Cloud Computing with Enomalism

Continuing with our focus on Cloud Computing, this month we deploy a Cloud Computing infrastructure with a web-based graphical client. This makes using the setup a breeze

Sunday, February 01, 2009

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Continuing with our focus on Cloud Computing, this month we deploy a Cloud Computing infrastructure with a web-based graphical client. This makes using the setup a breeze.

Last month we talked about deploying an EC2 compatible cloud computing infrastructure using Eucalyptus. The deployment of Eucalyptus was tedious but easy due to the Rocks ISOs. But the only problem with Eucalyptus is that the client for using it is Amazon's EC2 which is completely command line based and as a result difficult to run.

So, this time we decided to deploy a Cloud Computing infrastructure which has a neat web based graphical client, which can make usage of the setup pretty simple. We selected Enomalism for the same. I cannot guarantee a complete graphical usage due to some bugs and you might still need to use the command line, but if you compare it against Eucalyptus, it's far more easier to use. The other good thing is that if you plan to do a production class deployment with Enomalism, you can first try out the free version and if you like it but are too bothered by the management and troubleshooting part of it, you may buy the paid support from Enomalism. But before we begin, let me warn you that deployment is not going to be a cakewalk this time.

Prerequisites
There are a couple of things which you have to first identify and arrange before we can start with the deployment. The first is the base OS on top of which you want to run Enomalism. One can technically install it on any Linux distro. However, the preferred distros for installing Enomalism are Fedora 9, CentOS 5.2 and RedHat 5.2.

We first tried installing it on top of a Fedora Box but due to some problem with the Xen available on Fedora 9 repository, we shifted to CentOS 5.2, where Enomalism installation worked perfectly. The second thing you need in place is to have a couple of servers/machines with hardware virtualization support and identify a machine as the master node which will have the database and the repo directory on it. All other machines will connect to the master node. In our setup we used a 24 Core Dunnington server as the master node and a couple of Core 2 Duo machines as other nodes.

Step 1: Installing the Master Node
First do a base installation of CentOS 5.2 on all machines. I would recommend a 64-bit installation. Once the installation is done, identify one machine as the master node and configure it first. The master node should have a good amount of RAM and hard drive space because all of your virtual machines and the Enomalism database is going to reside on that.
Now download and import two sets of public keys from the enomalism repository and import them to your system by running following commands:

#wget
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/enomalism/enomalism.public
#wget
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/enomalism/enomalism001.pubkey.asc
# rpm --import enomalism.public
#rpm --import enomalism001.pubkey.asc

Once done, download libvirt 0.4.1 and libvirt-python 0.4.1 for CentOS 5.x for x64 by running the following commands:

#wget
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/enomalism/libvirt-0.4.1-1.CentOS5.x86_64.rpm?modtime=1205833130&big_mirror=0
#wget
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/enomalism/libvirt-python-0.4.1-1.Cen
tOS5.x86_64.rpm?modtime=1205833291&big_mirror=0

But don't install it at this point, because if you do so you will not be able to install Xen on this machine due to dependency troubles.

Now download Enomalism build for Python 2.4 (as CentOS 5.2 doesn't have Python 2.5) from http://tinyurl.com/enomalism2 and install it using yum so that all dependencies for enomalism can be take care automatically. You can do so by running the following command from the location where you just downloaded enomalism rpm:

# yum install Enomalism2-2.1.1-3595-noarch-py24.rpm

Now this is the time to install Xen, Qemu and KVM on these machines. Enomalism supports all these hypervisors. You can install them by running the following commands:

#yum install yum install kernel-xen xen kvm kmod-kvm qemu
# ln –s /usr/bin/qemu-kvm /usr/bin/kvm

Now install lib-virt 01.4.1 by running the following command from the location where you have downloaded the libvirt and libvirt-python packages:

#yum install libvirt-0.4.1-1.CentOS5.x86_64.rpm libvirt-python-0.4.1-1.CentOS5.x86_64.rpm

This entire procedure forms part of the first step and it is going to be same for both nodes and the master server.

Step 2: Configuring SQL
Now you have to run MySQL on the master computer, configure it and create the Enomalism database on it. First run mysqld by running:

# /etc/init.d/mysqld start

Then provide a password to the root user of MySql by running the following command. Let's assume, we give a password “pass@word”:

# mysqladmin password pass@word

Now run the following command to make sure MySql starts automatically whenever the machine boots:

# chkconfig mysqld on

Now you have to create the database in MySql for enomalism. To do so go to /opt/enomalism2/scripts and run:

#./init-db.sh pass@ord enomalism2 pass@word

This command will create at database named enomalism2 and a MySql user called enomalism2, give the user a password which is again pass@word. It will create the required tables and fill values to it.

Downloading appliances To create a virtual machine on top of your Enomalism cloud, the easiest thing which you can do is just download a virtual appliance from enomalism repository and use it to create virtual machines. To do so, go to “Repository ” tab, then click on the “Remote Appliances”. It will list all the appliances available in Enomalism's repo. Select the appliance and click on the 'Add' button to start the download. Provisioning a new VM Once you have downloaded a couple of appliances from the remote repository, you can start creating virtual appliances. To do so, first go to the “Virtual Infrastructure” and click o the default cluster link at the right side of the window. Once you do that, you will be able to see all the physical machines (nodes) available in your cloud. Now select any physical machine on which you want to create a virtual machine. And click on the star icon (which says Toggle Machine details) at the left side of the machine name. This will open the details of the machine. Now click on “Provision a new VM on this machine” option. A window will open, give a name to the VM, select the appliance from the first drop down menu. And select the hypervisor which you want to use from the second drop down menu and click on 'Create' button. After a few moments you will see this new virtual machine in your cluster. Now you can toggle its detail and click on the 'Start' button to boot the virtual machine. If you want to change the machine vitals such as Max VCPU, RAM, VNC port, HDD image etc, you can click on the 'Edit VM XML Definition' and change the settings into the XML file. Once done, click on 'Update' and your machine will be created. Bug Fix Sometimes, after creating a virtual machine, you might find difficulty booting it. Enomally has a bug which sometimes prevents the VMs to boot directly through the web interface. The work around for this bug is pretty simple. All you have to do is to copy the XML file from the 'Edit VM XML Definition' window and save it to a text file. Let's call the file test.xml. Once done, go to the terminal and run the command #virsh create /test.xml. And the machine will boot. Now if you go back to the web interface, you will find the status of the machine as Power ON. You can even manage and modify the VM from the interface now.

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