oVirt Setup with PowerFlex (ScaleIO) Storage July 19, 2021
CentOSTips/TricksVirtualization
0 Comment

For many of us out there, running VMware as the only hypervisor is quite expensive. Especially when using a SDS type of storage solution, such as PowerFlex, or legacy ScaleIO.

In this post, will contain pointers and gotchas, which require modification to successfully deploy.

Configuration of Engine & KVM Hosts

  • For this deployment, a standalone server/VM was used, not a self-hosted Engine
  • On the Engine Deployment, if using CentOS or RHEL8.x
    • Enable the codeready repo else install will fail on enablement of
      • yum module enable javapackages-tools
    • To fix enable the codeready repo, even if its enabled, seems to be a bug
    • subscription-manager repos --enable=codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
  • PowerFlex does not yet, as of 3.6.0 support SecureBoot, so ensure that is disabled in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Ensure your nodes have Virtualization Support Enabled and SR-IOV
  • Ensure you install the repo on any KVM Compute Host, else install will fail
    • yum install https://resources.ovirt.org/pub/yum-repo/ovirt-release44.rpm
  • Add to the /etc/multipath.conf a blacklist entry for the local sdX devices (local storage)
    • devnode "sd[a-b]$"
  • Also add to /etc/multipath.conf a blacklist exception for the scini (PowerFlex Block Devices)
    • blacklist_exceptions {
      devnode "scini"
      }
  • Then map a PowerFlex volume to you KVM Host nodes, and it will appear as a valid Fibre Channel device for your data Storage Domain.