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Virtual Environment Platform Setup

This wiki is currently dedicated at login information regarding the deployment of a virtual environment platform on a Clevo H150RW laptop.

As the hypervisor layer, we'll first try to setup a Debian Wheezy (7.4.0) base OS using Xen and virt-manager.
Later, for production server deployment, we might try to go for some other configuration, in particular using oVirt will be one of our goals.

Debian Installation

The latest Debian installer was used, booted from a USB stick.
In case you have no idea how to make a bootable Debian installer USB stick, please refer to the Debian documentation on the subject, our attempt was made using the latest netboot mini.iso image.

We won't go into the details of installing Debian, following are simply a few notes that might be of interest during this step.

Desktop Environment

Although choosing the right desktop environment shouldn't be a main preoccupation, we decided to go for KDE on our first trial install.

Additional Packages

Also, you might want to add some proprietary drivers on the the space that is left free on your USB key. In our case, the Realtek WiFi interface required the rtlwifi/rtl8192cfw.bin package to be present.
You'll need to create a new partition in the free space left, using GParted is one of the easiest way to do this.

Once the packages are present on this extra space, it seems the Debian installer automatically detects them and uses them.

Partitionning

In the case of the hypervisor layer, what we'd like is to have as much disk space as possible available for the virtual machines. Therefore we'll apply the following partition schema when the Debian installer asks for the partition method:

Partitioning method: Manual
Partition disks: Select your main HD (to delete all existing partitions)
Create new partitions: Select pri/log FREE SPACE, then create new partition
Create a 1GB for /boot filesystem → Primary → Beginning → Ext4 journaling file system, Mount point: /boot → Label: Boot → Bootable flag: on → Done

Repeat partition setup for another one
Use full space available → Primary → Use as: Physical volume for LVM → Done

Configure the Logical Volume Manager
Write changes to disk and configure LVM?: Yes
Create volume group: xenvg Select devices: (select only the LVM partition (/dev/sdX2)

Create logical volume
Volume group: xenvg
Logical volume name: root
Logical volume size: 4GB

Create logical volume
Volume group: xenvg
Logical volume name: swap
Logical volume size: 4GB

Create logical volume
Volume group: xenvg
Logical volume name: var
Logical volume size: 20GB

Finish

Set mount points

On top of the list, select the first entry

LVM  VG  xenvg, LV root - 4.0 GB Linux device-mapper (linear)
     #1          4.0GB

Use as: Ext4 → Mount point: / → Done

Second: LV swap entry: Use as: Swap → Done

Third: LV var: Use as: Ext4 → Mount point: /var → Done

Finish partitioning and write changes to disk

Software selection

[*] SSH server
[*] Laptop
[*] Standard system utilities

GRUB

Install the GRUB boot loader to the master boot record? Yes

Boot into the new system