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syslog-ng Store Box 7.4.0 - Installation Guide

Limitations of SSB under VMware

The following limitations apply to running version 7.4.0 of SSB under VMware:

  • SSB can be installed under the following VMware versions:

    • VMware ESXi 4.0 or later.

    • VMware ESX 4.0 or later.

  • SSB supports both thin and thick provisioning but can only use fixed disk space assigned to the virtual host. To increase the virtual disk size, you must power down SSB, as it does not support on-the-fly disk allocation scenarios. To increase the size of the virtual disk, see Increasing the virtual disk size of SSB under a virtual machine.

  • Hardware-related alerts and status indicators of SSB may display inaccurate information, for example, display degraded RAID status.

  • Creating Quiesced snapshots is not supported. Disable this option when taking a snapshot of your SSB appliance, otherwise the boot firmware of the appliance becomes tainted.

Installing SSB under VMware ESXi/ESX

The following procedure describes how to install a new SSB under VMware ESXi or ESX.

To install a new SSB under VMware ESXi or ESX

  1. Create the virtual machine for SSB using the following settings:

    • Guest operating system: Linux/Ubuntu 64-bit.

    • Allocate memory for the virtual machine. SSB requires a minimum of 1 GB of memory, in addition to the memory limit of the indexed logspaces. The recommended size for the memory depends on the exact environment, but consider the following:

      • The base system requires 256 MB.

      • The syslog-ng server running on SSB requires between 128 MB and 1 GB of memory, depending on the message load and on the configuration of SSB.

      • For every logspace, SSB requires additional memory to index the incoming messages. The amount of memory allocated for the indexer can be set individually for every logspace.

    • The hard disk controller must be LSI Logic Parallel.

    • Do not use RAID for the hard disk, use the data duplication features of your virtual environment instead. That way, a single hard disk is sufficient for the system. If you need to use the built-in RAID support of SSB for some reason, use two hard disks, and SSB will automatically use them in software RAID.

      		 Caution:

      Hazard of data loss When you install or reinstall SSB in a virtual environment, always create new hard disks. Using existing hard disks can cause unexpected behavior and operational problems.

    • Configure a fixed size disk with at least 8 GB space.

      About 5 GB is required for the base system, the remaining disk space is used to store data. To increase the initial disk size, see Increasing the virtual disk size of SSB under a virtual machine.

    • SSB requires that you use either 1 network card or 4 network cards, all of them must be VMXNET3.

      NOTE: In case of establishing a High Availability cluster, four network cards must be configured as described in section With or without High Availability cluster capability.

  2. After creating the virtual machine, edit the settings of the machine. Set the following options:

    1. Under Options > VMware Tools, enable the Shutdown, Suspend, Reset options, otherwise the SSB administrator will not be able to access these functions from the SSB web interface.

    2. Under Options > Boot options, enable the Force BIOS Setup option. This is required to be able to check the system time (and modify it if needed) before installing SSB.

  3. Log in to the support portal and download the latest syslog-ng Store Box installation ISO file. Note that you need to have purchased SSB as a virtual appliance or have partner access to download syslog-ng Store Box ISO files. If you are a partner but do not see the ISO files, you can request partner access within the support portal.

  4. Mount the ISO image and boot the virtual machine. Follow the on-screen instructions to install SSB.

    Once installation successfully completes, the virtual machine will restart automatically.

    If installation fails, a message appears to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to reboot the virtual machine.

With or without High Availability cluster capability

From version 7.3.0, two virtual SSB appliances can be connected into a High Availability (HA) cluster. To do so, make sure that the following requirements are met:

  1. The disks must be exactly of the same type and same size in both of the involved SSB appliances. Only one disk can be used, and no external data disks are allowed.

  2. Both virtual machines must have four virtual network interfaces. The same requirement applies for the hardware-based SSB appliances as well. The involved interfaces will be automatically renamed to eth0, eth1, eth2, and eth3.

    However, if you plan to use the "Redundant HA" or "Next-hop Monitoring" features, you must configure the first three virtual network interfaces to promiscuous mode, so that SSB can pass each incoming packet to the CPU and enable MacVlan interfaces inside the virtual interfaces.

    To configure a promiscuous subnet inside VMware execute the following steps:

    1. Under the Networking tab, select the appropriate subnet.

      The subnet information will appear on the right panel.

    2. Select the Configure tab, then navigate to Settings > Policies.

    3. Under the Security section, set the Promiscuous mode to Accept by clicking Edit.

    Make sure that the fourth interface (eth3) is set up with a port group. Configure the same port group on both virtual machines. This emulates the two machines being connected with a cable.

  3. Install DRBD block devices on the core firmware disk partition. During installation, a selector pop-up page appears to choose between "HA support" or "No HA Support" (standalone) mode as shown in the following screenshot:

  4. Make sure that similarly to hardware-based HA, an HA-enabled license is available.

If you meet all requirements for both SSB virtual machines, you can connect them into an HA cluster. However, consider the following limitations of virtual HA installations compared to virtual standalone installations:

  • You cannot extend the virtual disk size after installation. In other words, the "Disk Resize" feature is not available for virtual SSB appliances.

  • SSB can collect logs only on the system disk. You cannot configure or use external data disks.

Upgraded versions of SSB also have these limitations.

syslog-ng Store Box Hyper-V Installation Guide

This tutorial describes the possibilities and limitations of installing syslog-ng Store Box (SSB) 7.4.0 as a virtual appliance under a Hyper-V server.

Limitations of SSB under Hyper-V

Version 7.4.0 of SSB has no special support for running under Hyper-V. While the basic functionality of SSB is not affected by running as a virtual appliance, the following limitations apply:

  • If High Availability (HA) operation mode is required in a virtual environment, use the HA function provided by the virtual environment.

  • Hardware-related alerts and status indicators of SSB may display inaccurate information, for example, display degraded RAID status.

  • When running SSB under Microsoft Hyper-V, ensure that the network interfaces are actually connected to the network. When running under Hyper-V, SSB indicates on the Basic Settings > Network > Ethernet links page that there is a link, even if the network interface is configured and enabled, but not connected to the network.

  • When rebooting SSB in Hyper-V, the following critical error message may appear in the event log of the Hyper-V host:

    <Virtual machine name> was reset because an unrecoverable error occurred on a virtual processor that caused a triple fault.

    This is normal, there is no problem with SSB. For details, see Triple fault in event log shows reset of Linux virtual machines.

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