System requirements¶

Software prerequisites¶

Before you install murano, verify your system meets the following prerequisites.

Supported operating systems:

• Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS
• RHEL/CentOS
• Debian

System packages for Ubuntu:

• gcc
• python-pip
• python-dev
• libxml2-dev
• libxslt-dev
• libffi-dev
• libpq-dev
• python-openssl
• mysql-client

System packages for CentOS:

• gcc
• python-pip
• python-devel
• libxml2-devel
• libxslt-devel
• libffi-devel
• postgresql-devel
• pyOpenSSL
• mysql

Hardware requirements¶

We recommend that your system meets the following hardware requirements:

Other possible storage configurations:

• 1x SSD 500+ GB
• 1x HDD (7200 rpm) 500+ GB and 1x SSD 250+ GB (install the system onto the HDD and mount the SSD drive to the directory where the virtual machines images are stored)
• 1x HDD (15000 rpm) 500+ GB

Testing the performance¶

We have measured the time required to boot 1 to 5 instances of the Windows operating system simultaneously. You can use this data as the baseline to check if your system is fast enough.

To reproduce the performance test, proceed with the following steps:

1. Prepare a Windows 2012 Standard (with GUI) image in the QCOW2 format. This example uses the ws-2012-std.qcow2 image.

2. Verify that there are no KVM processes running on the host:

   ps aux | grep kvm
   

3. Make 5 copies of the Windows image file:

   for i in $(seq 5); do \
   cp ws-2012-std.qcow2 ws-2012-std-$i.qcow2; done
   

4. Create the start-vm.sh script in the directory with the .qcow2 files:

   #!/bin/bash
   [ -z $1 ] || echo "VM count not provided!"; exit 1
   for i in $(seq $1); do
   echo "Starting VM $i ..."
   kvm -m 1024 -drive file=ws-2012-std-$i.qcow2,if=virtio -net user -net nic,model=virtio -nographic -usbdevice tablet -vnc :$i & done
   

5. Start ONE instance using the command below (as root) and measure time between the instance launch and the moment when the Server Manager window displays.

   sudo ./start-vm.sh 1
   

   To view the instance desktop, connect with VNC viewer to your host to VNC screen :1 (port 5901).

6. Turn off the instance. You may simply kill all KVM processes by running:

   sudo killall kvm
   

7. Start FIVE instances with the command below (as root) and measure time interval between ALL instances launch and the moment when the LAST Server Manager window displays.

   sudo ./start-vm.sh 5
   

   To view VM’s desktops, connect with VNC viewer to your host to VNC screens :1 thru :5 (ports 5901-5905).

8. Turn off the instances. You may simply kill all KVM processes by running:

   sudo killall kvm