4.2. virt-who
virt-who is an agent for reporting virtual guest IDs to Satellite. virt-who has the ability to scan for third-party hypervisors, registering the hypervisors on the Satellite. virt-who also uploads the list of guest UUIDs associated with the hypervisors.
Note
For this technical preview, the only hypervisor covered is VMWare ESX.
The following sections will set up virt-who on the Satellite server and guest clients.
4.2.1. virt-who Setup
virt-who can be installed on any system except for the hypervisor. The requirements for the system to install virt-who and successfully set it up are as follows:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 or above.
- Access to both the Red Hat Satellite and the hypervisor on port 443, TCP. A Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) system, if one is available, would be suitable.
- The system must be registered to either Red Hat Network directly or the Red Hat Satellite and subscribed to the RHN Tools channel.
Note
virt-who cannot be installed on the hypervisor since the only supported hypervisor is VMWare ESX and this is a non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.
To set up virt-who on the Red Hat Satellite:
- Login as root on the Red Hat Satellite.
- Install the virt-who package:
# yum install virt-who
- Edit the following entries in the
/etc/sysconfig/virt-whofile:# Start virt-who on background, perform doublefork and monitor for virtual guest # events (if possible). It is NOT recommended to turn off this option for # starting virt-who as service. VIRTWHO_BACKGROUND=1 # Enable debugging output. # optional VIRTWHO_DEBUG=1 # virt-who subscription manager backend, enable ony one option from following 2: # Report to Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) VIRTWHO_SAM=0 # Report to Satellite VIRTWHO_SATELLITE=1 # Register ESX machines using vCenter VIRTWHO_ESX=1 # Option for ESX mode VIRTWHO_ESX_ENV=not-used VIRTWHO_ESX_SERVER=server_hostname_or_IP VIRTWHO_ESX_USERNAME=server_login VIRTWHO_ESX_PASSWORD=server_password # Option for Satellite backend VIRTWHO_SATELLITE_SERVER=satellite_hostname VIRTWHO_SATELLITE_USERNAME=username VIRTWHO_SATELLITE_PASSWORD=password
- Start the virt-who service:
service virt-who start
Starting the virt-who service will gather the ESX host/guest UUID information and send the information to the Satellite. It will also scan the/var/lib/virt-who/hypervisor-systemid-[UUID]file to check if the hypervisor has already been registered to the Red Hat Satellite. If it does, the existing hypervisor system information on the Red Hat Satellite is updated. If it does not exist on the Satellite, the new hypervisor wil be registered.
Note
If a hypervisor is deleted, its corresponding file needs to be removed from
/var/lib/virt-who/hypervisor-systemid-UUID, and the hypervisor needs to be manually removed via the satellite web UI.
