Documentation Virtualization Beat

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Live Snapshotting of Virtual Machines

The virtualization stack in Fedora has provided the ability to take "snapshots" of a virtual machine for many releases. These functions have however always required that the virtual machine be paused or stopped while the storage snapshot was created. Recent updates included in Fedora 17 allow for qemu and libvirt to create snapshots of a virtual machine without requiring any downtime.

Live snapshot creation now works even for virtual machines using disk images stored in RAW format. In these cases libvirt creates snapshots using external QCOW2 files - transparently switching the virtual machine to run on the new external image(s) once created.

oVirt 3.1

Fedora 17 included the packages required to support a minimal installation of the oVirt virtualization management platform. This initial offering has now been significantly expanded. oVirt has arrived! In addition to the existing functionality it is now possible to use a Fedora installation as a fully fledged oVirt "Engine" - providing a graphical management console for your virtualized environments.

Project homepage: http://ovirt.org.

oVirt Engine Installation

The oVirt Engine provides a browser accessible management console for creating, provisioning, and using virtual machines. It also provides facilities for managing the networking and storage needs of the virtualized environment. For users who want to experience the management console but do not have a spare machine to act as a virtualization host an 'all in one' plugin is provided. The 'all in one' plugin allows a system to act as both the oVirt Engine and as a virtualization host.

To install the oVirt Engine:

• Log in to the Fedora system on which you wish to host oVirt Engine as the root user.
• Install the ovirt-engine package, and all of the packages it depends on, using yum.

   # yum install ovirt-engine

• Run the engine-setup script and follow the prompts to complete installation of oVirt Engine.

   # engine-setup

• Once the Engine has been installed successfully the script will provide instructions for accessing the web Administration Portal.

To install the oVirt Engine (including the 'all in one' plugin):

• Log in to the Fedora system on which you wish to host oVirt Engine as the root user.
• Install the ovirt-engine package, and all of the packages it depends on, using yum.

   # yum ovirt-engine-setup-plugin-allinone

• Run the engine-setup script and follow the prompts to complete installation of oVirt Engine.

   # engine-setup

• Once the Engine has been installed successfully the script will provide instructions for accessing the web Administration Portal.

Virtualization Host Installation

For each system you wish to use as a virtualization host:

• Install Fedora 18. A minimal installation is sufficient. Ensure that you set password for the root user and that SSH is enabled.
• Log in to your oVirt Engine installation using your web browser.
• Select "Add" from the Hosts tab.
• Enter a name for the Fedora host.
• Provide the hostname or IP address and root password for the Fedora host
• Click OK.

There will be a short delay as your host downloads and installs required packages. Your Fedora host will then be added to the environment. Once you have added your first virtualization host try:

• Adding Data and ISO storage domains.
• Uploading an ISO image for an operating system.
• Creating a virtual machine!

Additional Information

A Quick Start Guide for oVirt 3.1 is available at http://wiki.ovirt.org/wiki/Quick_Start_Guide.