1. SUNY IT Master's Project Using Open Source Virtualization Technology In Computer Education By: Ronny L. Bull Advised By: Geethapriya Thamilarasu, Ph.D. Fall 2011

2. Goals Create a scalable virtualization server cluster using Open Source technology Used by students & faculty for labs, research, & development Used by CS Admins to migrate aging physical servers to virtual environment Provide fine grained user access to virtual machines via the web using current LDAP authentication

3. Virtualization Overview Allows an organization to leverage the power of multi-core server hardware to host multiple virtual servers on a single physical host. Consolidates a large server farm down to a few powerful machines which have the advantage of saving space and energy costs while still retaining the same level of service that they previously relied upon.

4. Hypervisor Makes server virtualization possible by creating a basic abstraction layer of software that sits directly on the hardware below any operating system. Responsible for CPU scheduling and memory partitioning of the various virtual machines running on the physical hardware Controls execution of virtual machines as they share the common processing environment and resources

5. Hypervisor Cont. Has no knowledge of networking, external storage devices, video, or any other common I/O functions Most enterprise virtualization solutions offer their hypervisors for free. (Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, VMWare ESXi)

6. Hosts & Guests The Host operating system is a privileged virtual machine that has special rights to access physical I/O resources as well as manages the other virtual machines running on the system The Guest operation systems have no direct access to the physical hardware on the machine, and rely on the host to manage them The Host must be online before any Guests are allowed to be started

7. My Choice Most enterprise virtualization solutions offer free hypervisors however the utilities to manage them can be expensive Enter Xen, the open source hypervisor Citrix bases all of it's products on Xen Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) is an open source implementation of Citrix XenServer CentOS Linux based distribution Minimal documentation

8. Hardware Specs Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBDX9SCM-O Server Motherboard (SandyBridge) w/ 2 integrated 1000MB Intel NIC's Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1240 @ 3.30GHz Quad Core w/ Hyper Threading RAM: 16 GB Crucial DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Hard Drives: 2x Seagate Momentus XT 500GB Hybrid

9. Hardware Specs Cont. Hard Drive Mounts: 2x Mushkin Enhanced drive adapter bracket Rack Mount Case: Antec Take 4 + 4U With 650W Power Supply (Quiet Computing) Rack Rails: Antec 20" Side Rails Total Cost Per Server: $1,331.46

10. Hardware Issues Repeatable lockups on two of the three servers when pushing heavy I/O Performed extensive hardware diagnostic and stress tests Swapped parts Found both motherboards were faulty and had to be RMA'd

11. XCP Installation Installed from CDROM Setup management interface on Admin subnet Created local ISO storage repositories Extended the Default LVM Volume Group to include the remaining 450GB from second hard drive

12. Networking Created firewall rules for the Eth0 management interface, connected to Admin subnet Created VLAN entries on all of the servers to support all of the VLAN's on the network Assigned all VLANS to Eth1 – VM interface Assigned Eth1 to 201 VLAN – Student, and gave it an IP address Connected Eth1 to trunked port and setup firewall rules for access

13. Server Management Can not clone servers to produce new ones because of UUID's on resources Each server must be setup from scratch Can use Citrix XenCenter to manage multiple servers from a single remote location Export, Import, Create, Connect To, & Manage VM's Snapshots, Resource Management, CPU Priority, & Templates

14. Server Pools Created three server pools CSAdmin – For migrated CS dept. servers NCS-Student – NCS Lab server CS-Student – CS Lab/Research server More servers will be added as they are retired from ITS and become available

15. Bugs Default Linux templates do not boot from CDROM 30 day license issue XenCenter snapshot issue (Version)

16. User Access & Authentication https://xen1-web.cs.sunyit.edu XVP Appliance – turnkey virtual appliance created to manage Citrix XenServer & XCP servers LDAP integration Fine grained user access control on a per machine or per pool basis Web based using https Access & Setup via command line utility

17. User Access & Authentication Cont. User only needs access to port 443 of xen1- web appliance All console connections to virtual machines are done over the standard VNC TCP port 5900 from xen1-web to the xen server the virtual machine is hosted on. This is done on the local network, users do not need port 5900 access to anything! Users can open multiple consoles at the same time in the same session

18. Conclusion Xen Cloud Platform proved to be a stable and robust competitor to the other enterprise level virtualization options that are currently offered Offers a low cost (hardware only) highly scalable solution to server virtualization, and allows for the creation of Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD guests Virtual machines can be accessed securely from anywhere via web browser VLANs allow separation for security

19. Conclusion Cont. Lab environments can be consolidated Students can each have their own set of virtual machines rather than sharing physical computers, maximizing their learning experience

20. References Xen Overview: http://xen.org/files/Marketing/HowDoesXenWork.pdf Citrix XenServer 5.6 Feature Pack 1 Administrator's Guide: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127321 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127321 Xen Cloud Platform: http://xen.org/products/cloudxen.html http://xen.org/products/cloudxen.html Citrix XenCenter: http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/XenCenter http://community.citrix.com/display/xs/XenCenter XVP Appliance: http://www.xvpsource.org/topic=about&page=xvpappliance

21. More Stuff My notes, paper, and a copy of this presentation can be found at: http://ronnybull.com/portfolio/masters-project http://ronnybull.com/portfolio/masters-project Within my notes all of the setup commands are documented with step by step instructions. Source code for my scripts are also included for bug workarounds.