
# Note: ideally the ip address should match the floating ip address ranges

#
# Telling nova how best to contact our XenServer
# should make the VNC proxy work
#
XENAPI_CONNECTION_URL="http://<you_xcp_box_ip_address"

#
# I changed the default memory because I was short on memory
# Increased the disk size
#
OSDOMU_MEM_MB=900
OSDOMU_VDI_GB=12

#
# Use Ubuntu 12.04
#
UBUNTU_INST_RELEASE="precise"
UBUNTU_INST_TEMPLATE_NAME="Ubuntu 12.04 (64-bit) for DevStack"

#
# Keep any code changes I make
#
RECLONE=no

#
# Turn on logging
#
LOGFILE=/tmp/devstack/log/stack.log
SCREEN_LOGDIR=/tmp/devstack/log/

#
# Default image doesn't have an agent
# this will speed up the instance boot time
#
EXTRA_OPTS=("xenapi_disable_agent=True")


If you need to change settings related to when the DomU is created (like PUB_IP, and OSDOMU_MEM_MB), you will need to delete the template before, otherwise your changes will not take affect. You can do this by using the following setting:

CLEAN_TEMPLATES=true


Running DevStack

Note: if things go wrong, you may need to clean the templates by setting the following:

TODO

Using OpenStack

TODO

Changing the configuration to use XenAPI NFS

Here is a good example of how to use Cinder with XenServer in some simple deployments.

First install NFS server on your machine: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNFSHowTo

Then you can update the localrc file to use NFS, and reboot the VM to use the new settings:

CINDER_DRIVER=XenAPINFS
CINDER_XENAPI_CONNECTION_URL=$XENAPI_CONNECTION_URL
CINDER_XENAPI_CONNECTION_USERNAME=root
CINDER_XENAPI_CONNECTION_PASSWORD=$XENAPI_PASSWORD
CINDER_XENAPI_NFS_SERVER=<domU IP address>
CINDER_XENAPI_NFS_SERVERPATH=/export


TODO

Changing some code

There is one other use for the NFS server we have just installed. We can now access the above code from your development machine, and directly edit it. Lets look at changing Nova.

TODO