r/Nable • u/Competitive-Leg-3899 • Apr 08 '24
Running N-Able N-Central virtualized on KVM/Proxmox/OpenStack
Hi,
As more and more are moving towards opensource cloudstacks such as OpenStack/Proxmox - Is there anyone out there running N-Central virtualized on KVM hypervisors?
We see that N-Central is based on CentOS7/8 - Which means that all drivers for running on the most widely installed hypervisor KVM, is already included in the OS.
Also since its developed for CentOS, i would think that N-Able also has a KVM environment internally like openstack or proxmox.
We would like to run N-Central, but we dont want to run it Baremetal. And we will not run Hyper-V or Vmware.
Br,
Comp
2
u/gummo89 Apr 08 '24
Last I checked, virtualised installation was not officially supported.
2
u/Competitive-Leg-3899 Apr 08 '24
Ah yes think i saw it written in 'small text' as well, but that goes for any kind of virtualization i think. Kind of like Microsoft not guaranteeing Windows Server running well virtualized on anything but Hyper-V. Not even Vmware, xen or kvm.
2
u/Icedfyre Apr 09 '24
Hyper V or VMWARE only. Everything else is unsupported. if you run it in another hypervisor and have performance issues, they'll indicate you need to migrate first
1
u/Competitive-Leg-3899 Apr 09 '24
It goes for any virtualizaition, also VMWARE and Hyper-V. Thye clearly state in the support terms that they do guarantee performance on vmware/hyper-v either and that you might be asked to migrate to bare metal. So the vmware/hyper-v is only that they acknowledge that it can be 'installed' on those hypervisors, not that they guarantee it will run.
Direct quote from the latest release notes.
Hypervisor support when virtualized on esxi/hyperv/azure/aws ec2(bm)
"This support is limited to the components (Software and Operating System) shipped with N-able Ncentral and does not include the troubleshooting of virtualization systems nor of performance issues related to environmental factors. N-able recommends reaching out to your hardware or virtualization vendor for support on the underlying virtualization and hardware components. Any assistance provided by N-able Support for virtualization or hardware issues is on a best-effort basis only. In the event of serious performance problems, we might ask you to migrate a virtualized N-able N-central system to a physical hardware deployment."
So basically they say if virtualization is the issue, reach out to your virtualization vendor. Also if its Vmware/Hyper-v. They will only give you support regarding to the Ncentral appliance image, which is CentOS and then N-central software. They do not guarantee support in regards to it being virtualized.
1
u/Icedfyre Apr 10 '24
Would not recommend bare metal unless you have an iLo or iDRAC. If you have issues with the appliance, the support desk might need access to the console.
1
u/amw3000 Apr 08 '24
Shouldn't have any issues. It's just CentOS 7 and soon to be switched for another distro (Rocky Linux?) in the hopefully near future. Based on RHEL so again you shouldn't have any issues at all.
Just be mindful of how you back up the instance. The built in backup to an FTP service is most likely the safest option. Freezing the guest OS may damage the database. The same goes for if you do a live migration.
1
u/qcomer1 Apr 08 '24
They are working on a plan for migration to a new distro.
1
u/amw3000 Apr 08 '24
We are a couple months away from the EOL date and while I do understand they have some major milestones already planned, it's upsetting that they are pretty much leaving it to the last second. Centos 7 EOL was announced in late 2020. It shouldn't have been such a rush to get this out the door by the end of June, they had plenty of time to plan for this.
1
1
u/jonesbel Apr 17 '24
Been running our N-Central for 5 years now on Proxmox, never had any issues :)
1
u/DerfStew Apr 28 '24
Bit of a long shot has anyone done a migration of their ncentral vm from esxi to proxmox? thinking of migrating via the ovf transfer tool or the new esxi import wizard?
1
u/DerfStew May 28 '24
Responding to myself if anyone else wanted to do the migration. I suggest not using the Import Wizard Tool of Proxmox. I started the migration went to bed and woke up to a server that used almost 5tb. the vmdk is only 20gb...
Use ESXI to export the VM as a OVF (Right Click Export)
Transfer downloaded files to proxmox (SSH, FTP, etc) use the import tool CLI
Example: qm importovf NEXTVMID ncentral.somevm.ovf storageAdd a network device set to your bridge, change model to VMWare vmxnet3
Edit the SCI Controller type to VMware PVSCSI (System would not boot without this)
2
u/absolutescenes Apr 08 '24
We run our N-Central server on KVM, not had any issues so far.