Hypervisor Build on MicroServer

Here's the build details of the hypervisor on my MicroServer.

Making use of the internal USB socket to install Centos 6.6 on an 8GB USB stick and using all the hard drives as guest storage. There are 3 hard drives which will be configured as RAID 5 using Linux software RAID.

Use the lovely ILO to virtual mount and boot the Centos 6.6 ISO and the remote console to do the install. A big advantage over my first MicroServer.

Tip - quick way to erase a USB stick in Windows - use diskpart

DISKPART> list disk
DISKPART> select disk 2
DISKPART> clean

Perform a minimal install to the USB stick.
Tip - to avoid having to update after the install, use an install URL and add an additional repository for the updates. It'll all be done in one go. Here's the ones I use:
Install URL: http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.centos.org/6.6/os/x86_64/
Additional repo: http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.centos.org/6.6/updates/x86_64/

Install additional packages:
xauth (for X window virt-manager to work)
ntp (time sync)
parted (disk partitioning as fdisk is deprecated and doesn't like new large disks)
acpid (so you can do a graceful shutdown with the power button)
hp-ams (HP's agentless management service, get from the HP website. Integrates into ILO)

Configure and enable firewall and allow only ssh inbound (/etc/sysconfig/iptables)

# Firewall configuration written by system-config-firewall
# Manual customization of this file is not recommended.
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
-A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p icmp -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
-A FORWARD -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT

Configure and enable ntp
Create a user id and block root access via ssh

Install Virtualisation

yum groupinstall Virtualization
yum groupinstall "Virtualization Client"
yum groupinstall "Virtualization Platform"
yum install dejavu-lgc-sans-fonts

Allow 'paul' to run virt-manager and manage the local qemu
Create /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/50-libvirt-remote-access.pkla

                [Remote libvirt SSH access]

       Identity=unix-group:paul

       Action=org.libvirt.unix.manage

       ResultAny=yes

       ResultInactive=yes

       ResultActive=yes

 

See the next post for details of how to configure the RAID 5 disks and configure KVM to use them.