Need to add NFS Data and Export Storage Domain to oVirt/RHEV?

At Bobcares we often handle similar requests from our customers as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today let’s see how our Support Engineers do this for our customers with ease.

How to add NFS Data and Export Storage Domain to oVirt/RHEV

oVirt/RHEV uses a centralized storage system for virtual machine disk images, ISO files, and Snapshots.

oVirt is a free and open-source virtualization solution fit for running critical enterprise Workload.

Network File System(NFS) allows client systems to access files that are stored on a remote shared server over a network and lets to make use of those file systems.

Steps for adding to oVirt/RHEV

We can see the steps that our Support Techs follow to implement this.

1. Creating group/user account

First login to NFS server and create a system group called kvm on NFS server if it does not exist already:

$ getent group kvm || sudo groupadd kvm -g 36

Then create the user vdsm in the group kvm

$ getent passwd vdsm || sudo useradd vdsm -u 36 -g 36

2. Configure NFS Server

First, we can install the NFS server packages on RHEL 8.

$ sudo yum -y install nfs-utils

Then start and enable nfs-server service.

$ sudo systemctl enable --now nfs-server rpcbind

Next, we will create NFS exports directories for oVirt.

sudo mkdir -p /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/{data,iso,export}

And set the ownership of exported directories to 36:36, which gives vdsm:kvm ownership:

$ sudo chown -R 36:36 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/data
$ sudo chown -R 36:36 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/iso
$ sudo chown -R 36:36 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/export

This gives vdsm:kvm ownership.

Next, we can change the mode of the directories:

$ sudo chmod 0755 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/data
$ sudo chmod 0755 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/iso
$ sudo chmod 0755 /glusterfs/exports/ovirt/export

And then we will configure NFS exports file with the following command:

$ sudo vim /etc/exports

Start and enable NFS server service.

$ sudo systemctl enable --now nfs-server

Then update NFS exports table with the following

$ sudo exportfs -rvv

If a firewall like firewalld is enabled, we need to add NFS service in firewalld.

$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=nfs --permanent
$ sudo firewall-cmd --add-service={nfs3,mountd,rpc-bind} --permanent
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload

3. Attaching NFS Storage to ovirt/RHEV

Finally, we can attach an NFS storage domain to the data center in oVirt/RHEV environment.

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Conclusion

To conclude we saw the steps followed by our Support Engineers to add Export Storage Domain & NFS Data to an oVirt/RHEV environment.