Prepare a lab for murano¶

This section provides basic information about lab’s system requirements. It also contains a description of a test which you may use to check if your hardware fits the requirements. To do this, run the test and compare the results with baseline data provided.

System prerequisites¶

Supported operating systems¶

Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS
RHEL/CentOS 6.4

System packages are required for Murano

Ubuntu

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

Install all the requirements on Ubuntu by running:

sudo apt-get install gcc python-pip python-dev \
libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libffi-dev \
libpq-dev python-openssl mysql-client

CentOS

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

Install all the requirements on CentOS by running:

sudo yum install gcc python-pip python-devel libxml2-devel \
libxslt-devel libffi-devel postgresql-devel pyOpenSSL \
mysql

Lab requirements¶

Criteria	Minimal	Recommended
CPU	4 core @ 2.4 GHz	24 core @ 2.67 GHz
RAM	8 GB	24 GB or more
HDD	2 x 500 GB (7200 rpm)	4 x 500 GB (7200 rpm)
RAID	Software RAID-1 (use mdadm as it will improve read performance almost two times)	Hardware RAID-10

Table: Hardware requirements

There are a few possible storage configurations except the shown above. All of them were tested and were working well.

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 folder where VM images are)
1x HDD (15000 rpm) 500+ GB

Test your lab host performance¶

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

You should use sysprepped images for this test, to simulate VM first boot.

Steps to reproduce test:

Prepare Windows 2012 Standard (with GUI) image in QCOW2 format. Let’s assume that its name is ws-2012-std.qcow2
Ensure that there is NO KVM PROCESSES on the host. To do this, run command:
```
ps aux | grep kvm
```

Make 5 copies of Windows image file:

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

Create script start-vm.sh in the folder with .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

Start ONE instance with command below (as root) and measure time between VM’s launch and the moment when Server Manager window appears. To view VM’s desktop, connect with VNC viewer to your host to VNC screen :1 (port 5901):
```
sudo ./start-vm.sh 1
```
Turn VM off. You may simply kill all KVM processes by
```
sudo killall kvm
```
Start FIVE instances with command below (as root) and measure time interval between ALL VM’s launch and the moment when LAST Server Manager window appears. To view VM’s desktops, connect with VNC viewer to your host to VNC screens :1 thru :5 (ports 5901-5905):
```
sudo ./start-vm.sh 5
```
Turn VMs off. You may simply kill all KVM processes by
```
sudo killall kvm
```

Baseline data¶

The table below provides baseline data which we’ve got in our environment.

	Boot 1 instance	Boot 5 instances
Avg. Time	3m:40s	8m
Max. Time	5m	20m

Avg. Time refers to the lab with recommended hardware configuration, while Max. Time refers to minimal hardware configuration.

Host optimizations¶

Default KVM installation could be improved to provide better performance.

The following optimizations may improve host performance up to 30%:

change default scheduler from CFQ to Deadline
use ksm
use vhost-net

Prepare a lab for murano