Difference between “Non Responsive” && “Non Operational” hypervisor status in ovirt GUI

I think this tip will help you to understand the difference between these statuses..

  *      Non-operational:
It means there is something wrong with the configuration of the hypervisor.  The ovirt-engine can still communicate with the hypervisor though.

It can be a failure in the connectivity of hypervisor to any of the cluster’s ( ex: logical network, storage domain..etc ) components.  So check hypervisor is capable of working with all the components defined for a cluster.

*      Non-responsive:

means that the Ovirt Engine cannot communicate with the hypervisor via vdsm.

Luns are not visible in ovirt GUI when creating storage domain?

There could be different reasons which caused this behaviour.. How-ever make sure that you did cross-chek below requirements before assigning or when creating storage domain.
1. The LUN should be raw (no filesystem,no LVM, no data)
2. The LUN should be larger than 10Gb in size
3. The LUN should be r/w accessible from the SPM host.

 

Once you passed above checks, the Lun should be visible in the GUI. Also, if you have used that lun  previously for storage domain creation, you will be mostly into “Point 1” in above requirement.

Whats new in RHEV 3 ?

May be this is one of the question which I keep answering since rhev 3 release, so thought of blogging about it.. Instead of copy-paste, why can’t I point directly to http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.0/html/Manager_Release_Notes/sect-whatsnew.html ?

Glossary of RHEV/Ovirt terms ( Data Center, Storage Domain, SPM , Cluster, Hypervisor, VDSM..etc)

Data Center (DC):

It is the logical entity which consists of different clusters .. Clusters are made by number of hypervisors.. You can have more than 1 cluster in a DC.

 

Cluster:

As mentioned Cluster built by group of hypervisors.. The cluster has to be defined for a particular ‘processor’ type. For ex: You can not mix INTEL and AMD  hypervisors in the same cluster as of now.

 

RHEL or RHEV- hypervisor :

Refer #https://www.humblec.com/difference-between-kvm-and-rhevovirt/

RHEV-M ( RHEV Manager) : 

You got the answer from above URL.

VDSM:

The service running on RHEL or RHEV-Hypervisor which talks to RHEV Manager . This service listens on port 54321.

rhevm or jboss service :

The main service running on RHEV manager..

STORAGE DOMAIN :

This is the shared storage in a RHEV setup where Virtual Machines are hosted.. There are different protocols supported in a RHEV environment to create a storage domain.. NFS/ISCSI/FC ..etc.. When you create a storage domain there is a volume group created ( in case of FC/ISCSI) with NFS it is a file ..

STORAGE POOL MANAGER:  ( SPM)

In simple terms, there should be one server who controls access to the common/shared storage .  The SPM server do this job. There should be only one SPM per DC.  Any of the active host can be elected as a SPM server..

 

I am putting  “.” Here..  Let me know if you need anything need to be expanded or explained..

 

Additional Info:

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.0/html-single/Installation_Guide/index.html

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.0/html/Technical_Reference_Guide/chap-Technical_Reference_Guide-Storage_Architecture.html

www.ovirt.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ovirt-vdsm-storage.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Image Locked” status in ovirt/RHEV-M GUI

This is just an informational note :

 

As you know, it is possible to perform lots of operations on virtual machines through ovirt/rhev-m gui.. Before performing such operations, the VM storage has to be locked to avoid further damage/data corruption.. That said, all storage operations, such as create/delete VM/Template/Snapshot, will lock the VM image to perform the same. The storage operations (ex: snapshot ) depends the VM disk image size and the data on it. The time needed to perform these operations  vary.  So you may see “image locked” status on this time.. If the “VM” is continuing in “Image Locked” status for long time ( It depend on the operation) it could be something wrong with it, need to analyse further..

Should I use RHEL hypervisor or RHEV-Hypervisor ?

It is possible to use both ( RHEL and RHEV) hypervisors in an environment.. How-ever there are couple of things to consider.’1)  VDSM hooks are NOT supported with RHEV hypervisor, currently it is only supported with RHEL hypervisor. Refer below URL for more details on that. http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.0/html/Administration_Guide/VDSM_Hooks.html 2) RHEV hypervisor is a dedicated appliance, it …

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Give hugepage memory for guests in KVM virtualization

First of all, what are hugepages ? I would love to explain this, but it is already did by someone here, so I am just quoting some bits of it..

Thats it.. Hope this helps..

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cat /proc/meminfo |grep -i huge
AnonHugePages: 434176 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB ======; 2M
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# sysctl -a |grep -i huge
vm.nr_hugepages = 0
vm.nr_hugepages_mempolicy = 0
vm.hugetlb_shm_group = 0
vm.hugepages_treat_as_movable = 0
vm.nr_overcommit_hugepages = 0

My guest have ‘512M’ of memory , so I decided to give “256” ( total 256*2M=512) as the number of hugepages

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# sysctl vm.nr_hugepages=256
vm.nr_hugepages = 256
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# sysctl -a |grep -i huge
vm.nr_hugepages = 256
vm.nr_hugepages_mempolicy = 256
vm.hugetlb_shm_group = 0
vm.hugepages_treat_as_movable = 0
vm.nr_overcommit_hugepages = 0
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

So, hugepage assignment reflected here:

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cat /proc/meminfo |grep -i huge
AnonHugePages: 450560 kB
HugePages_Total: 256
HugePages_Free: 256
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

Once you assigned hugepages, you need to restart ‘libvirtd” service…

[root@humbles-lap hpages]# service libvirtd restart
Stopping libvirtd daemon: [ OK ]
Starting libvirtd daemon: [ OK ]
[root@humbles-lap hpages]#

Check mount point for ‘existence’ of a directory as shown below:

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cd /dev/hpages/
[root@humbles-lap hpages]# ls
libvirt
[root@humbles-lap hpages]# cd libvirt/
[root@humbles-lap libvirt]# ls
qemu
[root@humbles-lap libvirt]# cd qemu/
[root@humbles-lap qemu]# ls
[root@humbles-lap qemu]#
With the current configuration, I have NOT specified to have ‘hugepage’ backed memory for my guest..

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cat /etc/libvirt/qemu/rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm.xml |grep -i memory
memory;524288/memory;
currentMemory;524288/currentMemory;
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

I edited my guest xml configuration to say, this guest memory is backed with “HUGEPAGES”..

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cat /etc/libvirt/qemu/rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm.xml|grep -i memory -A 2
memory;524288/memory;
currentMemory;524288/currentMemory;
;memoryBacking;
hugepages/;
/memoryBacking;
vcpu;2/vcpu;
os;
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

Started guest:

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# virsh create /etc/libvirt/qemu/rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm.xml
Domain rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm created from /etc/libvirt/qemu/rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm.xml

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# virsh list
Id Name State
———————————-
1 rhel5.4-x86_64-kvm running

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

Now, check ‘meminfo’ in HOST system to know whether “HUGEPAGES” are used with GUESTS..

[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]# cat /proc/meminfo |grep -i huge
AnonHugePages: 483328 kB
HugePages_Total: 256
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
[root@humbles-lap qemu_upstream]#

virt-install –cpuset=auto

INFORMATIONAL NOTE: The option “virt-install –cpuset=auto ( with other switches)” can be used to pin physical cpus for the guest cpus. This option is really useful when “numa” capable host system is in use. So that you dont need to select host cpus to pin for guest cpus. The utility “virt-install” will form the optimal …

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