Bhaisaab - How to install CloudStack with KVM host

Rohit Yadav Sep 12, 2014

This is a how-to guide on setting up CloudStack on Ubuntu and with KVM host in basic zone, basic networking but with security groups. You may do this on a VM or an actual host. This post covers setting up a CloudStack cloud on one box, which means we’ll install everything from CloudStack management server to agent to MySQL to NFS, all in one box. My motivation was to create a VM with which I can build, test Apache CloudStack (ACS) locally and show that one can do it in less than 30 minutes given ample bandwidth.

Note: this should work for ACS 4.3.0 and above. This how-to post may get outdated in future, so please read the latest docs and/or read the latest docs on KVM host installation .

First install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS x86_64 on a system that has at least 2G RAM, preferably 4GB RAM, and with a 64-bit CPU that has Intel VT-x or AMD-V enabled. I personally use VMWare Fusion which can give VMs CPU with Intel VT-x which is needed by KVM to do HVM. Too bad VirtualBox cannot do this yet, or one can say KVM cannot do paravirtualization (like Xen).

Next, we need to do bunch of things:

Setup networking, IPs, create bridge

Install cloudstack-management and cloudstack-common

Install and setup MySQL server

Setup NFS for primary and secondary storages

Preseed systemvm templates

Prepare KVM host and install cloudstack-agent

Configure Firewall

Start your cloud!

Let’s start by installing some basic packages, assuming you’re root or have sudo powers:

Make sure root is able to ssh using password, fix in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Reset root password and remember this password:

Ubuntu s**ks at configuring networking, you need to reboot everytime to apply changes, and they don’t have systemd yet. Though, its Unity feels more stable than Gnome3, but then again it’s the distribution that does not even say that it’s GNU/Linux (go ahead, read their website ). For good or bad reasons, it’s one of the most popular distros. Enough of trolling, let’s configure some network.

We’ll be setting up bridges and not OpenVswitch because I like bridges and they seem to work for people for several years now. CloudStack requires that KVM hosts have two bridges cloudbr0 and cloudbr1 which is because these names are sort of hard coded in the code and on the KVM host we need to have a way to let VMs communicate to the host, between themselves and reach the outside world etc. Add network rules and configure IPs as applicable.

Notice, we’re not using cloudbr1 because the intention is to setup basic zone, basic networking, so all networking going through one bridge only.

We’re done with setting up networking, just note the cloudbr0 IP. In my case, it was 172.16.154.10 . You may notice that we’re not configuring eth0 at all, it’s because we’ve a bridge now and we expose this bridge to the outside networking using this cloudbr0’s IP. By removing IP from eth0 (static or dhcp), we get ubuntu to use cloudbr0 as its default interface and use cloudbr0’s gateway as its default gateway and route. Silly Ubuntu, you need to reboot your VM or host now.

Setup CloudStack repo, you may use something that I host (the link is unreliable, let me know if it stops working for you). You may use any other debian repo as well. One can also build from source and host their own repositories .

We need to install the CloudStack management server, MySQL server and setup the management server database:

You don’t need to explicitly install cloudstack-common because the management package depends on it. This is to point out that many tools, scripts can be found in this package, such as tools to setup database, preseed systemvm template etc.

You may put following rules on your /etc/mysql/my.cnf, they are mostly to configure innodb settings and have MySQL use the bin-log “ROW” format which can be useful for replication etc. Since we’re doing only test setup we may skip this, even though CloudStack docs say that you put only this but I think on production systems you may need to configure many more options (perhaps 400 of those).

Now, let’s setup managment server database;

We’ll setup NFS and preseed systemvm.

I prefer to download the systemvm first and then preseed it:

Time to setup cloudstack-agent, libvirt and KVM:

Finally punch in holes on the firewall, free ‘em ports, substitute your network in the following:

All set! Make sure tomcat is not running, start the agent and management server:

If all goes well, open http://cloudbr0-IP:8080/client and you’ll see the ACS login page. Use username admin and password password to log in. Now setup a basic zone, in the following steps change the IPs as applicable:

Pick zone name, DNS 172.16.154.2, External DNS 8.8.8.8, basic zone + SG

Pick pod name, gateway 172.16.154.2, netmask 255.255.255.0, IP range 172.16.154.200-250

Add guest network, gateway 172.16.154.2, netmask 255.255.255.0, IP range 172.16.154.100-199

Pick cluster name, hypervisor KVM

Add the KVM host, IP 172.16.154.10, user root, password whatever-the-root-password-is

Add primary NFS storage, IP 172.16.154.10, path /export/primary

Add secondary NFS storage, IP 172.16.154.10, path /export/secondary

Hit launch, if everything goes well launch your zone!

Keep an eye on your /var/log/cloudstack/management/management-server.log and /var/log/cloudstack/agent/agent.log for possible issues. Read the admin docs for more cloudy admin tasks. Have fun hacking your CloudStack cloud.