Overview
Learn about the prerequisites for deploying Management Center Virtual on KVM. Understand how to install the required packages, obtain the qcow2 image, and apply recommended host tuning and optimization settings to prepare your Linux environment for deployment.
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Download the Firewall Management Center Virtual qcow2 file from Cisco.com and put it on your Linux host:
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A Cisco.com login and Cisco service contract are required.
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For the purpose of the sample deployment in this document, we assume you are using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Install the following packages on top of the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS host:
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qemu-kvm
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libvirt-bin
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bridge-utils
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virt-manager
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virtinst
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virsh tools
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genisoimage
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Performance is affected by the host and its configuration. You can maximize the throughput on KVM by tuning your host. For generic host-tuning concepts, see Network Function Virtualization: Quality of Service in Broadband Remote Access Servers with Linux and Intel Architecture.
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Useful optimizations for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS include the following:
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macvtap—High performance Linux bridge; you can use macvtap instead of a Linux bridge. Note that you must configure specific settings to use macvtap instead of the Linux bridge.
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Transparent Huge Pages—Increases memory page size and is on by default in Ubuntu 18.04.
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Hyperthread disabled—Reduces two vCPUs to one single core.
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txqueuelength—Increases the default txqueuelength to 4000 packets and reduces drop rate.
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pinning—Pins qemu and vhost processes to specific CPU cores; under certain conditions, pinning is a significant boost to performance.
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For information on optimizing a RHEL-based distribution, see Red Hat Enterprise Linux6 Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide.