Chapter 1. Introduction
A self-hosted engine is a virtualized environment in which the engine, or Manager, runs on a virtual machine on the hosts managed by that engine. The virtual machine is created as part of the host configuration, and the Manager is installed and configured in parallel to the host configuration process. The primary benefit of the self-hosted engine is that it requires less hardware to deploy an instance of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization as the Manager runs as a virtual machine, not on physical hardware. Additionally, the Manager is configured to be highly available. If the host running the Manager virtual machine goes into maintenance mode, or fails unexpectedly, the virtual machine will be migrated automatically to another host in the environment. A minimum of two self-hosted engine hosts are required to support the high availability feature.
Table 1.1. Supported OS versions to Deploy Self-Hosted Engine
|
System Type
|
Supported Versions
|
|---|---|
|
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Host
|
7.2
|
|
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor Host
|
7.2
|
|
HostedEngine-VM (Manager)
|
6.7
|
Important
It is important to synchronize the system clocks of the hosts, Manager, and other servers in the environment to avoid potential timing or authentication issues. To do this, configure the Network Time Protocol (NTP) on each system to synchronize with the same NTP server.
1.1. Installation Options
Self-Hosted Engine Hosts
You can use Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisors or Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts, or both.
- Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor is distributed as an ISO file and contains only the packages required for the machine to act as a virtualization host. See Chapter 2, Deploying Self-Hosted Engine on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems subscribed to the appropriate entitlements can be used as virtualization hosts. See Chapter 3, Deploying Self-Hosted Engine on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Host.
Self-Hosted Engine Manager
You can use the RHEV-M Virtual Appliance, or you can install and configure the Manager virtual machine manually.
- The RHEV-M Virtual Appliance automates the process of installing and configuring the Manager virtual machine, and does not require you to access the virtual machine during the setup.
- Manually installing and configuring the Manager virtual machine is also supported but requires you to access the virtual machine directly during the setup.
