This article by Pradeep Subramanian, author of Getting Started with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, describes setting up RHEV-M, including the installation, initial configuration, and connection to the administrator and user portal of the manager web interface.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

Setting up the RHEL operating system for the manager

Prior to starting the installation of RHEV-M, please make sure all the prerequisite are met to set up RHEV environment.

Consider the following when setting up RHEL OS for RHEV-M:

Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with latest minor update of 5, and during package selection step, select minimal or basic server as an option. Don't select any custom package.
The hostname should be set to FQDN.
Set up basic networking; use of static IP is recommended for your manager with a default gateway and primary and secondary DNS client configured.
SELinux and iptables are enabled by default as part of the operating system installation. For more security, it's highly recommended to keep it on.

To disable SELinux on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, please run the following command as the root user:

# setenforce Permissive

This command will switch off SELinux enforcement temporarily until the machine is rebooted. If you would like to permanently disable it, edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux and enter SELINUX=disabled.

Registering with Red Hat Network

To install RHEV-M, you need to first register your manager machine with Red Hat Network and subscribe to the relevant channels.

You need to connect your machine to the Red Hat Network with a valid account with access to the relevant software channels to register your machine and deploy RHEV-M packages.

If your environment does not have access to the Red Hat Network, you can perform an offline installation of RHEV-M. For more information, please refer to https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/216983.

To register your machine with the Red Hat Network using RHN Classic, please run the following command from the shell and follow the onscreen instructions:

# rhn_register

This command will register your manager machine to the parent channel of your operating system version. It's strongly recommended to use Red Hat Subscription Manager to register and subscribe to the relevant channel. To use Red Hat Subscription Manager, please refer to the Subscribing to the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager Channels using Subscription Manager section from the RHEV 3.3 installation guide at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.3/html/Installation_Guide/index.html.

After successful registration of your manager machine to the Red Hat Network, subscribe the manager machine using the following command to subscribe to the relevant channels. Then download and install the manager-related software packages. The following command will prompt you to enter your Red Hat Network login credentials:

# rhn-channel -a -c rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhevm-3.3 -c rhel-x86_64-server-supplementary-6 -c jbappplatform-6-x86_64-server-6-rpm
Username: "yourrhnlogin" 
Password: XXXX

To cross-check whether your manager machine is registered with Red Hat Network and subscribed to the relevant channels, please run the following command. This will return all the channels mentioned earlier plus the base channel of your operating system version, as shown in the following yum command output:

# yum repolist
repo id                                              repo name                                                                  status
jbappplatform-6-x86_64-server-6-rpm                  Red Hat JBoss EAP (v 6) for 6Server x86_64                                  1,415
rhel-x86_64-server-6                                 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6 for 64-bit x86_64)                   12,662
rhel-x86_64-server-6-rhevm-3.3                       Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager (v.3.3 x86_64)                      164
rhel-x86_64-server-supplementary-6                   RHEL Server Supplementary (v. 6 64-bit x86_64)                                370

You are now ready to start downloading and installing the software required to set up and run your RHEV-M.

Installing the RHEV-Manager packages

Update your base Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system to the latest up-to-date version by running the following command:

# yum -y upgrade

Reboot the machine if the upgrade installed the latest version of the kernel.

After a successful upgrade, run the following command to install RHEV-M and its dependent packages:

# yum -y install rhevm

There are a few conditions you need to consider before configuring RHEV-M:

We need a working DNS for forward and reverse lookup of FQDN. We are going to use the Red Hat IdM server configured with the DNS role in the rest of the article for domain name resolution of the entire virtualization infrastructure. Refer to the Red Hat Identity Management Guide for more information on how to add forward and reverse zone records to the configured IdM DNS at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Identity_Management_Guide/Working_with_DNS.html.
You can't install Identity Management software on the same box where the manager is going to be deployed due to some package conflicts.
To store ISO images of operating systems in order to create a virtual machine, you need Network File Server (NFS) with a planned NFS export path. If your manager machine has sufficient storage space to host all your ISOs, you can set up the ISO domain while configuring the manager to set up the NFS share automatically through the installer to store all your ISO images. If you have an existing NFS server, it's recommended to use a dedicated export for the ISO domain to store the ISO images instead of using the manager server to serve the NFS service.
Here we are going to use a dedicated local mount point named /rhev-iso-library on the RHEV Manager box to store our ISO images to provision the virtual machine. Note that the mount point should be empty and only contain the user and group ownership and permission sets before running the installer:
```
# chown -R 36:36 /rhev-iso-library ;  chmod 0755 /rhev-iso-library
```

It will also be useful to have the following information at hand:

Ports to be used for HTTP and HTTPS communication.
FQDN of the manager. A reverse lookup is performed on your hostname.
At the time of writing this article, RHEV supported only the PostgreSQL database for use with RHEV-M. You can use a local database or remote database setup. Here we are going to use the local database. In the case of a remote database setup, keep all database login credentials ready.
Please refer to the Preparing a PostgreSQL Database for Use with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager section for detailed information on setting up a remote database to use with manager at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.3/html-single/Installation_Guide/index.html#Preparing_a_Postgres_Database_Server_for_use_with_Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization_Manager.
Password for internal admin account of RHEV-M.
Organization name for the RHEV-M SSL certificate.
Leave the default storage type to NFS for the initial default data center. We will create a new data center in the latter stage of our setup.
Provide the file system path and display name for NFS ISO library configuration, so that the manager will configure NFS of the supplied filesystem path, and make it visible by the display name under the Storage tab section on administration portal of RHEV-M.

Running the initial engine setup

Once you're prepared with all the answers to the questions we discussed in the previous section, it's time to run the initial configuration script called engine-setup to perform the initial configuration and setting up of RHEV-M. The installer will ask you several questions, which have been discussed above, and based on your input, it will configure your RHEV-M. Leave the default settings as they are and press Enter if you feel the installer's default answers are appropriate to your setup. Once the installer takes in all your input, it will ask you for the final confirmation of your supplied configuration setting; type in OK and press Enter to continue the setup. For better understanding, please refer to the following output of the engine-setup installer while setting up a lab for this article.

Log in to manager as the root user, and from the shell of your Manager machine, run the following engine-setup command:

# engine-setup

Once you execute this command, engine-setup performs the following set of tasks on the system:

First check whether any updates are available for this system. Accept the default Yes and proceed further:
```
Checking for product updates and update if available. Enter Default Yes.
```
Set the hostname of the RHEV-M system. The administration portal web access will get bound to the FQDN entered here:
```
Host fully qualified DNS name of this server [rhevmanager.example.com]:
```
Set up the firewall rule on the manager system, and this will backup your existing firewall rule configured on the manager system if any:
```
Do you want Setup to configure the firewall? (Yes, No) [Yes]: No
```
Local will set up the PostgreSQL database instance on the manager system; optionally, you can choose Remote to use the existing remote PostgreSQL database instance to use with manager:
```
Where is the database located? (Local, Remote) [Local]:
```

If you selected Local, you will get an option to customize the PostgreSQL database setup by choosing the relevant option:

Would you like Setup to automatically configure PostgreSQL, or prefer to perform that manually? (Automatic, Manual) [Automatic]:

Set up the internal admin user password to access the manager web interface for initial setup of the virtualization infrastructure:
```
Engine admin password:
Confirm engine admin password:
```
RHEV supports the use of clusters to manage Gluster storage bricks in addition to virtualization hosts. Choosing both will give the flexibility to use hypervisor hosts to host virtual machines as well as other sets of hypervisor hosts to manage Gluster storage bricks in your RHEV environment:
```
Application mode (Both, Virt, Gluster) [Both]:
```
Engine installer creates a data center named Default as part of the initial setup. The following step will ask you to select the type of storage to be used with the data center. Mixing storage domains of different types is not supported in the 3.3 release, but it is supported in the latest 3.4 release. Choose the default NFS option and proceed further. We are going to create a new data center, using the administration portal, from scratch after the engine setup and then select the storage type as ISCSI for the rest of this article:
```
Default storage type: (NFS, FC, ISCSI, POSIXFS) [NFS]:
```
The manager uses certificates to communicate securely with its hosts. Provide your organization's name for the certificate:
```
Organization name for certificate [example.com]:
```
The manager uses the Apache web server to present a landing page to users. The engine-setup script can make the landing page of the manager the default page presented by Apache:
```
Do you wish to set the application as the default page of the web server? (Yes, No) [Yes]:
```
By default, external SSL (HTTPS) communications with the manager are secured with the self-signed certificate created in the PKI configuration stage for secure communication with hosts. Another certificate may be chosen for external HTTPS connections without affecting how the manager communicates with hosts:
```
Setup can configure apache to use SSL using a certificate issued from the internal CA.
Do you wish Setup to configure that, or prefer to perform that manually? (Automatic, Manual) [Automatic]:
```
Choose Yes to set up an NFS share on the manager system and provide the export path to be used to dump the ISO images in a later part. Finally, label the ISO domain with a name that will be unique and easily identifiable on the Storage tab of the administration portal:
```
Configure an NFS share on this server to be used as an ISO Domain? (Yes, No) [Yes]:
Local ISO domain path [/var/lib/exports/iso]: /rhev-iso-library
Local ISO domain name [ISO_DOMAIN]: ISO_Datastore
```
The engine-setup script can optionally configure a WebSocket proxy server in order to allow users to connect with virtual machines via the noVNC or HTML 5 consoles:
```
Configure WebSocket Proxy on this machine? (Yes, No) [Yes]:
```
The final step will ask you to provide proxy server credentials if the manager system is hosted behind the proxy server to access the Internet. RHEV supports vRed Hat Access Plugin, which will help you collect the logs and open a service request with Red Hat Global Support Services from the administration portal of the manager:
```
Would you like transactions from the Red Hat Access Plugin sent from the RHEV Manager to be brokered through a proxy server? (Yes, No) [No]:
```
Finally, if you feel all the input and configurations are satisfactory, press Enter to complete the engine setup.
It will show you the configuration preview, and if you feel satisfied, press OK:
```
Please confirm installation settings (OK, Cancel) [OK]:
```

After the successful setup of RHEV-M, you can see the summary, which will show various bits of information such as how to access the admin portal of RHEV-M, the installed logs, the configured iptables firewall, the required ports, and so on.

Connecting to the admin and user portal 006C

Now access the admin portal, as shown in the following screenshot, using the following URLs:

Use the user admin and password specified during the setup to log in to the oVirt engine (also called RHEV-M).

installing-rhev-manager-img-0

Click on Administration Portal and log in using the credentials you set up for the admin account during the engine setup.
Then click on User Portal and log in using the credentials you set up for the admin account during the engine setup. You will see a difference in the portal with a very trimmed-down user interface that is useful for self-service.

We will see how to integrate the manager with other active directory services and efficiently use the user portal for self-service consumption later in the article.

RHEV reporting

RHEV bundles two optional components. The first is the history management database, which holds the historical information of various virtualization resources such as data centers, clusters, hosts, virtual machines, and others so that any other external application can consume them for reporting.

The second optional component is the customized JasperServer and JasperReports. JasperServer is an open source reporting tool capable of generating and exporting reports in various formats such as PDF, Word, and CSV for end user consumption.

To enable the reporting functionality, you need to install the specific components that we discussed. For simplicity, we are installing both the components at one go using the command described in the following section.

Installing the RHEV history database and report server

To install the history database and report servers, execute the following command:

# yum install rhevm-dwh  rhevm-reports

Once you have installed the reporting components, you need to start with setting up the RHEV history database by using the following command:

# rhevm-dwh-setup

This will momentarily stop and start the oVirt engine service during the setup. Further, it will ask you to create a read-only user account to access the history database. Create it if you want to allow remote access to the history database and follow the onscreen instructions and finish the setup.

Once the oVirt engine history database (also known as the RHEV Manager history database) is created, move on to setting up the report server. From the RHEV-M server, run the following command to set up the reporting server:

# rhevm-reports-setup
#setup will prompt to restart ovirt-engine service.
In order to proceed the installer must stop the ovirt-engine service 
Would you like to stop the ovirt-engine service? (yes|no):
#The command then performs a number of actions before prompting you to set the password for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager Reports administrative users (rhevm-admin and superuser)
Please choose a password for the reports admin user(s) (rhevm-admin and superuser):

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

Follow the onscreen instructions and enter Yes to stop the oVirt-engine and set up a password for the default internal super user account called rhevm-admin to access and manage the report portal and proceed further with the setup. Note that this user is different from the internal admin account we set up during the engine setup of RHEV-M. The rhevm-admin user is used only for accessing and managing the report portal, not for the admin or user portal.

Accessing the RHEV report portal

After the successful installation and initial configuration setup of the report portal, you can access it by https://rhevmanager.example.com/rhevm-reports/login.html from your client machine. You can also access the report portal from the manager web interface by clicking on the Reports Portal hyperlink, which will redirect you to the report portal.

Log in with rhevm-admin and the password credentials we set while running the RHEV-M report setup script in the previous section to generate reports and create and manage users to access the report portal. Initially, most of the report portal is empty since we are yet to set up and create the virtual infrastructure. It will take at least a day or two after the complete virtualization infrastructure setup to view various resources and generate reports.

To learn more about using and gathering reports using the report portal, please refer to Reports, History Database Reports, and Dashboards at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Virtualization/3.3/html/Administration_Guide/chap-Reports_History_Database_Reports_and_Dashboards.html.

Summary

In this article, we discussed setting up our basic virtualization infrastructure, which includes installing RHEV-M and report server and connecting to various portals such as admin, user, and report portal.