You can install the control panel on a single dedicated server and manage multiple cluster nodes. We recommend that you choose the most fault-tolerant server for installation. 

System requirements

Supported operating systems:

  • CentOS 7 x64 (recommended).

Note

You should install a minimal version of the operating system.

We don't recommend that you update the operating system of cluster node with major version changing.

Be sure to install the operating system of the same version on all cluster nodes. The control panel won't allow adding a cluster node if its operating system differs from the one installed on VMmanager server. For example, you cannot add a cluster node with CentOS 7.6, if the master server runs on CentOS 7.5.

We strongly recommend a clean install of VMmanager. All the services that VMmanager requires, will be installed automatically during software installation. If your server with VMmanager is supposed to be a cluster node, make sure it meets requirements to cluster nodes.

Note

We don't recommend that you install the software product from a third-party repository.

The server with the control panel can be used as a cluster node.  The server must meet requirements to cluster nodes, including the requirement to the server where the control panel is installed. For more information please refer to the article Cluster node configuration.

Network requirements

  • All cluster nodes must be in the same network;
  • SSH must listen on the port 22 on every node;
  • you can allocate 100-150 Gb for the root partition;
  • disable protection from multicast storm;
  • Pay attention to network capacity if you use network storages.

Firewall configuration

Allow incoming connections for the following ports:

  • 22/tcp - SSH service, from all cluster nodes, and from the public network if needed
  • 111/tcp - rpcbind for NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 662/tcp,udp - pftp for NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 892/tcp,udp - NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 1500/tcp - ihttpd, to access to the control panel web-interface from the public network and access the panel services on a cluster node
  • 1515/tcp - vmwatch-master monitoring of a VM state, from all cluster nodes on the server with the control panel
  • 2049/tcp,udp - NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 32803/tcp - NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 32769/udp - NFS, from all cluster nodes
  • 5900-6900/tcp - QEMU VNC. If access to VNC can be performed only via the control panel, the range of ports must be allowed for the network combining cluster nodes
  • 15900-16900/tcp - websockify, QEMU VNC translation for the noVNC web-interface, access from the public network
  • 49152-49261/tcp - libvirt migration services.

Recommended configuration of the disk subsystem

When installing an operating system on cluster nodes we recommend using XFS as the file system.

OS templates that VMmanager uses for guest OS are about 80 GB is the size (the largest templates are Windows - 10-15 GB each template. Every Unix template requires about 100 MB). Templates are located in the /nfsshare/ directory, which is duplicated to each cluster node. Allocate 60-80 Gb of disk space to /nfsshare. If you are planning to install Windows on guest systems or create custom OS templates, you may allocate less space to the partition.

If you plan to make backup copies, make sure you have in the root section has additional free space: 2,5*<maximum size of vm disk>.

Therefore, we recommend that you allocate 100-150 GB (+ some space for backup copied) for the root partition. The rest of HDD — for /vm, if you are going to use a local file system as a storage, or for the linux-lvm partition if you use a local LVM as a storage.