Deploy and Configure Virtual Appliance in KVM

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) uses Linux as a hypervisor to run virtual machines. For more information, see What is KVM?

This document contains links to RedHat documentation. Splunk AppDynamics makes no representation as to the accuracy of RedHat documentation because RedHat controls its own documentation.

You can deploy the Virtual Appliance by using the QCOW2 image. Splunk AppDynamics recommends you to use the custom scripts that are available in Splunk AppDynamics GitHub repository. This deployment requires three KVM hypervisors and runs single virtual machine in each hypervisors.

Before you run these scripts, ensure to update or verify the configuration details in config.cfg such as tags, deployment configuration, and IP addresses. After you download the image and scripts, grant the 744 permission for the custom scripts:

chmod 744 ~/<folder path or filename>

CODE

Prerequisites

Before you deploy the Virtual Appliance, ensure that:

• The NTP service is enabled to synchronize time across hypervisors.
  

  $ timedatectl status
                 Local time: Thu 2024-10-03 22:36:06 UTC
             Universal time: Thu 2024-10-03 22:36:06 UTC
                   RTC time: Thu 2024-10-03 22:36:06
                  Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
  System clock synchronized: yes
                NTP service: active
            RTC in local TZ: no

  CODE
• The KVM is enabled in the server.
  

  $ kvm-ok
  INFO: /dev/kvm exists
  KVM acceleration can be used

  CODE
• The bridged device is available. Note the device name to specify in the config.cfg file.

For more information, see Installing Ubuntu Server Considerations in Readme.md.

Update and Verify the KVM Configuration

The custom scripts uses the configuration specified in the config.cfg file. Update and verify the configuration in the config.cfg file. This file includes the following parameters:

Parameter	Description
Storage Pool	This pool stores the image file and disks of the virtual machines. The storage pool parameters specifies the following: The storage pool parameters for all the virtual machine The path of the virtual machine disk storage that is configured on each KVM node.
Network	Specifies the Linux bridge device that connects the virtual machine to the host network.
IP Addresses of the Host and Peers	Specifies IP addresses of the host and its peers. The Virtual Appliance cluster will deploy in the LIBVIRT_HOST_SELF IP address. In LIBVIRT_HOST_PEERS, list the IP addresses of other KVM hypervisor nodes on which you want to deploy virtual machines. Do not specify the SELF IP address in the peers list.
Virtual Machine Network	Specifies the virtual machine network parameters such as cluster name, CIDRs, gateway, DNS, and host name.
Virtual Machine Size	Specifies the Virtual Appliance profile with its specifications. See Virtual Appliance Sizing. Currently, the Virtual Appliance supports only Small profile on KVM.

The following is an example config.cfg script:

## libvirt/kvm host user with virt permissions
DEPLOY_ID=${USER}   ## defaults to current user

## Libvirt directory storage pool name
# Storage pool parameters
STORAGE_POOL="appdva-storage"         # node-local directory
STORAGE_PATH="/data/${STORAGE_POOL}"  # path to local storage on each node

# Network parameters (kvm phys host VM bridge name)
BRIDGE_NAME=<Name of the Bridge Network>

# Physical libvirt hypervisor IPs
# used for virsh remote connections:
#   VIRT_CONNECTION_URL="qemu+ssh://${DEPLOY_ID}@${HOSTIP}/system"
# enabling remote operations on different physical libvirt nodes
#
LIBVIRT_HOST_SELF="10.0.0.1" # specify the primary node here 
LIBVIRT_HOST_PEERS=(
    "10.0.0.2"
    "10.0.0.3"
)
# LIBVIRT_HOST_PEERS=( )

## VM Network parameters
VM_CLUSTER_NAME="libvirt1"
# these CIDR values change with the cluster name, consult the wiki
VM_CIDRS=(
    "10.0.0.11/20"
    "10.0.0.12/20"
    "10.0.0.13/20"
)
VM_GATEWAY=10.x.x.x
VM_DNS=10.x.x.x
VM_HOSTNAME_PREFIX="appdva-${VM_CLUSTER_NAME}-vm"
VM_NAME_PREFIX="${DEPLOY_ID}-${VM_HOSTNAME_PREFIX}"

## VM size parameters
# profile=small
NUM_VMS=3
VM_VCPUS=16
VM_MEMORY_GB=64
VM_OS_DISK_GB=200
VM_DATA_DISK_GB=500

Run the Custom Scripts

We recommend you to run the scripts in the given order to deploy virtual machines in KVM.

Additional Scripts

If you decide to clean up storage and virtual machines, you can run the following scripts for those tasks: