| Line 18: | Line 18: | ||
Dennis J. | Dennis J. | ||
asked<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-July/msg00183.html</ref> | asked<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-July/msg00183.html</ref> | ||
about [[Features/VirtStorage|virt storage]]. | |||
"What is the best way to deal with I/O load when running several VMs on a | "What is the best way to deal with I/O load when running several VMs on a | ||
physical machine with local or remote storage?" "What I'm primarily worried about is the case when several VMs cause disk I/O at the same time." "What is the best way to soften the impact of such a situation?" | physical machine with local or remote storage?" "What I'm primarily worried about is the case when several VMs cause disk I/O at the same time." "What is the best way to soften the impact of such a situation?" | ||
[[PasiKärkkäinen|Pasi Kärkkäinen]] | [[PasiKärkkäinen|Pasi Kärkkäinen]] | ||
suggested "If the | suggested "If the IOs are not split evenly between VMs, you could use some tool like | ||
dm-ioband<ref>http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ioband/wiki/dm-ioband</ref> to make sure IOs are split fairly between VMs. Or then get faster disks. Single 15k rpm SAS disk will give you up to 350 | dm-ioband<ref>http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ioband/wiki/dm-ioband</ref> to make sure IOs are split fairly between VMs. Or then get faster disks. Single 15k rpm SAS disk will give you up to 350 | ||
IOPS, so it's 2-3x faster than 7200 rpm SATA." | IOPS, so it's 2-3x faster than 7200 rpm SATA." | ||
| Line 32: | Line 33: | ||
lots of host processes doing I/O. So: lots of spindles, expensive I/O | lots of host processes doing I/O. So: lots of spindles, expensive I/O | ||
hardware, etc." | hardware, etc." | ||
<references /> | <references /> | ||
Revision as of 02:24, 3 August 2009
Virtualization
In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization technologies on the @fedora-virt and @virt-tools-list lists.
Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley
Fedora Virtualization List
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.
Distributing I/O Load Among Guests
Dennis J. asked[1] about virt storage. "What is the best way to deal with I/O load when running several VMs on a physical machine with local or remote storage?" "What I'm primarily worried about is the case when several VMs cause disk I/O at the same time." "What is the best way to soften the impact of such a situation?"
Pasi Kärkkäinen suggested "If the IOs are not split evenly between VMs, you could use some tool like dm-ioband[2] to make sure IOs are split fairly between VMs. Or then get faster disks. Single 15k rpm SAS disk will give you up to 350 IOPS, so it's 2-3x faster than 7200 rpm SATA."
Richard Jones concurred[3] "For KVM, each VM isn't really any different from a host process, so you have to deal with them the same way that you'd deal with having lots of host processes doing I/O. So: lots of spindles, expensive I/O hardware, etc."
Virtualization Tools List
This section contains the discussion happening on the virt-tools-list list.
The very newest releases of virt packages are available (for testing purposes only) in the Virtualization Preview Repository before they become generally available.
New Release virt-manager 0.8.0
Cole Robinson
[1]
a new 
virt-manager
Virtual Machine Manager provides a graphical tool for administering virtual machines, using
New features:
- New 'Clone VM' Wizard
- Improved UI, including an overhaul of the main 'manager' view
- System tray icon for easy VM access (start, stop, view console/details)
- Wizard for adding serial, parallel, and video devices to existing VMs.
- CPU pinning support (Michal Novotny)
- Ability to view and change VM security (sVirt) settings (Dan Walsh)
- Many bug fixes and improvements
New Release virtinst 0.500.0
Cole Robinson
announced[1]
a new
virtinst is a module that helps build and install libvirt based virtual machines. It currently supports KVM, QEmu and Xen virtual machines. Package includes several command line utilities, including virt-install (build and install new VMs) and virt-clone (clone an existing virtual machine).
New features:
- New virt-install device options --serial, --parallel, and --video
- Allow various auth types for libvirt connections (PolicyKit, SASL, ...)
- New virt-clone option --auto-clone: generates all needed input.
- Option to specify network device model via virt-install --network (Guido Gunther)
- New virt-install option --virt-type for specifying hypervisor type (kvm, qemu). --accelerate is now the default behavior: To provision a plain qemu VM on a KVM enabled host, use '--virt-type qemu'
- OVF input support for virt-convert
- Many bug fixes and improvements
New Release virt-viewer 0.2.0
Daniel Berrange
announced[1]
a new
New features:
- Switch UI over to use Glade
- Support graphical dialog for VNC and libvirt authentication
- Resize window to match VNC desktop size where possible
- Scale down VNC desktop if it cannot fit in host desktop space
- Allow user to resize window to arbitrary size, scaling VNC
- Fix blocking of accelerators
- Allow automatic reconnect to a VM via --reconnect
- Use libvirt events to detect when VM changes state
- Wait for VM to appear if it does not exist
- Fix plugin build with newer xulrunner
- Port & build for Mingw32 target