Anvil! m2 Tutorial

AN!Wiki :: How To :: Anvil! m2 Tutorial

Warning: This tutorial is NOT complete! It is being written using Striker version 1.2.0 β. Things may change between now and final release.

A typical Anvil! build-out

What is an 'Anvil!', Anyway?

Simply put;

• The Anvil! is a high-availability cluster platform for hosting virtual machines.

Slightly less simply put;

• The Anvil! is;
  • Exceptionally easy to build and operate.
  • A pair of "nodes" that work as one to host one or more highly-available (virtual) servers in a manner transparent to the servers.
    • Hosted servers can live-migrate between nodes, allowing business-hours maintenance of all systems without downtime.
    • Existing expertise and work-flow are almost 100% maintained requiring almost no training for staff and users.
  • A "Foundation Pack" of fault-tolerant network switches, switched PDUs and UPSes. Each Foundation pack can support one or more "Compute Pack" node pairs.
  • A pair of "Striker" dashboard management and support systems which provide very simple, web-based management on the Anvil! and it's hosted servers.
  • A "Scan Core" monitoring and alert system tightly couple to all software and hardware systems that provides fault detection, predictive failure analysis, and environmental monitoring with an early-warning system.
    • Optionally, "Scan Core" can automatically, gracefully shut down an Anvil! and it's hosted servers in low-battery and over-temperature events as well as automatically recovery when safe to do so.
  • Optional commercial supported with 24x7x365 monitoring, installation, management and customization services.
  • 100% open source (GPL v2+ license) with HA systems built to be compliant with Red Hat support.
  • No vendor lock-in.
    • Entirely COTS equipment, entirely open platform. You are always free to shift vendors at any time.

Pretty darn impressive, really.

What is the Build Process?

The core of the Anvil!'s support and management is the Striker dashboard. It will become the platform off of which nodes and other dashboards are built from.

So the build process consists of:

Setup the First Striker Dashboard

If you're not familiar with installing Linux, please don't worry. It is quite easy and we'll walk through each step carefully.

1. Build the first Striker dashboard
   1. Do a minimal install off of a standard RHEL 6 install disk.
   2. Grab the Striker install script and run it.
   3. Load up the Striker Web Interface.

Preparing the Anvil! Nodes

It's rather difficult to borderline-impossible to fully automate the install process, but Striker does automate the vast majority of it, and it simplifies the few manual parts. The main goal of this stage is to get an operating system onto the nodes so that the web-based installer can take over.

1. PXE

 

Any questions, feedback, advice, complaints or meanderings are welcome.
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