Ovirt – Confirm Reboot for Unresponsive Host in Ovirt

1. engine backup is done using a script aptly called engine-backup. Backing up VMs is trickier, there's a built-in API[1] but it will only be effective if you're using a host OS that is capable of libvirt blockcommit, i.e. latest Fedora or EL7.1. Otherwise, you can backup the VMs the old fashined way, using in-agent backups or stopping them to take a backup, if downtime isn't critical.

2. I would bond all 4 NICs using mode-4, if the switch can support that, and segregating the network into a management VLAN, VM network, display network and storage network. If you expect storage loads to interfere, maybe break that down into two bonds, one for storage and one for VMs, display and mgmt

3. One at a time. When you click the "maintenance" button, all VMs from the host will migrate away, so the host can be taken down. Storage connections, during maintenance are also getting shut down.

4. Whatever the UPS vendor recommends, this has nothing to do with oVirt. Basically, the pre-shutdown procedure would be to take all VMs down first (so the UPS might want to trigger an API script that would issue shutdown on all VMs) and then place all hosts in maintenance, so they can be shutdown cleanly. When all hosts are in maintenance, it is safe to pull the plug

5. Not wrong and not right either. In the older versions, there were some hard dependencies that could break if you deleted the default stuff. Using the defaults wasn't a problem. Since it's still better to have everything properly named, it is recommended to create your own DC and Clusters. To move a host between clusters, put it in maintenance, edit and change the cluster affinity. Activate the host - and it's in the new cluster.

Welcome to the wonderful world of oVirt :)

[1] http://www.ovirt.org/Features/Backup-Restore_API_Integration

If you can afford downtime, why not simply backup the VM, install oVirt and restore the VM into an oVirt based VM?

Also, if the "small" box is going to be the engine, you can simply install the engine on it while the original VM runs in vbox, attach the "big" box as a host, and then move the VM into oVirt.

Another option is the self hosted engine, basically, deploy engine as a VM on the "big" box, move the VM, and later maybe also add the "small" box as a second host, so you can have a two node cluster.