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 Adds Disk and Network I/O Graphs
Guido Günther submitted[1] a patch for virt-manager
to display with disk and network input/output graphs in addition to the CPU and memory utilization graphs.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00026.html
virt-manager Supports Multiple Serial Consoles
Cole Robinson patched[1] virt-manager to
combine "the serial console window with the VM details window. Opening the serial console now appends a tab to the details view. In addition, multiple serial consoles are now supported, not just the primary/first defined console, though this still only works for 'pty' devices."
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00109.html
Maintaining VM State While Restarting libvirtd Needed
Upgrades of libvirt necessitate a restart of libvirtd. Guido Günther asked[1] if there was any progress on saving enough state to restart libvirtd without restarting any guests. Daniel P. Berrange replied[2] this has been solved for the LXC driver and the same approach may apply to the QEMU driver.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00093.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00094.html
Guido pointed[3] out "This would solve the problem of restarting libvirtd. How are we going to distinguish this from daemon shutdown on e.g. system reboot?" To which, Daniel B. proposed[4] "We can probably distinguish by picking a specific signal for orderly shutdown of the daemon + vms, vs a simple restart." Adding, "Perhaps we should have an explicit API, or a convenient virsh command to shutdown all VMs in one go."
[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00046.html
[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00047.html
Fedora Xen List
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.
No Dom0 Support in Fedora 10
Daniel P. Berrange laid[1] it out there. "There is pretty much zero chance that Fedora 10 will include a Xen Dom0 host. While upstream Xen developers are making good progress on porting Dom0 to paravirt_ops, there is simply too little time for this to be ready for Fedora 10. So if you need to use Fedora 10 as a host, then KVM is your only viable option at this time. If you can wait for Fedora 11 (or use RHEL-5 / CentOS-5) then Xen may be an option for you." See also FWN 143[2].
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00035.html
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Laying_the_Groundwork_for_Xen_Domain_0_Support
Libvirt List
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
Running Xen Guests Without xend
Stefan de Konink asked[1] if users could someday run xen guests without a xend running. Gerd Hoffmann said[2] there are patches queued up which begin to allow qemu to do this. Adding, "If things work out well we might have that in the F11 timeframe." Assuming Dom0 support in the pv_ops based kernel is completed.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00402.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00406.html
oVirt Devel List
This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.