nova-powervm/doc/source/devref/usage.rst

Usage

To make use of the PowerVM drivers, a PowerVM system set up with NovaLink is required. The nova-powervm driver should be installed on the management VM.

Note: Installing the NovaLink software creates the pvm_admin group. In order to function properly, the user executing the Nova compute service must be a member of this group. Use the usermod command to add the user. For example, to add the user stacker to the pvm_admin group, execute:

sudo usermod -a -G pvm_admin stacker

The user must re-login for the change to take effect.

The NovaLink architecture is such that the compute driver runs directly on the PowerVM system. No external management element (e.g. Hardware Management Console or PowerVC) is needed. Management of the virtualization is driven through a thin virtual machine running on the PowerVM system.

Configuration of the PowerVM system and NovaLink is required ahead of time. If the operator is using volumes or Shared Storage Pools, they are required to be configured ahead of time.

Configuration File Options

After nova-powervm has been installed the user must enable PowerVM as the compute driver. To do so, set the compute_driver value in the nova.conf file to compute_driver = powervm_ext.driver.PowerVMDriver.

The standard nova configuration options are supported. In particular, to use PowerVM SR-IOV vNIC for networking, the pci_passthrough_whitelist option must be set. See the networking-powervm usage devref for details.

Additionally, a [powervm] section is used to provide additional customization to the driver.

By default, no additional inputs are needed. The base configuration allows for a Nova driver to support ephemeral disks to a local volume group (only one can be on the system in the default config). Connecting Fibre Channel hosted disks via Cinder will use the Virtual SCSI connections through the Virtual I/O Servers.

Operators may change the disk driver (nova based disks - NOT Cinder) via the disk_driver property.

All of these values are under the [powervm] section. The tables are broken out into logical sections.

To generate a sample config file for [powervm] run:

oslo-config-generator --namespace nova_powervm > nova_powervm_sample.conf

The [powervm] section of the sample can then be edited and pasted into the full nova.conf file.

VM Processor Options

Configuration option = Default Value	Description
proc_units_factor = 0.1	(FloatOpt) Factor used to calculate the processor units per vcpu. Valid values are: 0.05 - 1.0
uncapped_proc_weight = 64	(IntOpt) The processor weight to assign to newly created VMs. Value should be between 1 and 255. Represents the relative share of the uncapped processor cycles the Virtual Machine will receive when unused processor cycles are available.

Disk Options

Configuration option = Default Value	Description
disk_driver = localdisk	(StrOpt) The disk driver to use for PowerVM disks. Valid options are: localdisk, ssp If localdisk is specified and only one non-rootvg Volume Group exists on one of the Virtual I/O Servers, then no further config is needed. If multiple volume groups exist, then further specification can be done via the volume_group* options. Live migration is not supported with a localdisk config. If ssp is specified, then a Shared Storage Pool will be used. If only one SSP exists on the system, no further configuration is needed. If multiple SSPs exist, then the cluster_name property must be specified. Live migration can be done within a SSP cluster.
cluster_name = None	(StrOpt) Cluster hosting the Shared Storage Pool to use for storage operations. If none specified, the host is queried; if a single Cluster is found, it is used. Not used unless disk_driver option is set to ssp.
volume_group_name = None	(StrOpt) Volume Group to use for block device operations. Must not be rootvg. If disk_driver is localdisk, and more than one non-rootvg volume group exists across the Virtual I/O Servers, then this attribute must be specified.
volume_group_vios_name = None	(StrOpt) (Optional) The name of the Virtual I/O Server hosting the volume group. If this is not specified, the system will query through the Virtual I/O Servers looking for one that matches the volume_group_vios_name. This is only needed if the system has multiple Virtual I/O Servers with a non-rootvg volume group whose name is duplicated. Typically paired with the volume_group_name attribute.

Volume Options

Configuration option = Default Value	Description
fc_attach_strategy = vscsi	(StrOpt) The Fibre Channel Volume Strategy defines how FC Cinder volumes should be attached to the Virtual Machine. The options are: npiv or vscsi. It should be noted that if NPIV is chosen, the WWPNs will not be active on the backing fabric during the deploy. Some Cinder drivers will operate without issue. Others may query the fabric and thus will fail attachment. It is advised that if an issue occurs using NPIV, the operator fall back to vscsi based deploys.
vscsi_vios_connections_required = 1	(IntOpt) Indicates a minimum number of Virtual I/O Servers that are required to support a Cinder volume attach with the vSCSI volume connector.
ports_per_fabric = 1	(IntOpt) (NPIV only) The number of physical ports that should be connected directly to the Virtual Machine, per fabric. Example: 2 fabrics and ports_per_fabric set to 2 will result in 4 NPIV ports being created, two per fabric. If multiple Virtual I/O Servers are available, will attempt to span ports across I/O Servers.
fabrics = A	(StrOpt) (NPIV only) Unique identifier for each physical FC fabric that is available. This is a comma separated list. If there are two fabrics for multi-pathing, then this could be set to A,B. The fabric identifiers are used for the 'fabric<identifier>_port_wwpns' key.
fabric<name>_port_wwpns	(StrOpt) (NPIV only) A comma delimited list of all the physical FC port WWPNs that support the specified fabric. Is tied to the NPIV 'fabrics' key.

Config Drive Options

Configuration option = Default Value	Description
vopt_media_volume_group = root_vg	(StrOpt) The volume group on the system that should be used to store the config drive metadata that will be attached to the VMs.
vopt_media_rep_size = 1	(IntOpt) The size of the media repository (in GB) for the metadata for config drive. Only used if the media repository needs to be created.
image_meta_local_path = /tmp/cfgdrv/	(StrOpt) The location where the config drive ISO files should be built.