Chapter 2. Quick Start

2.1. Add Hosts to a Hardware Pool
2.2. Add Storage to a Hardware Pool
2.3. Create a Virtual Machine Pool
2.4. Create Virtual Machines
2.5. Assign User Permissions

This section is intended for users who wish to start using oVirt quickly. While it is recommended that you read the entire document, this section briefly describes how to apply oVirt's functionality to typical virtualization tasks. This section provides examples of how you can use oVirt to set up a number of nodes and how to set up a team environment.

Note:

It is assumed that you have oVirt installed and setup as described in the Installation guide, or on the website.

A Sample Scenario

oVirt enables a development team to access hardware, storage and virtual machines for a new project in a quick, efficient and balanced way. A development team requires hardware resources, storage and a number of virtual machines to proceed with their project. In this exercise, the hardware administrator sets up the hardware resources, the team administrator assigns user permissions, and the developers can define, start or stop the VMs.

The scenario is as follows, given physical hosts and adequate networked storage:

Create a hardware pool for a team.
In the hardware pool, make a set of Virtual machines with appropriate resource allocations and limits for three developers working on a project.
Assign the developers appropriate permissions to use and manage their VMs.

2.1. Add Hosts to a Hardware Pool

A hardware pool consists of fake or hardware oVirt nodes. Nodes are automatically added to the hardware pool when they first bootup. If your nodes have not yet been booted up, from a command shell, if you are on a development version run:

# virsh start node3

on your host machine to start your first fake oVirt node. If you are using a production version, with physical machines, boot up your first piece of physical hardware, and make sure it PXE boots as an oVirt node. Once your first piece of hardware (either virtual or physical) is booted:

Click on the default hardware pool in the Resource Pools Navigator on the right hand side of the oVirt User Interface. The Contents pane and the Hardware resource menu display on the right-hand side of the page.
Click on the Hosts tab in the Hardware Resource Menu.
The Hosts page appears in the Contents pane and displays the hosts that you just booted. This means that you have successfully registered at least one piece of hardware with oVirt.