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

Maximum Number of Attached CDROMs in Xen

Alexander Todorov asked[1] why only 3 CDROM devices could be attached in virt-manager.

Cole Robinson replied[2] "Xen uses a forked qemu for HVM device emulation" and the version on RHEL is limited to 4 IDE devices. The newer qemu found in Fedora 9 allow attaching SCSI disks and CDROMs, and thereby more devices. This ability already in libvirt is not yet exposed in the virt-manager GUI.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00062.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00065.html

Parallel Port Support in virt-manager

Bob Tennent asked if virt-manager supports adding a parallel port to a guest OS. Cole Robinson answered[2] this functionality is[3] in libvirt, but not exposed in virt-manager yet.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00048.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00051.html

[3] http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsConsole

VMWare VMX Output from virt-convert

Joey Boggs posted[1] a patch which provides VMWare vmx[2] output from virt-convert. "This will replace the virt-pack command and supplemental Unware.py file and integrate them into virt-convert directly as a module."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00057.html

[2] http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html

Disk Image Signature Verification

Joey Boggs posted patches for virtinst[1] and for virt-convert[2] that "will add in disk signature support for ISV's and others folks that wish to verify the disk has not been altered prior to running virt-image. Supports MD5 and SHA1 signatures."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00068.htmlk

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00096.html

Fedora Xen List

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

Continued Trouble with 32bit Fedora 9 DomU on Fedora 8 Dom0

Fred Brier followed[1] up on a thread[2] from June 2008. It seems that on a 32bit system running Fedora 8 dom0, the shutdown or restart of a Fedora 9 domU results in that guest being inaccessible to libvirt tools until a dom0 reboot or xend restart. There are at least two similar bugs[3],[4] filed for this issue.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00029.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-June/msg00029.html

[3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=429403

[4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=453276

Libvirt List

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

Libvirt 0.4.6 Released

Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.6. "There is no major change in this release, just the bug fixes a few improvements and some cleanup".

Improvements include:

• add storage disk volume delete (Cole Robinson)
• KVM dynamic max CPU detection (Guido Günther)
• spec file improvement for minimal builds (Ben Guthro)
• improved error message in XM configuration module (Richard Jones)
• network config in OpenVZ support (Evgeniy Sokolov)
• enable stopping a pool in logical storage backend and cleanup deletion of pool (Chris Lalancette)

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00380.html

After finding no F8 build newer than 0.4.4 in Bodhi, Dale Bewley asked[2] if the Xen users stuck[3] on Fedora 8 could expect an update[4].

Daniel Veillard responded[5] it was unclear the release would fix anything for Xen users and "It was looking more risky than potentially useful to update there."

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00400.html

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#kernel-xen_is_Dead

[4] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00401.html

RFC: Events API

David Lively began[1] a discusion on implementation of events in libvirtd.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00321.html

Windows Binaries

Richard W.M. Jones pointed[1] out that -- while not an official distribution -- binaries for libvirt-0.dll and virsh.exe are available[2] in the mingw32-libvirt package.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00393.html

[2] http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mingw/fedora-9/

oVirt Devel List

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

oVirt 0.93-1 Released

Perry N. Myers [1]

both the oVirt Node and oVirt Server Suite.

New features in this release include:

• Addition of 'Smart Pools' in the Web user interface for organizing pools on a per user basis.
• Additions to the Edit VM screen to allow re-provisioning of a guest as well editing other guest settings.
• oVirt Appliance manages VMs directly on the host it is running on. This eliminates the 'fake nodes' used in previous versions.
• oVirt API (Ruby Bindings)
• Support for configuring more than one NIC per Node. UI support for this will be integrated shortly.
• Support for bonding/failover of NICs. UI support for this will be integrated shortly.
• SELinux support on oVirt Node
• Rewrite of performance graphing visualization

Instructions for configuring yum to point to the ovirt.org repository: http://www.ovirt.org/download.html

Instructions for using the Appliance and Nodes: http://www.ovirt.org/install-instructions.html

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00491.html

Modeling LVM Storage

Chris Lalancette described[1] the outcome of a IRC chat about carving up storage with LVM.

The existing StoragePool in the current model contains zero or more StorageVolumes. Chris described adding a StorageVolume of type LVM which contains one or more iSCSI StorageVolumes and presumably fiberchannel in the future.

After the model is modified and the backend "taskomatic" code is in place, then while provisioning a guest VM the user will either choose an entire LUN guest, choose an existing logical volume, or create a new volume.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00313.html

Scott Seago clarified[2] that "volumes must be of the same 'type' as the pool". An IscsiStoragePool contains IscsiStorageVolumes an LvmStoragePool contains LvmStorageVolumes. "In additon, for LvmStoragePools, we have a new association defined between it and StorageVolumes. an LvmStoragePool has 1 or more "source storage volumes""... "which for the moment must be IscsiStorageVolumes."

"When determining which storage volumes are available for guests, we'll have to filter out storage volumes which are connected to LvmStoragePools."

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00315.html

Steve Ofsthun asked[3] how will oVirt distinguish between logical volumes created on a whole disk assigned to a guest versus volumes used by the host. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[4] this could accomplished by creating a partition on the disk and assigning this to the guest, thereby making the guest LVM one step removed from the host.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00317.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00322.html