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Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager is a JBoss-based Java application running as a web service that provides centralized management for server and desktop virtualization. It is based on the open source oVirt project and is referred to as the oVirt Engine. The engine runs on another Oracle Linux environment, a dedicated host or deployed as a self-hosted engine. A self-hosted engine is a virtualized environment where the engine runs inside a virtual machine on the hosts in the environment. The virtual machine for the engine is created as part of the host configuration process. The engine communicates directly with the Virtual Desktop and Server Manager (VDSM) service, running on Oracle Linux KVM hosts as a daemon, to perform tasks such as managing hosts, VMs, networks, and storage, and to create new images and templates. The engine is deployed by the engine-setup script, the summary of which is shown in Figure 4.
The setup script uses the host FQDN as the URL for web access, though the user can also append ovirt-engine which is the redirect: https://austin245.dellhcilab.com/ovirt-engine/.
After deployment of the oVirt Engine, it is important to setup regular backups. oVirt offers a simple CLI tool, engine-backup, that dumps the engine to a single file which can be used for various restore operations. In fact, if backups are not taken regularly, Oracle Virtualization Manager warns the user in the event log with the following message: “There is no full backup available, please run engine-backup to prevent data loss in case of corruption.”
Although there are many options for backing up using the utility, including adding config files, the simplest operation is to run a full backup. It is best to save the backup file to a location off the hosted engine server. In this environment, a separate PowerFlex NFS mount, engine_backup, is used for this purpose.
Run the following command as root, modifying the file locations:
engine-backup --scope=all --mode=backup --file=/engine_backup/engine_backup_1-18-2024 --log=/engine_backup/engine_backup.log
Beyond the basics already noted, Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager offers administrators the ability to migrate VMs through the interface, manage high availability, and even setup storage quotas or performance limitations (throttling). There are three options for UI views shown in Figure 5: Administration Portal, VM Portal, and Monitoring Portal.
After logging in to the administration portal, users will be presented with a dashboard view displaying key information about the deployment such as VM counts, hosts count, clusters, storage, and so on. It also displays the status of each entity and key performance metrics in Figure 6.
This portal view is the heart of Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager as almost all activities related to the environment can be accomplished here. The user can create storage domains, clusters, VMs, add new hosts and change networking. The portal also provides an easy-to-use interface to upgrade Oracle Linux KVM hosts.
In the Clusters view of the Administration portal if new software becomes available, the interface informs the user. If the user drills down to the Hosts, each host indicates when an upgrade is available and enables a user to check for upgrades on demand. Both these views are present in Figure 7.
The VM Portal allows the user to drill down into each virtual machine in the environment and make changes at that level. Figure 8 shows the detail of one particular VM, austin160.dellhcilab.com.
The final option is the Monitoring Portal which has Grafana at its foundation. Grafana is an open-source analytics and monitoring platform that integrates with oVirt and provides dashboards, alerting, and monitoring capabilities. It is a highly customizable platform permitting users to modify and share dashboards. Grafana comes preconfigured with a selection of dashboard categories and dashboards shown in Figure 9.