Virtualization

You can use SUSE Manager to manage virtualized clients in addition to regular traditional or Salt clients. In this type of installation, a virtual host is installed on the SUSE Manager Server to manage any number of virtual guests. If you choose to, you can install several virtual hosts to manage groups of guests.

The range of capabilities that virtualized clients have depends on the third-party virtualization provider you choose.

Xen and KVM hosts and guests can be managed directly in SUSE Manager. This enables you to autoinstall hosts and guests using AutoYaST or Kickstart, and manage guests in the Web UI.

For VMWare, including VMWare vSphere, and Nutanix AHV, SUSE Manager requires you to set up a virtual host manager (VHM) to control the VMs. This gives you control over the hosts and guests, but in a more limited way than available with Xen and KVM; SUSE Manager cannot create or edit VMs on VMWare vSphere or Nutanix AHV.

Other third-party virtualization providers are not directly supported by SUSE Manager. However, if your provider allows you to export a JSON configuration file for the VM, you can upload that configuration file to SUSE Manager and manage it with a VHM.

For more information about using VHMs to manage virtualization, see Virtual Host Managers.

1. Manage Virtualized Hosts

Before you begin, ensure that the client you want to use as a virtualization host has the Virtualization Host system type assigned to it. Both traditional and Salt clients can be used as virtual hosts. Navigate to Systems  Systems List and click the name of the client to use as a virtualization host. If the Virtualization Host system type is not listed, initialize the Virtualization Host formula. For more information, see client-configuration:virt-xenkvm.adoc#virt-xenkvm-host.

When a client has the Virtualization Host system type, the Virtualization tab is available in the System Details page for the client. The Virtualization tab allows you to create and manage virtual guests, and manage storage pools and virtual networks.

2. Create Virtual Guests

You can add virtual guests to your virtualization hosts within the SUSE Manager Web UI.

Procedure: Creating a Virtual Guest

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Systems  Systems List, click the name of the virtualization host, and navigate to the Virtualization tab.

  2. In the General section, complete these details:

    • In the Guests subtab, click Create Guest.

    • In the Name field, type the name of the guest.

    • In the Hypervisor field, select the hypervisor to use.

    • In the Virtual Machine Type field, select either fully virtualized or para-virtualized.

    • In the Maximum Memory field, type the upper size limit for the guest disk, in MiB.

    • In the Virtual CPU count, type the number of vCPUs for the guest.

    • In the Architecture field, select the emulated CPU architecture to use on the guest. By default, the architecture selected matches the virtual host.

    • In the Auto-installation Profile field, select the auto-installation tool to use to install the guest. Leave this field blank if you do not want to use auto-installation.

  3. In the Disks section, complete the details of the virtual disk to use with the client. In the Source template image URL field, ensure you type the path to an operating system image. If you do not do this, your guest is created with an empty disk.

  4. In the Networks section, complete the details of the virtual network interface to use with the client. Leave the MAC address field blank to generate a MAC address.

  5. In the Graphics section, complete the details of the graphics driver to use with the client.

  6. Schedule a time for the guest to be created, and click Create to create the guest.

  7. The new virtual guest starts as soon as it has successfully been created.

You can add virtual guests on a pacemaker cluster within the SUSE Manager Web UI, too.

Procedure: Creating a cluster managed Virtual Guest

  1. Follow the Creating a Virtual Guest procedure on one of the nodes of the cluster with the following additions:

    • Ensure the Define as a cluster resource field is checked.

    • In the Path to the cluster shared folder for VM definitions field, type the path to a folder shared by all cluster nodes where the guest configuration will be stored.

    • Make sure every disk is located on a storage pool shared by all the cluster nodes.

Virtual Guests managed by a cluster can be live migrated.

3. SUSE Support and VM Zones

Public cloud providers use regions to define the physical geographic location of the datacenter providing virtual machines. For example, US-East, or Asia.

Regions are then further divided into zones. For example, the US-East region might contain zones called us-east-2a and us-east-2b, among others.

SUSE uses the zone of a virtual machine to determine the appropriate subscription to provide. If all of your VMs are provided by the same zone, you are within the terms and conditions of the 1-2 Virtual Machines subscription.

If your VMs are provided by different zones, even if they are within the same region, you might not meet the conditions of the 1-2 Virtual Machines subscription. In this case, check your subscription carefully.

For BYOS instances (Bring-your-own-subscription), all installed products are passed to the subscription matcher. If your public cloud instances are PAYG (Pay-as-you-go), their base products are excluded from the subscription matcher counting.

The calculation about whether an instance is PAYG or BYOS is done at the time of registration or when a hardware refresh action is executed.

For more information, see https://www.suse.com/products/terms_and_conditions.pdf or contact SUSE.