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. Pasi Kärkkäinen forwarded[1] a patch announcement[2] from xen-devel list. This set of 7 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

Daniel P. Berrange said[3] these patches will make their way into rawhide when they are merged into the LKML dev tree line used by rawhide at that time.

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

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

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 in FWN issue 141, Daniel Berrange pointed out 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] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00210.html

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.

Red Hat has acquired[1][2] Qumranet, Inc., the inventor and key maintainer of KVM.

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

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