Install Apstra Server on KVM

Make sure that KVM is installed on your Linux distribution before continuing.

Method One: via Virtual Machine Manager

  1. Click the Create a new virtual machine button.

    _images/kvm_create.png

  2. Import the existing disk image.

    _images/kvm_import.png

  3. Specify the path for the qcow2 image and provide the following OS parameters.

    _images/vm_browse.png

  4. Enter the required CPU and RAM values.

    _images/vm_settings.png

  5. Select a network and provide respective bridge settings.

    _images/vm_network.png

  6. When the VM is up and running you are ready to configure the Apstra server. Open a console to it with one of the KVM frontends (such as virt-manager).

    _images/kvm_final.png

Method Two: Via Command Line

Warning

Users must use the e1000 or virtio Linux KVM network drivers. Using other drivers such as rtl8139 may result in high CPU utilization for the ksoftirqd process.

You can verify the network driver with the ethtool -i eth0 command in the Apstra server VM.

admin@aos-server:~$ ethtool -i eth0
driver: virtio_net
version: 1.0.0
firmware-version:
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:03.0
supports-statistics: no
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no
admin@aos-server:~$

  1. Linux KVM requires that the QEMU environment and bridge networking be installed and configured. Please refer to the following document as examples for QEMU install and configuration.

    For RHEL

    https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/virtualization_deployment_and_administration_guide/index

    For Ubuntu

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation

  2. Uncompress the qcow2.gz image with gunzip.

    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -l
total 1873748
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1918712115 Feb  4 22:28 aos_server_3.3.0.2-46.qcow2.gz
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ gunzip aos_server_3.3.0.2-46.qcow2.gz
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls -l
total 1905684
-rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1951413760 Feb  4 22:28 aos_server_3.3.0.2-46.qcow2
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

  3. Create the VM with the virt-install command line tool. For example, installing the aos_server_3.3.0.2-46.qcow2 image using existing bridge network (named br0).

    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo virt-install --name=aos-server --disk=aos_server_3.3.0.2-46.qcow2 --os-type=linux --os-variant ubuntu18.04 --import --noautoconsole --vcpu=8 --ram=65535 --network bridge=br0,model=virtio

Starting install...
Domain creation completed.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo virsh list
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
 4     aos-server                     running

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

  4. Connect to the VM console. For example.

    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo virsh console aos-server
Connected to domain aos-server
Escape character is ^]

Apstra Operating System (AOS)

aos-server login:

  5. When the VM is up and running you are ready to configure the Apstra server.