edgeLinux OS
Overview
edgeLinux OS is a type-1 hypervisor, specialized for the needs of Antsle. You can see the system requirements on the download page.
It is based on CentOS and is a custom operating system with everything that’s needed to manage your virtual servers. It orchestrates the networking, backups, storage, etc. It has zero overhead on top of that. The result is a blazing fast hypervisor.
Virtual Machines and Bare-Metal Containers
edgeLinux OS supports two types of virtualization to create your antlets. While each antlet is a complete Virtual Private Server (VPS), LXC antlets use OS-based virtualization, a.k.a. containerization (popularized by docker), whereas KVM antlets use hardware-based virtualization with QEMU and KVM. For most cases, use LXC-based antlets because they create the least overhead and save resources including electricity. In that way, your Antsle is a green datacenter.
Storage
For storage, we use mirrored ZFS pools. ZFS is an advanced, feature rich file system designed to never allow any data loss or inconsistent state on the storage media. Combined with mirroring, our ZFS-based storage architecture offer excellent fault-tolerance and flexibility. We just thought your data is important – so we better keep it safe.
We use a ZFS pool (zpool) named “antlets” to store your antlets as well as the templates the antlets are created from. Try a zfs list or zfs list -t all to inspect the layout of ZFS file systems. The HDD add-on resides on a separate zpool named hdd.
Each antlet gets its own ZFS file system in the antlets pool, so it’s completely separated from the rest of the system (including other antlets). Mirroring, compression etc is all handled by ZFS inside edgeLinux OS and is completely transparant to the antlets themselves. In plain English: each and every antlet gets isolation, mirroring and compression for free, without having to take care of it in any way.
Internal IP address assignment
We have an integrated, internal DHCP server in edgeLinux OS, and each antlet will pull it's IP address from that DHCP server - unless you create a bridge. This DHCP server will assign IP addresses based on Mac addresses:
In our pre-defined templates, we're always using those Mac addresses, and through our template XMLs we make sure that one of these MACs will be assigned.
How to Migrate from edgeLinux 1 (based on Gentoo) to edgeLinux 2.0
This is a new migration process and currently in beta. We cannot guarantee that your system will be in the state that you left it previously or that all your antlets will run on your new installation. This will not save any of the following:
Custom configurations that you did to your Antsle server,
Your port forwarding rules
Your snapshots
Virtual drives that are not on the main antlets zpool (those need to be backed up separately).
Step 1 - Get your systems ready
Check your settings tab in antMan, your version of antMan should should be 2.2.1 (or higher). Why is this important? Any antlet backups taken before this version can not be restored on edgeLinux 2.0. If your antMan is not up to date then run upgrade-antman in your console before taking backups in step two.
Next log in to antHill.antsle.com and make sure that your server is activated and visible there. antHill is the central hub and will allow you to restore backups across multiple Antsle servers.
Step 2 - Back up any antlets that you want to keep
Watch this 1 minute video or read our docs article for a guide on how to back up and restore antlets. This tutorial assumes you will use the Antsle Cloud as your storage backend. Backups come with antMan Essential, Grow or Scale. You can see our plans and pricing here. Once backups are enabled you can back up your antlets.
If you have any templates you want to keep, just create an antlet out of them and back them up as well
Important note: If your antlet has a virtual drive on a different zpool that will not be included in the back up. Read our docs article on backing up antlets for workarounds.
Step 3 - Do a fresh install of our OS
Download here and follow the instructions in the docs for installation.
Step 4 - Activate new Antsle Server
At the on-boarding screen, select “this is Antsle hardware” and follow the prompts. This will give your new installation the same serial number and license as the original.
You must also register the Antsle on antHill when prompted in the on-boarding process. This will allow antHill to make the connection between your backups and this new server.
Step 5 - Restore the backups to your new server
Restore backups from the "Heal antlets" section in antMan. Hop right over to the 0:45 time stamp at this video where we show you how to heal your antlets.
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