1 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.2//EN" [
3 <article class="specification">
5 <title>Ganeti installation tutorial</title>
7 <para>Documents Ganeti version 1.2</para>
10 <title>Introduction</title>
13 Ganeti is a cluster virtualization management system based on
14 Xen. This document explains how to bootstrap a Ganeti node (Xen
15 <literal>dom0</literal>), create a running cluster and install
16 virtual instance (Xen <literal>domU</literal>). You need to
17 repeat most of the steps in this document for every node you
18 want to install, but of course we recommend creating some
19 semi-automatic procedure if you plan to deploy Ganeti on a
24 A basic Ganeti terminology glossary is provided in the
25 introductory section of the <emphasis>Ganeti administrator's
26 guide</emphasis>. Please refer to that document if you are
27 uncertain about the terms we are using.
31 Ganeti has been developed for Linux and is
32 distribution-agnostic. This documentation will use Debian Etch
33 as an example system but the examples can easily be translated
34 to any other distribution. You are expected to be familiar with
35 your distribution, its package management system, and Xen before
39 <para>This document is divided into two main sections:
43 <simpara>Installation of the base system and base
47 <simpara>Configuration of the environment for
52 Each of these is divided into sub-sections. While a full Ganeti
53 system will need all of the steps specified, some are not strictly
54 required for every environment. Which ones they are, and why, is
55 specified in the corresponding sections.
61 <title>Installing the base system and base components</title>
64 <title>Hardware requirements</title>
67 Any system supported by your Linux distribution is fine.
68 64-bit systems are better as they can support more memory.
72 Any disk drive recognized by Linux
73 (<literal>IDE</literal>/<literal>SCSI</literal>/<literal>SATA</literal>/etc.)
74 is supported in Ganeti. Note that no shared storage
75 (e.g. <literal>SAN</literal>) is needed to get high-availability features. It is
76 highly recommended to use more than one disk drive to improve
77 speed. But Ganeti also works with one disk per machine.
81 <title>Installing the base system</title>
84 <emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.
88 It is advised to start with a clean, minimal install of the
89 operating system. The only requirement you need to be aware of
90 at this stage is to partition leaving enough space for a big
91 (<emphasis role="strong">minimum
92 <constant>20GiB</constant></emphasis>) LVM volume group which
93 will then host your instance filesystems. The volume group
94 name Ganeti 1.2 uses (by default) is
95 <emphasis>xenvg</emphasis>.
99 While you can use an existing system, please note that the
100 Ganeti installation is intrusive in terms of changes to the
101 system configuration, and it's best to use a newly-installed
102 system without important data on it.
106 Also, for best results, it's advised that the nodes have as
107 much as possible the same hardware and software
108 configuration. This will make administration much easier.
112 <title>Hostname issues</title>
114 Note that Ganeti requires the hostnames of the systems
115 (i.e. what the <computeroutput>hostname</computeroutput>
116 command outputs to be a fully-qualified name, not a short
117 name. In other words, you should use
118 <literal>node1.example.com</literal> as a hostname and not
119 just <literal>node1</literal>.
123 <title>Debian</title>
125 Note that Debian Etch configures the hostname differently
126 than you need it for Ganeti. For example, this is what
127 Etch puts in <filename>/etc/hosts</filename> in certain
131 127.0.1.1 node1.example.com node1
134 but for Ganeti you need to have:
137 192.168.1.1 node1.example.com node1
139 replacing <literal>192.168.1.1</literal> with your node's
140 address. Also, the file <filename>/etc/hostname</filename>
141 which configures the hostname of the system should contain
142 <literal>node1.example.com</literal> and not just
143 <literal>node1</literal> (you need to run the command
144 <computeroutput>/etc/init.d/hostname.sh
145 start</computeroutput> after changing the file).
153 <title>Installing Xen</title>
156 <emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.
160 While Ganeti is developed with the ability to modularly run on
161 different virtualization environments in mind the only one
162 currently useable on a live system is <ulink
163 url="http://xen.xensource.com/">Xen</ulink>. Supported
164 versions are: <simplelist type="inline">
165 <member><literal>3.0.3</literal></member>
166 <member><literal>3.0.4</literal></member>
167 <member><literal>3.1</literal></member> </simplelist>.
171 Please follow your distribution's recommended way to install
172 and set up Xen, or install Xen from the upstream source, if
173 you wish, following their manual.
177 After installing Xen you need to reboot into your Xen-ified
178 dom0 system. On some distributions this might involve
179 configuring GRUB appropriately, whereas others will configure
180 it automatically when you install Xen from a package.
183 <formalpara><title>Debian</title>
185 Under Debian Etch or Sarge+backports you can install the
186 relevant <literal>xen-linux-system</literal> package, which
187 will pull in both the hypervisor and the relevant
188 kernel. Also, if you are installing a 32-bit Etch, you should
189 install the <computeroutput>libc6-xen</computeroutput> package
190 (run <computeroutput>apt-get install
191 libc6-xen</computeroutput>).
196 <title>Xen settings</title>
199 It's recommended that dom0 is restricted to a low amount of
200 memory (<constant>512MiB</constant> is reasonable) and that
201 memory ballooning is disabled in the file
202 <filename>/etc/xen/xend-config.sxp</filename> by setting the
203 value <literal>dom0-min-mem</literal> to
204 <constant>0</constant>, like this:
205 <computeroutput>(dom0-min-mem 0)</computeroutput>
209 For optimum performance when running both CPU and I/O
210 intensive instances, it's also recommended that the dom0 is
211 restricted to one CPU only, for example by booting with the
212 kernel parameter <literal>nosmp</literal>.
216 <title>Debian</title>
218 Besides the ballooning change which you need to set in
219 <filename>/etc/xen/xend-config.sxp</filename>, you need to
220 set the memory and nosmp parameters in the file
221 <filename>/boot/grub/menu.lst</filename>. You need to
222 modify the variable <literal>xenhopt</literal> to add
223 <userinput>dom0_mem=512M</userinput> like this:
225 ## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option
226 # xenhopt=dom0_mem=512M
228 and the <literal>xenkopt</literal> needs to include the
229 <userinput>nosmp</userinput> option like this:
231 ## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option
235 Any existing parameters can be left in place: it's ok to
236 have <computeroutput>xenkopt=console=tty0
237 nosmp</computeroutput>, for example. After modifying the
238 files, you need to run:
248 <title>Selecting the instance kernel</title>
251 After you have installed Xen, you need to tell Ganeti
252 exactly what kernel to use for the instances it will
253 create. This is done by creating a
254 <emphasis>symlink</emphasis> from your actual kernel to
255 <filename>/boot/vmlinuz-2.6-xenU</filename>, and one from
257 <filename>/boot/initrd-2.6-xenU</filename>. Note that if you
258 don't use an initrd for the <literal>domU</literal> kernel,
259 you don't need to create the initrd symlink.
263 <title>Debian</title>
265 After installation of the
266 <literal>xen-linux-system</literal> package, you need to
267 run (replace the exact version number with the one you
271 ln -s vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-xen-686 vmlinuz-2.6-xenU
272 ln -s initrd.img-2.6.18-5-xen-686 initrd-2.6-xenU
281 <title>Installing DRBD</title>
284 Recommended on all nodes: <ulink
285 url="http://www.drbd.org/">DRBD</ulink> is required if you
286 want to use the high availability (HA) features of Ganeti, but
287 optional if you don't require HA or only run Ganeti on
288 single-node clusters. You can upgrade a non-HA cluster to an
289 HA one later, but you might need to export and re-import all
290 your instances to take advantage of the new features.
294 Supported DRBD version: the <literal>0.7</literal>
295 series. It's recommended to have at least version
296 <literal>0.7.24</literal> if you use <command>udev</command>
297 since older versions have a bug related to device discovery
298 which can be triggered in cases of hard drive failure.
302 Now the bad news: unless your distribution already provides it
303 installing DRBD might involve recompiling your kernel or
304 anyway fiddling with it. Hopefully at least the Xen-ified
305 kernel source to start from will be provided.
309 The good news is that you don't need to configure DRBD at all.
310 Ganeti will do it for you for every instance you set up. If
311 you have the DRBD utils installed and the module in your
312 kernel you're fine. Please check that your system is
313 configured to load the module at every boot, and that it
314 passes the following option to the module:
315 <computeroutput>minor_count=64</computeroutput> (this will
316 allow you to use up to 32 instances per node).
319 <formalpara><title>Debian</title>
321 You can just install (build) the DRBD 0.7 module with the
322 following commands (make sure you are running the Xen
328 apt-get install drbd0.7-module-source drbd0.7-utils
331 echo drbd minor_count=64 >> /etc/modules
332 modprobe drbd minor_count=64
336 It is also recommended that you comment out the default
337 resources in the <filename>/etc/dbrd.conf</filename> file, so
338 that the init script doesn't try to configure any drbd
339 devices. You can do this by prefixing all
340 <literal>resource</literal> lines in the file with the keyword
341 <literal>skip</literal>, like this:
357 <title>Other required software</title>
359 <para>Besides Xen and DRBD, you will need to install the
360 following (on all nodes):</para>
364 <simpara><ulink url="http://sourceware.org/lvm2/">LVM
365 version 2</ulink></simpara>
369 url="http://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</ulink></simpara>
373 url="http://www.openssh.com/portable.html">OpenSSH</ulink></simpara>
376 <simpara><ulink url="http://bridge.sourceforge.net/">Bridge
377 utilities</ulink></simpara>
381 url="http://developer.osdl.org/dev/iproute2">iproute2</ulink></simpara>
385 url="ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iputils-current.tar.gz">arping</ulink>
386 (part of iputils package)</simpara>
390 url="http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/">mdadm</ulink>
391 (Linux Software Raid tools)</simpara>
394 <simpara><ulink url="http://www.python.org">Python 2.4</ulink></simpara>
397 <simpara><ulink url="http://twistedmatrix.com/">Python
398 Twisted library</ulink> - the core library is
403 url="http://pyopenssl.sourceforge.net/">Python OpenSSL
404 bindings</ulink></simpara>
408 url="http://www.undefined.org/python/#simplejson">simplejson Python
409 module</ulink></simpara>
413 url="http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/">pyparsing Python
414 module</ulink></simpara>
419 These programs are supplied as part of most Linux
420 distributions, so usually they can be installed via apt or
421 similar methods. Also many of them will already be installed
422 on a standard machine.
426 <formalpara><title>Debian</title>
428 <para>You can use this command line to install all of them:</para>
432 # apt-get install lvm2 ssh bridge-utils iproute iputils-arping \
433 python2.4 python-twisted-core python-pyopenssl openssl \
443 <title>Setting up the environment for Ganeti</title>
446 <title>Configuring the network</title>
448 <para><emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.</para>
451 Ganeti relies on Xen running in "bridge mode", which means the
452 instances network interfaces will be attached to a software bridge
453 running in dom0. Xen by default creates such a bridge at startup, but
454 your distribution might have a different way to do things.
458 Beware that the default name Ganeti uses is
459 <hardware>xen-br0</hardware> (which was used in Xen 2.0)
460 while Xen 3.0 uses <hardware>xenbr0</hardware> by
461 default. The default bridge your Ganeti cluster will use for new
462 instances can be specified at cluster initialization time.
465 <formalpara><title>Debian</title>
467 The recommended Debian way to configure the Xen bridge is to
468 edit your <filename>/etc/network/interfaces</filename> file
469 and substitute your normal Ethernet stanza with the
474 iface xen-br0 inet static
475 address <replaceable>YOUR_IP_ADDRESS</replaceable>
476 netmask <replaceable>YOUR_NETMASK</replaceable>
477 network <replaceable>YOUR_NETWORK</replaceable>
478 broadcast <replaceable>YOUR_BROADCAST_ADDRESS</replaceable>
479 gateway <replaceable>YOUR_GATEWAY</replaceable>
488 The following commands need to be executed on the local console
496 To check if the bridge is setup, use <command>ip</command>
497 and <command>brctl show</command>:
502 9: xen-br0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,10000> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue
503 link/ether 00:20:fc:1e:d5:5d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
504 inet 10.1.1.200/24 brd 10.1.1.255 scope global xen-br0
505 inet6 fe80::220:fcff:fe1e:d55d/64 scope link
506 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
509 bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
510 xen-br0 8000.0020fc1ed55d no eth0
517 <title>Configuring LVM</title>
520 <para><emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.</para>
523 <simpara>The volume group is required to be at least
524 <constant>20GiB</constant>.</simpara>
527 If you haven't configured your LVM volume group at install
528 time you need to do it before trying to initialize the Ganeti
529 cluster. This is done by formatting the devices/partitions you
530 want to use for it and then adding them to the relevant volume
535 vgcreate xenvg /dev/sda3
541 vgcreate xenvg /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1
546 If you want to add a device later you can do so with the
547 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>vgextend</refentrytitle>
548 <manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry> command:
553 vgextend xenvg /dev/sdd1
557 <title>Optional</title>
559 It is recommended to configure LVM not to scan the DRBD
560 devices for physical volumes. This can be accomplished by
561 editing <filename>/etc/lvm/lvm.conf</filename> and adding
562 the <literal>/dev/drbd[0-9]+</literal> regular expression to
563 the <literal>filter</literal> variable, like this:
565 filter = [ "r|/dev/cdrom|", "r|/dev/drbd[0-9]+|" ]
573 <title>Installing Ganeti</title>
575 <para><emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.</para>
578 It's now time to install the Ganeti software itself. Download
579 the source from <ulink
580 url="http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/"></ulink>.
584 tar xvzf ganeti-1.2b1.tar.gz
586 ./configure --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/etc
589 mkdir /srv/ganeti/ /srv/ganeti/os /srv/ganeti/export
593 You also need to copy the file
594 <filename>doc/examples/ganeti.initd</filename>
595 from the source archive to
596 <filename>/etc/init.d/ganeti</filename> and register it with
597 your distribution's startup scripts, for example in Debian:
599 <screen>update-rc.d ganeti defaults 20 80</screen>
602 In order to automatically restart failed instances, you need
603 to setup a cron job run the
604 <computeroutput>ganeti-watcher</computeroutput> program. A
605 sample cron file is provided in the source at
606 <filename>doc/examples/ganeti.cron</filename> and you can
607 copy that (eventually altering the path) to
608 <filename>/etc/cron.d/ganeti</filename>
614 <title>Installing the Operating System support packages</title>
616 <para><emphasis role="strong">Mandatory</emphasis> on all nodes.</para>
619 To be able to install instances you need to have an Operating
620 System installation script. An example for Debian Etch is
621 provided on the project web site. Download it from <ulink
622 url="http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/"></ulink> and follow the
623 instructions in the <filename>README</filename> file. Here is
624 the installation procedure:
629 tar xvf instance-debian-etch-0.1.tar
630 mv instance-debian-etch-0.1 debian-etch
634 In order to use this OS definition, you need to have internet
635 access from your nodes and have the <citerefentry>
636 <refentrytitle>debootstrap</refentrytitle>
637 <manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>, <citerefentry>
638 <refentrytitle>dump</refentrytitle><manvolnum>8</manvolnum>
639 </citerefentry> and <citerefentry>
640 <refentrytitle>restore</refentrytitle>
641 <manvolnum>8</manvolnum> </citerefentry> commands installed on
645 <title>Debian</title>
647 Use this command on all nodes to install the required
650 <screen>apt-get install debootstrap dump</screen>
655 Alternatively, you can create your own OS definitions. See the
658 <refentrytitle>ganeti-os-interface</refentrytitle>
659 <manvolnum>8</manvolnum>
666 <title>Initializing the cluster</title>
668 <para><emphasis role="strong">Mandatory:</emphasis> only on one
669 node per cluster.</para>
672 <para>The last step is to initialize the cluster. After you've repeated
673 the above process on all of your nodes, choose one as the master, and execute:
677 gnt-cluster init <replaceable>CLUSTERNAME</replaceable>
681 The <replaceable>CLUSTERNAME</replaceable> is a hostname,
682 which must be resolvable (e.g. it must exist in DNS or in
683 <filename>/etc/hosts</filename>) by all the nodes in the
684 cluster. You must choose a name different from any of the
685 nodes names for a multi-node cluster. In general the best
686 choice is to have a unique name for a cluster, even if it
687 consists of only one machine, as you will be able to expand it
688 later without any problems.
692 If the bridge name you are using is not
693 <literal>xen-br0</literal>, use the <option>-b
694 <replaceable>BRIDGENAME</replaceable></option> option to
695 specify the bridge name. In this case, you should also use the
696 <option>--master-netdev
697 <replaceable>BRIDGENAME</replaceable></option> option with the
698 same <replaceable>BRIDGENAME</replaceable> argument.
702 You can use a different name than <literal>xenvg</literal> for
703 the volume group (but note that the name must be identical on
704 all nodes). In this case you need to specify it by passing the
705 <option>-g <replaceable>VGNAME</replaceable></option> option
706 to <computeroutput>gnt-cluster init</computeroutput>.
710 You can also invoke the command with the
711 <option>--help</option> option in order to see all the
718 <title>Joining the nodes to the cluster</title>
721 <emphasis role="strong">Mandatory:</emphasis> for all the
726 After you have initialized your cluster you need to join the
727 other nodes to it. You can do so by executing the following
728 command on the master node:
731 gnt-node add <replaceable>NODENAME</replaceable>
736 <title>Separate replication network</title>
738 <para><emphasis role="strong">Optional</emphasis></para>
740 Ganeti uses DRBD to mirror the disk of the virtual instances
741 between nodes. To use a dedicated network interface for this
742 (in order to improve performance or to enhance security) you
743 need to configure an additional interface for each node. Use
744 the <option>-s</option> option with
745 <computeroutput>gnt-cluster init</computeroutput> and
746 <computeroutput>gnt-node add</computeroutput> to specify the
747 IP address of this secondary interface to use for each
748 node. Note that if you specified this option at cluster setup
749 time, you must afterwards use it for every node add operation.
754 <title>Testing the setup</title>
758 Execute the <computeroutput>gnt-node list</computeroutput>
759 command to see all nodes in the cluster:
762 Node DTotal DFree MTotal MNode MFree Pinst Sinst
763 node1.example.com 197404 197404 2047 1896 125 0 0
769 <title>Setting up and managing virtual instances</title>
771 <title>Setting up virtual instances</title>
773 This step shows how to setup a virtual instance with either
774 non-mirrored disks (<computeroutput>plain</computeroutput>) or
775 with network mirrored disks
776 (<computeroutput>remote_raid1</computeroutput>). All commands
777 need to be executed on the Ganeti master node (the one on
778 which <computeroutput>gnt-cluster init</computeroutput> was
779 run). Verify that the OS scripts are present on all cluster
780 nodes with <computeroutput>gnt-os list</computeroutput>.
783 To create a virtual instance, you need a hostname which is
784 resolvable (DNS or <filename>/etc/hosts</filename> on all
785 nodes). The following command will create a non-mirrored
789 gnt-instance add --node=node1 -o debian-etch -t plain inst1.example.com
790 * creating instance disks...
791 adding instance inst1.example.com to cluster config
792 Waiting for instance inst1.example.com to sync disks.
793 Instance inst1.example.com's disks are in sync.
794 creating os for instance inst1.example.com on node node1.example.com
795 * running the instance OS create scripts...
799 The above instance will have no network interface enabled.
800 You can access it over the virtual console with
801 <computeroutput>gnt-instance console
802 <literal>inst1</literal></computeroutput>. There is no
803 password for root. As this is a Debian instance, you can
804 modify the <filename>/etc/network/interfaces</filename> file
805 to setup the network interface (<literal>eth0</literal> is the
806 name of the interface provided to the instance).
810 To create a network mirrored instance, change the argument to
811 the <option>-t</option> option from <literal>plain</literal>
812 to <literal>remote_raid1</literal> and specify the node on
813 which the mirror should reside with the second value of the
814 <option>--node</option> option, like this:
818 # gnt-instance add -t remote_raid1 -n node1:node2 -o debian-etch instance2
819 * creating instance disks...
820 adding instance instance2 to cluster config
821 Waiting for instance instance1 to sync disks.
822 - device sdb: 3.50% done, 304 estimated seconds remaining
823 - device sdb: 21.70% done, 270 estimated seconds remaining
824 - device sdb: 39.80% done, 247 estimated seconds remaining
825 - device sdb: 58.10% done, 121 estimated seconds remaining
826 - device sdb: 76.30% done, 72 estimated seconds remaining
827 - device sdb: 94.80% done, 18 estimated seconds remaining
828 Instance instance2's disks are in sync.
829 creating os for instance instance2 on node node1.example.com
830 * running the instance OS create scripts...
831 * starting instance...
837 <title>Managing virtual instances</title>
839 All commands need to be executed on the Ganeti master node
843 To access the console of an instance, use
844 <computeroutput>gnt-instance console
845 <replaceable>INSTANCENAME</replaceable></computeroutput>.
849 To shutdown an instance, use <computeroutput>gnt-instance
851 <replaceable>INSTANCENAME</replaceable></computeroutput>. To
852 startup an instance, use <computeroutput>gnt-instance startup
853 <replaceable>INSTANCENAME</replaceable></computeroutput>.
857 To failover an instance to its secondary node (only possible
858 in <literal>remote_raid1</literal> setup), use
859 <computeroutput>gnt-instance failover
860 <replaceable>INSTANCENAME</replaceable></computeroutput>.
864 For more instance and cluster administration details, see the
865 <emphasis>Ganeti administrator's guide</emphasis>.