Avira AntiVir Personal on Linux (I)

I have always said over and over that the myth about there are no viruses for Linux is absolutely false. Occurs that there are fewer viruses on Linux because it is an open operating system, so many people may contribute quickly to fix its fails. In addition, it is more robust and less used than Windows, thereby hackers have got less interest to break it.

But figure for a moment when you are surfing the net, for instance with Firefox, and it turns out that your browser contains any critical vulnerability, or for example, the web page which you are visiting utilizes Java or Flash, and the versions that you have installed on your Linux system are vulnerable... your computer would be exposed to any attack or malware infection.

Now it is clear that many times, Linux is not really the guilty, but the responsability comes from third-party software. For that reason, I think that it is necessary to have installed a good antivirus on our Linux systems, regardless of the kind of distribution.

There are several good and free antivirus for Linux, such as avast, ClamAV, AVG, but my favourite option is Avira AntiVir. Its main features are:

• Easy installation through a script.


• Command Line Scanner: configurable on-demand searches for all malware types (viruses, horms, backdoors, trojans, etc.).


• Resident guard: configurable on-access actions (block, delete, repair, move and rename) when malware is detected.


• Heuristic detection.


• Automatic update for product, scan engine and virus signature file.

The most important characteristic of Avira with regard to other solutions is the AntiVir Guard module (ClamAV has got it too), which runs as a daemon process and it is permanently monitoring all the accesses to the system (on-access) and saving it against possible viruses.

In addition, the AV-Comparatives organization published in April 2011 the last review about On-demand Detection of Malicious Software, and Avira AntiVir reached excellent results.

Other modules belonging to Avira are AntiVir Command Line Scanner (allows to scan files in search of viruses or suspicious elements, and it can be integrated with scripts) and AntiVir Updater (downloads current updates from the Avira web servers, manually or automatically).

Also say that AntiVir Guard is based on DazukoFS, an open source software that provides a kernel module which lets execute online file access control, by intercepting memory and disk calls and passing the information to an user space application, in this case Avira AntiVir. Other applications are also based on Dazuko, such as ClamAV, Panda Security for Linux, F-Secure, etc.

The AntiVir installation package supplies a DazukoFS version which is automatically configured and installed (in theory). DazukoFS depends on the kernel version; for this purpose it is better to install manually this module.

Therefore let's get going to download the version 3.1.2 of Dazuko (this number of version works fine with a 2.6.32 kernel) and install it on our testing system, CentOS 6.0 (32 bits). To begin with, I will also get some necessary packages.

[root@centos ~]# yum install gcc make kernel-devel file

[root@centos tmp]# wget http://dazuko.dnsalias.org/files/dazukofs-3.1.2.tar.gz

[root@centos tmp]# tar xvzf dazukofs-3.1.2.tar.gz ; cd dazukofs-3.1.2

Now we are ready to compile and install DazukoFS as a module into our Linux system.

[root@centos dazukofs-3.1.2]# make ; make dazukofs_install

[root@centos dazukofs-3.1.2]# modprobe dazukofs

[root@centos dazukofs-3.1.2]# echo "modprobe dazukofs" >> /etc/rc.modules

[root@centos dazukofs-3.1.2]# chmod +x /etc/rc.modules

Lastly, also point out that the license of this antivirus allows you to install it for a personal use, for instance on your own PC or your home server. Note that if you use AntiVir Guard via DazukoFS, you will need to compile this module when you change the kernel. For production environments I always suggest ClamAV.

Adding a KVM hypervisor to OpenNebula (II)

Once I have finished to configure the KVM computing node, Adding a KVM hypervisor to OpenNebula (I), today I am going to conclude this series of technical articles about OpenNebula by setting a new instance up on kvm01.

First of all, I am going to use for my testing, a ttylinux image, downloaded directly from the OpenNebula website. This sort of Linux distribution is designed to consume fewer resources than a typical operating system such as Debian or CentOS.

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp$ wget http://dev.opennebula.org/attachments/download/170/ttylinux.tar.gz

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp$ tar xvzf ttylinux.tar.gz ; cd ~/templates

Next step is to define an image template so as to register it into OpenNebula.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ cat ttylinux.img
NAME        = "ttylinux"
PATH        = /tmp/ttylinux.img
DESCRIPTION = "Very small Linux distribution based on a 2.6 kernel"

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ oneimage register ttylinux.img

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ oneimage list
ID     USER                 NAME TYPE              REGTIME PUB PER STAT  #VMS
 0 oneadmin   Ubuntu Server 8.04   OS   Jul 02, 2011 10:34  No  No  rdy     0
 1 oneadmin             ttylinux   OS   Aug 07, 2011 18:30  No  No  rdy     0

Now we have a virtual image ready to be used on our KVM nodes, in this case kvm01.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ ls -lh ../var/images/8625d68b699fd30e64360471eb2c38fed47fcfb6
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud 40M 2011-08-07 20:30 var/images/8625d68b699fd30e64360471eb2c38fed47fcfb6

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ file ../var/images/8625d68b699fd30e64360471eb2c38fed47fcfb6
var/images/8625d68b699fd30e64360471eb2c38fed47fcfb6: x86 boot sector, LInux i386 boot LOader; partition 1: ID=0x83, starthead 1, startsector 63, 81585 sectors, code offset 0xeb

Then we have to make up a virtual network which will be utilized by all virtual machines built on our KVM computing node. Note that the key of this network is the bridge created in the previous article.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ cat kvm.net
NAME            = "KVM Network"
TYPE            = RANGED
PUBLIC          = NO
BRIDGE          = br0
NETWORK_ADDRESS = 192.168.1.160
NETWORK_SIZE    = 16
NETMASK         = 255.255.255.0
GATEWAY         = 192.168.1.1
DNS             = 194.30.0.1

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevnet create kvm.net

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevnet list
ID USER     NAME              TYPE BRIDGE P #LEASES
 0 oneadmin KVM Network     Ranged    br0 N       0

And lastly, we just have to set an instance template up where we outline the characteristics of our virtual machine and thus, to be able to run it over kvm01.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ cat ttylinux01.vm
NAME   = ttylinux01
CPU    = 1
MEMORY = 128

DISK   = [ SOURCE = "/srv/cloud/one/var/images/8625d68b699fd30e64360471eb2c38fed47fcfb6",
           TARGET = "hda" ]

NIC    = [ NETWORK = "KVM Network" ]

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm create ttylinux01.vm

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm list
ID     USER     NAME STAT CPU     MEM        HOSTNAME        TIME
 0 oneadmin ttylinux runn   0      0K           kvm01 00 00:01:03

Adding a KVM hypervisor to OpenNebula (I)

After ending up how to add a VMware ESXi hypervisor to OpenNebula, now it is turn to configure a KVM node into our cloud infraestructure with OpenNebula.

To begin with, we are going to make up a network bridge on kvm01. For this purpose, we must put the NIC into manual mode and associate it to the bridge (br0). Remember that this new interface has also to have an IP address belonging to the own subnetwork.

root@kvm01:~# cat /etc/network/interfaces
...
auto eth0
   iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
   iface br0 inet static
   address 192.168.1.12
   netmask 255.255.255.0
   network 192.168.1.0
   broadcast 192.168.1.255
   gateway 192.168.1.1
   dns-nameservers 194.30.0.1
   dns-search opennebula.local
   bridge_ports eth0
   bridge_fd 9
   bridge_hello 2
   bridge_maxage 12
   bridge_stp off

root@kvm01:~# /etc/init.d/networking restart

The reason for creating a bridge is clear: to be able to address the virtual machines built in this node. Otherwise, we would never link them.

Then we have to install the corresponding packages to be able to virtualize machines through KVM. The ruby package will be used to manage the node from OpenNebula and nfs-common to mount the shared area exported by storage01. As you can see, the libvirtd daemon must be put into listening mode without authentication.

root@kvm01:~# aptitude install kvm libvirt-bin ruby nfs-common

root@kvm01:~# cat /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf
...
listen_tls = 0
listen_tcp = 1
auth_tcp   = "none"

root@kvm01:~# cat /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf
...
dynamic_ownership = 0

root@kvm01:~# cat /etc/init/libvirt-bin.conf
...
env libvirtd_opts="-d -l"

root@kvm01:~# restart libvirt-bin

Besides, it is necessary to uncomment the line which says "dynamic_ownership = 1" (libvirt should dynamically change file ownership to match the configured user/group) and modify it to 0. Otherwise, you would get an error as follows.

neadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ tail -f ../var/oned.log
...
Sat Aug 13 20:32:11 2011 [TM][D]: Message received: TRANSFER SUCCESS 1 -
Sat Aug 13 20:32:12 2011 [VMM][D]: Message received: LOG - 1 Command execution fail: 'if [ -x "/var/tmp/one/vmm/kvm/deploy" ]; then /var/tmp/one/vmm/kvm/deploy /srv/cloud/one/var//1/images/deployment.0; else                              exit 42; fi'
Sat Aug 13 20:32:12 2011 [VMM][D]: Message received: LOG - 1 STDERR follows.
Sat Aug 13 20:32:12 2011 [VMM][D]: Message received: LOG - 1 error: Failed to create domain from /srv/cloud/one/var//1/images/deployment.0
Sat Aug 13 20:32:12 2011 [VMM][D]: Message received: LOG - 1 error: unable to set user and group to '104:112' on '/srv/cloud/one/var//1/images/disk.0': Invalid argument
Sat Aug 13 20:32:12 2011 [VMM][D]: Message received: LOG - 1 ExitCode: 255

Next step is to add a new user called oneadmin (with ID 1001, the same that in the rest of computers). I prefer to set a password up for this user because later, you have to copy the frontend01's public key in this machine.

root@kvm01:~# mkdir -p /srv/cloud/one/var

root@kvm01:~# groupadd --gid 1001 cloud

root@kvm01:~# useradd --uid 1001 -s /bin/bash -d /srv/cloud/one -g cloud -G kvm,libvirtd oneadmin

root@kvm01:~# passwd oneadmin

root@kvm01:~# chown -R oneadmin:cloud /srv/cloud

root@kvm01:~# id oneadmin
uid=1001(oneadmin) gid=1001(cloud) groups=1001(cloud),112(kvm),113(libvirtd)

root@kvm01:~# cat /etc/fstab
...
storage01:/srv/cloud/one/var /srv/cloud/one/var      nfs4    _netdev,auto    0       0

root@kvm01:~# mount -a

In addition, the node must be synchronized with all the machines of the cluster.

root@kvm01:~# crontab -e
...
0 * * * * ntpdate pool.ntp.org

And finally, we have to copy the public key from frontend01, so that this computer can be remotely handled by OpenNebula.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub oneadmin@kvm01

So as to check the installation, we can execute the next order from frontend01.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ lib/remotes/im/run_probes kvm kvm01
ARCH=x86_64 MODELNAME="Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz"

Now we are ready to use the new KVM node in our cloud computing architecture.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ onehost create kvm01 im_kvm vmm_kvm tm_nfs

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ onehost list
ID NAME              CLUSTER  RVM   TCPU   FCPU   ACPU    TMEM    FMEM STAT
 0 kvm01             default    0    100    100    100      2G    1.9G   on

Tuning Zabbix to improve its performance (II)

Let's continue with the last article about tuning Zabbix to improve its performance. First of all, I am going to set the suitable kernel parameters into the sysctl.conf file.

root@zbx01:~# cat /etc/sysctl.conf
...
# Maximum percentage of physical memory usage before going to swap
vm.swappiness = 10

# Number of open files for all processes
fs.file-max = 407020

# Minimum, default and maximum size of the send/receive buffer used by each TCP socket
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 8192        87380   16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 8192        87380   16777216

# Maximum number of queued connection requests which have still not received an ACK (three-way handshake)
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 2048

# Number of seconds to wait for a final FIN packet before the socket is forcibly closed
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 25

# Number of seconds a connection needs to be idle before TCP begins sending out keep-alive probes
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 1200

# Maximum TCP send window
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216

# Maximum TCP receive window
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216

# Maximum size in bytes of a message queue
kernel.msgmnb = 65536

# Maximum size for a message text
kernel.msgmax = 65536

# Maximum size in bytes for a shared memory segment
kernel.shmmax = 68719476736

# System wide maximum of shared memory pages
kernel.shmall = 4294967296

Then I am going to fit the values of MySQL by means of its configuration file. This part is really important if you want to achieve a good performance.

In order to adjust them, I have been following the status of the database throughout several weeks, by using tuning tools such as MySQL Performance Tuning Primer Script or MySQLTuner.

root@zbx01:~# cat /etc/mysql/my.cnf
...
# Size of the buffer used for index blocks
key_buffer = 16M

# Maximum size of one packet or any generated/intermediate string
max_allowed_packet = 16M

# Number of threads the server should cache for reuse
thread_cache_size = 64

# Maximum allowed number of simultaneous client connections
max_connections = 256

# Number of open tables for all threads
table_cache = 1024

# Number of table definitions that can be stored in the definition cache
table_definition_cache = 1024

# Do not cache results that are larger than this number of bytes
query_cache_limit = 16M

# Amount of memory allocated for caching query results
query_cache_size = 1024M

# Minimum size (in bytes) for blocks allocated by the query cache
query_cache_min_res_unit = 512

# 0: do not cache
# 1: cache all cacheable query results except for those that begin with SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE
# 2: cache results only for cacheable queries that begin with SELECT SQL_CACHE
query_cache_type = 1

# Slow queries are logged
log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log

# If a query takes longer than this value (seconds), the server logs the query
long_query_time = 5

# Queries that are expected to retrieve all rows are logged
log-queries-not-using-indexes

# Size in bytes of the memory buffer that InnoDB uses to cache data and indexes of its tables
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 4096M

With respect to MySQL, stand out that it is also important to defragment the query cache to enhance its utilization, by carrying out a "flush query cache" on the database. In my installation, I have seen that the optimum period is every hour.

root@zbx01:~# crontab -e
...
0 */1 * * * mysql -u root -pxxxxxx -e "flush query cache"

And finally, I have changed certain parameters from the Zabbix configuration file. The most important variable is related to the pre-forked pollers.

If this number is not enough, your Zabbix server will not be able to save all monitored data and you will find lack of many values. This is due to if the server runs out of sufficient processes to attend the requests, they will be ruled out and not registered.

root@zbx01:~# cat /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
...
# Number of pre-forked instances of pollers
StartPollers=96

# Shared memory size for storing hosts and items data
CacheSize=64M

# Shared memory size for storing history data
HistoryCacheSize=8M

# Shared memory size for storing trends data.
TrendCacheSize=8M

# Shared memory size for storing character, text or log history data
HistoryTextCacheSize=8M

Regarding Housekeeping, I have not modified any default parameter. In this way, the housekeeping procedure runs every hour and deletes all unnecessary values into the database.

If you note that your server does not work properly because it is using up lots of resources (CPU, memory, I/O) in this task, you will have to fit these options.

root@zbx01:~# cat /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
...
# Housekeeping is removing unnecessary information from history, alert, and alarm tables
# HousekeepingFrequency=1

# No more than MaxHousekeeperDelete rows will be deleted per one task in one housekeeping cycle
# MaxHousekeeperDelete=500

# Enable/disable housekeeping
# DisableHousekeeping=0

Tuning Zabbix to improve its performance (I)

I am really looking forward to this article. I think it is going to be really useful for Zabbix administrators.

When you have to control a small group of machines, it is enough to install Zabbix (either from the repositories or the source code) and not modify any parameter. But when the number of monitored machines or items is very large, it is necessary to fit some values related to the operating system, the database and the Zabbix itself. Otherwise it is possible that your system acts up or the performance is not expected.

Bellow you can see the status of my Zabbix server at work (Zabbix 1.8.5 with MySQL 5.1, on Ubuntu 11.04 - 64 bits). I am monitoring around 430 devices, between servers and switches, and you can distinguish that the requeried server performance (new values per second) is really huge: 1687.




This configuration would not be possible with a Zabbix base installation. Also point out the hardware features of the server: 4 vCPUs (2.66 GHz), 8 GB RAM and 254 GB of storage.

First of all, we are going to take a look at several graphics of the server. Let's get started with the memory consumption during a typical day. The figure shows that the average available memory is around 1.73 GB and the system is not swapping.




Regarding the CPU, I have chosen a period of 6 hours so as to explain the concept of Housekeeping in Zabbix. As you can make out in the next chart, the normal use of CPU is about 20-25%, but each hour, there is a strong increment. This situation coincides with a rise of the Input/Output operations.




The Housekeeping is a task run by Zabbix which takes care of removing the unnecessary data of the history, alerts and alarms tables. Taking a look at the zabbix log, you can find out how many records are deleted from the database.

root@zbx01:~# egrep 'housekeeper|Deleted' /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_server.log
1599:20110719:230307.692 Executing housekeeper
1599:20110719:231127.392 Deleted 1522478 records from history and trends
1599:20110720:001127.393 Executing housekeeper
1599:20110720:001927.742 Deleted 1480673 records from history and trends
...

This procedure is configured by means of different parameters into the zabbix_server.conf file.

Through the load average graph, we can also appreciate this issue, where the load average (1 min) reaches maximum increases of 1.30.




And finally, the following graphic represents the status of the Zabbix cache during a week. Its values are rightly suited too.




In the next article, I will teach how to set up correctly the parameters related to the Linux kernel, MySQL and Zabbix.

Adding a VMware ESXi hypervisor to OpenNebula (III)

This is the last article about Adding a VMware ESXi hypervisor to OpenNebula. In this posting, we are going to build a virtual machine up on the esxi01 node.

To begin with, I am going to download a virtual image from the Virtual Appliances Marketplace, specifically an Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS distribution (I will drop it off into the tmp directory).

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386$ ls -lh
total 529M
-rw-rw-r-- 1 oneadmin cloud  269 2008-07-05 17:59 README-vmware-image.txt
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud 8.5K 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386.nvram
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud 144M 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s001.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud 207M 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s002.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud 177M 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s003.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud 1.8M 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s004.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud  64K 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s005.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud  592 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386.vmdk
-rw------- 1 oneadmin cloud    0 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 oneadmin cloud 1.1K 2008-07-05 17:59 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386.vmx

Then I am going to register the image in OpenNebula. For this purpose, it is necessary to define an image template.

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386$ cat ubuntu-server-8.04.img
NAME        = "Ubuntu Server 8.04"
DESCRIPTION = "Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS (32 bits)"

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386$ onevmware register --disk-vmdk ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386.vmdk --disk-flat ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s001.vmdk,ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s002.vmdk,ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s003.vmdk,ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s004.vmdk,ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s005.vmdk ubuntu-server-8.04.img

What happens now? We have a virtual image ready to be used. This image has been stored into the images directory.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ oneimage list
ID     USER                 NAME TYPE              REGTIME PUB PER STAT  #VMS
 0 oneadmin   Ubuntu Server 8.04   OS   Jul 02, 2011 10:34  No  No  rdy     0

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ ls -l var/images/0ffb8867916a29e279e5ac2374833faa84fe5193/
total 540740
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud       592 2011-07-02 12:34 disk.vmdk
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud 150339584 2011-07-02 12:34 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s001.vmdk
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud 216268800 2011-07-02 12:35 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s002.vmdk
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud 185204736 2011-07-02 12:36 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s003.vmdk
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud   1835008 2011-07-02 12:37 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s004.vmdk
-rw-rw---- 1 oneadmin cloud     65536 2011-07-02 12:37 ubuntu-server-8.04.1-i386-s005.vmdk

What is the next step? Easy, to make up a virtual network so as to be able to connect our future virtual machine on it. In my example, I have created a simple ranged network called ESXi Network. You can review the different parameters by taking a look at the exposed link in this paragraph.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ mkdir templates ; cd templates

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ cat esxi.net
NAME            = "ESXi Network"
TYPE            = RANGED
PUBLIC          = NO
BRIDGE          = "VM Network"
NETWORK_ADDRESS = 192.168.1.160
NETWORK_SIZE    = 16
NETMASK         = 255.255.255.0
GATEWAY         = 192.168.1.1
DNS             = 194.30.0.1

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevnet create esxi.net

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevnet list
ID USER     NAME              TYPE BRIDGE P #LEASES
 0 oneadmin ESXi Network    Ranged VM Net N       0

And finally, we must just set up an instance template in order to declare the features of our virtual machine. Also point out that a virtual machine is known as instance as well.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ cat ubuntu-server01.vm
NAME   = "UbuntuServer-01"
CPU    = 1
MEMORY = 512

DISK   = [ IMAGE  = "Ubuntu Server 8.04",
           TARGET = hda ]

NIC    = [ NETWORK = "ESXi Network" ]

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm create ubuntu-server01.vm

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm list
ID     USER     NAME STAT CPU     MEM        HOSTNAME        TIME
 0 oneadmin UbuntuSe pend   0      0K                 00 00:00:07

We can see in the output of the preceding onevm list command that, the state of the instance is pend (pending), that is to say, it is waiting to be deployed on a hypervisor, in my case, esxi01. So let's go.

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm deploy 0 0

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm list
ID     USER     NAME STAT CPU     MEM        HOSTNAME        TIME
 0 oneadmin UbuntuSe prol   0      0K          esxi01 00 00:00:36

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm list
ID     USER     NAME STAT CPU     MEM        HOSTNAME        TIME
 0 oneadmin UbuntuSe boot   0      0K          esxi01 00 00:00:50

oneadmin@frontend01:~/templates$ onevm list
ID     USER     NAME STAT CPU     MEM        HOSTNAME        TIME
 0 oneadmin UbuntuSe runn   0      0K          esxi01 00 00:01:07

When we treat to deploy the virtual machine on the node, its first state is prol (prolog), then it reaches a boot state (booting), and lastly, runn (running), once the instance has been started up.

Adding a VMware ESXi hypervisor to OpenNebula (II)

Let's go ahead with the development of the cloud computing infraestructure based on OpenNebula by adding a VMware ESXi hypervisor. In the previous article, we saw how to configure a VMware vSphere node and now, we are going to set up the needed part on frontend01.

In order to manage the VMware node from OpenNebula, it is necessary to install libvirt on frontend01, and on top of all that, this software must be compiled with the ESX support. In this way, you cannot use the corresponding package located in the Ubuntu repositories. I am going to utilize the 0.9.2 version of libvirt.

root@frontend01:~# aptitude install libgnutls-dev libdevmapper-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev python-dev libnl-dev libapparmor-dev

root@frontend01:/tmp# wget http://libvirt.org/sources/libvirt-0.9.2.tar.gz

root@frontend01:/tmp# tar xvzf libvirt-0.9.2.tar.gz ; cd libvirt-0.9.2

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# ./configure --with-esx --with-apparmor --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/lib --sbindir=/usr/sbin --datarootdir=/usr/share --localstatedir=/var --libexecdir=/usr/lib/libvirt

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# make ; make install

I have also compiled the source code with AppArmor support, so I have had to move the required files.

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# mkdir -p /etc/apparmor.d/libvirt

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# cp -a examples/apparmor/usr.* /etc/apparmor.d/
root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# cp -a examples/apparmor/TEMPLATE /etc/apparmor.d/libvirt/
root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# cp -a examples/apparmor/libvirt-qemu /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# cat /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.libvirtd
...
owner /srv/cloud/one/var/** rw,
}

root@frontend01:/tmp/libvirt-0.9.2# /etc/init.d/apparmor restart

Next step is to download and install the VMware Drivers Addon (version 2.2.0 in my case). This wrapper enables the communication between OpenNebula and VMware ESXi through libvirt. This operation must be effected by means of the oneadmin user.

When you run the install.sh script and if everything went well, you will get a message about a specific code that you have to add into the oned.conf file.

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp$ wget http://dev.opennebula.org/attachments/download/350/vmware-2.2.0.tar.gz

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp$ tar xvzf vmware-2.2.0.tar.gz ; cd vmware-2.2.0

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/vmware-2.2.0$ ./install.sh
VMWare Drivers Addon successfully installed

# After the installation, please add the following to your oned.conf file
# and restart OpenNebula to activate the VMware Drivers Addon

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#  VMware Driver Addon Virtualization Driver Manager Configuration
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VM_MAD = [
name       = "vmm_vmware",
executable = "one_vmm_sh",
arguments  = "vmware",
default    = "vmm_sh/vmm_sh_vmware.conf",
type       = "vmware" ]
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#  VMware Driver Addon Information Driver Manager Configuration
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IM_MAD = [
name       = "im_vmware",
executable = "one_im_sh",
arguments  = "vmware" ]
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# VMware Driver Addon Transfer Manager Driver Configuration
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TM_MAD = [
name       = "tm_vmware",
executable = "one_tm",
arguments  = "tm_vmware/tm_vmware.conf" ]
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Due to there is a mistake in the install.sh script, you must execute manually the following two orders.

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/vmware-2.2.0$ mkdir -p $ONE_LOCATION/var/remotes/im/vmware.d && cp -r im/remotes/* $ONE_LOCATION/var/remotes/im/vmware.d

oneadmin@frontend01:/tmp/vmware-2.2.0$ mkdir -p $ONE_LOCATION/var/remotes/vmm/vmware && cp -r vmm/remotes/* $ONE_LOCATION/var/remotes/vmm/vmware

This problem causes that you cannot start the VMware node up and the log file will show the next error.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ cat var/oned.log
...
[ONE][E]: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting VARIABLE at line 2, columns 1:2

Before restarting OpenNebula, you must type the user and password used to access to esxi01 and include a line into the sudoers file, so that OpenNebula may properly set some permissions.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ cat etc/vmwarerc
...
USERNAME      = "oneadmin"
PASSWORD      = "xxxxxx"

root@frontend01:~# cat /etc/sudoers
...
oneadmin ALL=NOPASSWD:/srv/cloud/one/share/hooks/fix_owner_perms.sh ""

root@frontend01:~# /etc/init.d/opennebula restart

So as to check the correct installation, run the following command. Thereby, you will be able to obtain the physical resources of the managed node.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ lib/remotes/im/run_probes vmware esxi01
/srv/cloud/one/lib/ruby/vmwarelib.rb:26: warning: already initialized constant ONE_LOCATION
/srv/cloud/one/lib/ruby/vmwarelib.rb:32: warning: already initialized constant RUBY_LIB_LOCATION
HYPERVISOR=vmware TOTALCPU=100 CPUSPEED=3001 TOTALMEMORY=2096460 FREEMEMORY=1677168

Now if you want to add the VMware vSphere node configured to OpenNebula, you can execute the next order.

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ onehost create esxi01 im_vmware vmm_vmware tm_vmware

oneadmin@frontend01:~$ onehost list
ID NAME              CLUSTER  RVM   TCPU   FCPU   ACPU    TMEM    FMEM STAT
0  esxi01            default    0    100    100    100      2G    1.6G   on