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

New Release virt-manager 0.6.1

Cole Robinson announced[1] a new virt-manager release, version 0.6.1.

This release includes:

VM disk and network stats reporting (Guido Gunther)
VM Migration support (Shigeki Sakamoto)
Support for adding sound devices to an existing VM
Enumerate host devices attached to an existing VM
Allow specifying a device model when adding a network device to an existing VM
Combine the serial console view with the VM Details window
Allow connection to multiple VM serial consoles
Bug fixes and many minor improvements.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00067.html

New Release virtinst 0.4.1

Cole Robinson announced[1] a new virtinst release, version 0.4.1.

This release includes:

Add virt-image -> vmx support to virt-convert, replacing virt-pack (Joey Boggs)
Add disk checksum support to virt-image (Joey Boggs)
Enhanced URL install support: Debian Xen paravirt, Ubuntu kernel and boot.iso, Mandriva kernel, and Solaris Xen Paravirt (Guido Gunther, John Levon, Cole Robinson)
Expanded test suite
Numerous bug fixes, cleanups, and minor improvements

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00068.html

Fedora Virtualization List

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

Fedora Xen List

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

Xen Users Future on Fedora

Evan Lavelle wondered[1] if those who have invested years in xen on Fedora have been "shafted". "Xen isn't flavour of the month around here, but I assumed there were good reasons for that. Now, rather belatedly, I've found" that Red Hat acquired Qumranet and KVM. (FWN #143[2])

Neil Thompson thought[3] not. "Shafted?...I don't think so. We're just in a blip at the moment." Neil pointed out that "RHEL5, which has a number of years left, includes xen - I don't think Red Hat are going to mess their corporate clients around by removing it. The problem with F8 is that the kernel people could no longer drag an obsolete (2.6.21) kernel around just for xen, and decided to concentrate on helping get it into the mainstream kernel. This[4] has taken longer than expected."

Jan ONDREJ was also concerned[5] that, "KVM is still not a replacement for paravirtualized machines and I think fully virtualized KVM will be slower like a paravirtualized XEN."

Richard W.M. Jones countered[6] "KVM is a great replacement for Xen. It's much easier to use for a start -- no more rebooting into a completely separate kernel hypervisor. As long as you have the virtio drivers in the guest, which is the default for all new Linux distros, performance is roughly the same."

Apropros to the topic, but on another list, Mark McLoughlin explained[7] "Para-virtualization isn't always better. KVM uses full virtualization, meaning that it uses the processor's support for virtualization. This means you can run an unmodified guest OS on KVM. If you can modify the guest OS, then KVM does allow you to use paravirtualization for some performance sensitive operations - so e.g. we've got pvclock, pv MMU and virtio devices. Don't get tied up in marketing terminology - try both and decide for yourself which works best for you."

Support for dom0 is targeted[8] for kernel 2.6.29, but the changelogs[9] for the release candidates don't seem to indicate completion yet.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-January/msg00031.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Red_Hat_Acquires_Makers_of_KVM.2C_Qumranet_Inc.

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-January/msg00033.html

[4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XenPvopsDom0

[5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-January/msg00032.html

[6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-January/msg00041.html

[7] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00063.html

[8] http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenParavirtOps

[9] http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.29-rc2 http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.29-rc1