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this is the current state in my company - non relevant details omitted: we have a production server which hosts a CRM in a VM using virtualbox. Let call this server "SMALL" as it is a small tower server. I can not switch off such a server until I've migrated/rebuilt the VM in a new server.

We have no experience with virt tecnologies like ovirt/vmware/hyper-V, with the exception of the testing ovirt install I've made on my laptop using the all-in-one plugin! We have used desktop virtualization technologies for a while now (from virtual box to local installs of kvm+libvirt).

The idea: We are going to buy a new server, let call it "BIG", and we would like to use the "BIG" machine as an oVirt node, setting the "SMALL" one as ovirt-engine.

The deploy scenario 1: can I build an oVirt node without the engine and create a new VM on it, migrate there the CRM (the "how" is out of the scope of this thread) and let it run? Later, when the CRM will be online in the "BIG" node, I would like to format the "SMALL" server and put an ovirt-engine on it. is this possible?

deploy scenario 2: add a step on top of the previous procedure: use a temp engine, even on a notebook, and deploy the oVirt node as described above. How can I migrate the whole engine later on the "SMALL" server, considering it has been already configured on a temp machine?

deploy scenario 3: I'm open to any other suggestion! :-)

thank you,

MN

matteo nunziati
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1 Answers1

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If you can afford downtime, why not simply backup the VM, install oVirt and restore the VM into an oVirt based VM?

Also, if the "small" box is going to be the engine, you can simply install the engine on it while the original VM runs in vbox, attach the "big" box as a host, and then move the VM into oVirt.

Another option is the self hosted engine, basically, deploy engine as a VM on the "big" box, move the VM, and later maybe also add the "small" box as a second host, so you can have a two node cluster.

dyasny
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  • while the self-hosted solution seems great, I would like to stick on a more "basic" solution as our first install. Anyway I suppose the following should hold: - install ovirt on SMALL using the allinone plugin side by side to virtualbox - run down the path you suggested. My only concern: does the same oVirt version manage 2 different underlying OS (SMALL has centos 6.4, BIG was going to host centos 7)? – matteo nunziati Sep 29 '15 at 16:31
  • Why use all-in-one at all? Just install the engine, and then add the big box as a host. You will end up with "small" as the engine only, and "big" as a host. Since you don't have shared storage, you need to use local storage anyway, and clustering is out of the question. Later, when the company needs grow, you can set up a SAN/NAS and add more boxes to the setup – dyasny Sep 29 '15 at 18:53
  • Ok mixing centos seems evil: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1167827 – matteo nunziati Sep 29 '15 at 19:57
  • Dyasny I see your point: the allinone was an idea to use the small server as emergency recovery not to cluster it with the other machine. Btw the only available nas is a 4core atom w/ 4sata disks in raid5 and 2 gbit nics – matteo nunziati Sep 29 '15 at 20:00
  • OMG. Why do you need an enterprise grade virtualization management system like oVirt? Just install a plain simple CentOS7 with KVM and virt-manager, and run your VMs there. – dyasny Sep 29 '15 at 20:40
  • It's not me: I can deal with kvm/libvirt cmd line as I do with my standard workflow. The issue is that a number of people will start using VMs for scientific research and we want to consolidate the whole bunch of VM into a single machine. None of them is involved in OS/VM admin nor they use linux (virtmanager): I'm not aware of any "nice" crossplatform kvm GUI as fast to deploy as oVirt: I've deployed it in a few minutes on a test laptop! and it is a **fast and easy to use**! If another narrower-in-scope fast-to-deploy web interface exists it would be nice too, but this is going off-topic :-) – matteo nunziati Sep 29 '15 at 20:47
  • OK, then you do need oVirt. As I said, I would simply do hosted engine on the big box, free up the small one later on, and add it to the setup (reinstalled with C7). Nice and simple. – dyasny Sep 30 '15 at 01:45