FWN/Beats/Virtualization

Virtualization

In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

Enterprise Management Tools List

This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list

Virt-manager 0.6.0 Released

Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virt-manager[2] 0.6.0. Features include:

• Remote storage management and provisioning
• Remote VM installation
• Use Avahi to list libvirtd instances
• Virtio and USB options when adding a disk device

and many more.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00026.html

[2] http://www.virt-manager.org

Virtinst 0.400.0 Released

Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virtinst 0.400.0. Features include:

• New tool 'virt-convert'
• New tool 'virt-pack'
• Support for remote VM installation
• Use virtio disk/net drivers if chosen os entry supports it

and many more.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00027.html

Fedora Xen List

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.

Laying the Groundwork for Xen Domain 0 Support

There are further developments in the state of Xen in upstream Linux (see FWN#137[3]). Pasi Kärkkäinen forwarded[1] a patch announcement[2] from xen-devel list. This set of seven patches begin to lay the groundwork for Xen domain 0 support.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00001.html

[2] http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-09/threads.html#00170

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#State_of_Xen_in_Upstream_Linux

Daniel P. Berrange said[4] these patches will make their way into rawhide when they are merged into the LKML[5] dev tree line used by rawhide at that time.

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00003.html

[5] http://lkml.org

Libvirt List

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

Libvirt 0.4.5 Released

Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.5. In addition to a long changelog, the "main features are the improvement of OpenVZ and LXC, the uniform XML handling (and hence format) th[r]ough all drivers, improvements in devices handling for QEmu/KVM and storage pool source discovery."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00186.html

Segfault if no Qemu Emulator Passed

Cole Robinson patched[1] a bug that resulted in a segfault if a Qemu domain is defined without an emulator value. Daniel Berrange expressed[2] displeasure at letting this bug slip through and proposed a "brown paper bag" release. Daniel Veillard advised[3] against rushing the fix, and offered to push the patch to Fedora's build while other distributions could pick up the fix in a week or two when libvirt 0.4.6 would presumably be released.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00199.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00202.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00206.html

Daniel Berrange pointed out code test coverage reports[4] on the build server, and highlighted the need to create a functional test rig for the mass of code that is simply not possible to unit test due to interactions with host OS state / functionality.

[4] http://builder.virt-manager.org/module-libvirt--devel.html

Ability to Nice KVM Processes

Henri Cook expressed[1] a desire to nice KVM processes, and proposed a means to pass arbitrary command string parameters to the process startup.

As mentioned[2] in FWN #141, Daniel Berrange pointed out[3] the goal of libvirt is consistent API representation across hypervisors. Fortunately there is a 'schedular parameters' API in libvirt. All that's needed is for someone to implement the schedular parameters driver API for KVM.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00209.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Exposing_Unique_Hypervisor_Features

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00210.html

RFC Thoughts on Open Source Hypervisor Management

Nathan Charles described[1] his ideal clustered VM provisioning system. Features would include

• cluster administration is done from the command line
• cluster administration can be performed from any node
• a new node can join a cluster on a local subnet with one command
• local storage resources are presented to the cluster so there is no need to have predefined NAS/SAN/iSCSI
• cluster will load balance vm instances from node to node
• a node shouldn't need more than one nic but adding additional nic's provides failover and load balancing

Nathan acknowledged oVirt's virtues, but stated it requires a lot of substantial changes and significant modification to work with an existing provisioning infrastructure. Nathan requested comments on his thoughts.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00195.html

The only reply[2] so far came from Stefan de Konink, who pointed to some code[3] which seems[4] to be a "handler for libvirt using avahiclient".

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00196.html

[3] http://repo.or.cz/w/handlervirt.git

[4] http://kinkrsoftware.nl/projecten.html#virt

oVirt Devel List

This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.

Other Virtualization News

This section contains virtualization news which may not have been directly discussed on the above mailing lists.

Red Hat Acquires Makers of KVM, Qumranet Inc.

On September 4, 2008 Red Hat acquired[1][2] Qumranet, Inc., the inventor and key maintainer of KVM. Qumranet also develops Solid ICE[3] which runs a user's desktop in a KVM virtual machine in the data center with users connecting via thin client or other options.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2008/qumranet.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/promo/qumranet/

[3] http://www.qumranet.com/files/white_papers/Solid_IC_Data_Sheet.pdf