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Add FAQ to documentation

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Joshua Boniface 2020-04-11 01:22:07 -04:00
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# Frequently Asked Questions about Parallel Virtual Cluster
## General Questions
### What is it?
PVC is a virtual machine management suite designed around high-availability. It can be considered an alternative to ProxMox, VMWare, Nutanix, and other similar solutions that manage not just the VMs, but the surrounding infrastructure as well.
### Why would you make this?
The full story can be found in the [about page](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about), but after becoming frustrated by numerous other management tools, I discovered that what I wanted didn't exist as FLOSS software, so I built it myself.
### Is PVC right for me?
PVC might be right for you if your requirements are:
1. You need KVM-based VMs.
2. You want management of storage and networking (a.k.a. "batteries-included") in the same tool.
3. You want hypervisor-level redundancy, able to tolerate hypervisor downtime seamlessly, for all elements of the stack.
I built PVC for my homelab first, found a perfect usecase with my employer, and think it might be useful to you too.
### Is 3 hypervisor really the minimum?
For a redundant cluster, yes. PVC requires a majority quorum for several subsystems, and the smallest possible majority quorum is 2/3. That said, you can run PVC on a single node for testing/lab purposes without host-level reundancy.
## Feature Questions
### Does PVC support Docker/Kubernetes/LXC/etc.
No. PVC supports only KVM VMs. To run Docker containers, etc., you would need to run a VM which then runs your containers.
### Does PVC have a WebUI?
Not yet. Right now, PVC management is done almost exclusively with an API and the included CLI interface to that API. A WebUI could and likely will be built in the future, but I'm not a frontend developer.
## Storage Questions
### Can I use RAID-5 with PVC?
The short answer is no. The long answer is: Ceph, the storage backend used by PVC, does support "erasure coded" pools which implement a RAID-5-like functionality. PVC does not support this for several reasons. If you use PVC, you must accept at the very least a 2x storage penalty, and for true safety and resiliency a 3x storage penalty, for VM storage. This is a trade-off of the architecture.
### Can I use spinning HDDs with PVC?
You can, but you won't like the results. SSDs are effectively required to obtain any sort of reasonable performance when running multiple VMs. Ideally, datacentre-grade SSDs as well, due to their significantly increased write endurance.
### What Ceph version does PVC use?
PVC requires Ceph 14.x (Nautilus). The official PVC repository includes Ceph 14.2.8. Debian Buster by default includes only 12.x (Luminous).

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## Getting Started
To get started with PVC, read the [Cluster Architecture document](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/architecture/cluster/), then see [Installing](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installing) for details on setting up a set of PVC nodes, using the [PVC Ansible](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/ansible) framework to configure and bootstrap a cluster, and managing it with the [`pvc` CLI tool](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/cli) or [RESTful HTTP API](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/api). For details on the project, its motivation, and architectural details, see [the About page](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about).
To get started with PVC, read the [Cluster Architecture document](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/architecture/cluster/) and [Frequently Asked Questions](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/architecture/faq/), then see [Installing](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installing) for details on setting up a set of PVC nodes, using the [PVC Ansible](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/ansible) framework to configure and bootstrap a cluster, and managing it with the [`pvc` CLI tool](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/cli) or [RESTful HTTP API](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manuals/api). For details on the project, its motivation, and architectural details, see [the About page](https://parallelvirtualcluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about).
## Changelog