Overview
We recommend to use VMs for NMS Prime. This will make life easier in the future, because:
Pros while using VMs:
- full backup possibility (snapshots)
- easy updates and backwards compatibility
- hardware independence
- more flexible while moving towards HA-architecture (High Availability) and Clustering
We use qemu KVM architecture with the virt-manager GUI.
Pros while using KVM:
- completely free / open source
- native linux kernel support
- large community
- fast, stable and worldwide tested
Recommended file format is *.qcow2. This file format will only allocate as much space as required on the real host.
Setting up the real host
We also use CentOS 7 on the real machines. This makes life easier, because we only need to know CentOS config style. Of cause you could use other Linux distribution on the real host.
Install KVM real machine
This is a excellent article on how to setup the real host system: https://www.linuxtechi.com/install-kvm-hypervisor-on-centos-7-and-rhel-7/
Required packages:
yum install qemu-kvm libvirt bridge-utils # qemu-img is not needed
Start libvirt:
systemctl start libvirtd
Networking
We use bridge networking API. Things you need to do is:
- real host: all IPs must run on the bridge interface and not on the real network
- real host: assign the bridge device to your real network interface
- VM: assign the VM to your new bridge device
This is perfectly explained here: https://www.linuxtechi.com/install-kvm-hypervisor-on-centos-7-and-rhel-7/
Download CentOS 7
https://www.centos.org/download/
http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1708.iso
Create the NMS Prime VM
Update your system
yum update -y