Update on Virtualization in Debian

Introduction
News in testing/unstable
Qemu management GUIs
Xen and related tools in Debian
Thanks

Debian Virtualization – Update

Henning Sprang

Silpion IT Solutions GmbH/B1 Systems GmbH

2008-02-24 / FOSDEM 2008 – Brussels

Henning Sprang Debian Virtualization – Update

Introduction
Thanks

The speaker - Henning Sprang

Software developer, author, admin, consultant
Linux since 1997
In Debian: FAI team member
Virtualization: used diﬀerent ﬂavors, mainly software testing
Book: “Xen. Virtualisierung unter Linux.” for Opensourcepress
Other interests: Java(Spring, Hibernate, XML processing),
agile/RAD web development(Rails, Django, . . . )


Introduction
Thanks

Outline
1 Introduction
2 News in testing/unstable
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
3 Qemu management GUIs
4 Xen and related tools in Debian
Core Xen packages
Xen management – overview
Xen-tools and related stuﬀ
Ganeti
Xenman (project ConVirt)
dtc-xen Henning Sprang Debian Virtualization – Update

Introduction
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
Thanks

Libvirt

Libvirt – a generic virtualization management library
See http://www.libvirt.org
Debian Team: http:
//alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-libvirt/
Debian sources: http://git.debian.org/
Available in Lenny, Sid and Backports (only recent versions in
unstable support Xen)


Introduction
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
Thanks

Virt-Manager

GUI tool to control (remote) virtual machines
Supports many diﬀerent technologies:
Qemu(with Kqemu)
Xen
KVM
Main Virtualization control tool on Fedora and OpenSuSE
Actually a GUI for libvirt
pkg-libvirt project on Alioth


Introduction
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
Thanks

Virt-Manager status

Qemu (Kqemu) support: good
Xen support in libvirt only recently uploaded to unstable
Debian-tailored Guest install support lacking - workaround:
Install guest with xen-tools (or anything else)
Start it with xm create
virsh dumpxml domain-id > mydomainconﬁg.xml Â´
Then load this conﬁg into the system


Introduction
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
Thanks

Virtualbox

An aspiring and cross-platform desktop virtualization solution
Developed by a small company in Germany
Closed source versions used in production for quite some while
OpenSourced only a little more than a year ago
Bought by Sun some weeks ago
The Virtualbox team does a great job:
virtualbox-ose and all required packages
guest extensions for Linux
On Alioth: pkg-virtualbox


Introduction
Libvirt
Virt-Manager
Virtualbox
Others
Thanks

Others

Up-to date versions of KVM, Vserver and openVZ ﬂow into
Debian regularly
Qemu has now 3 GUI’s to chose from – more below
More on Xen and related tools later!


Introduction
Thanks

Qemu management GUIs I

Qtemu:
New in Lenny/Sid
easy to use and get started
but limited set of options
Qemu-launcher
harder to get started,
but full set of options and functionality,
very realiable


Introduction
Thanks

Qemu management GUIs II

Qemu-control
GUI for the Qemu monitor(VM control system, not graphical
output)
can be used standalone or called by Qemu-launcher
Qemulator:
New in Lenny/Sid
complex interface similar to qemu-launcher, but not full
functionality
One crash at the ﬁrst test – then seemed stable


Introduction
Thanks

Qemu management GUIs III

Summary:
You can chose by your taste which you like best - they are all
usable
All of these can save and store configs so same settings can be
reproduced
Surely, all have a different config file scheme :(


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm
Compatibility – running Debian on other dists

Core Xen packages

Xen 3.2 uploaded shortly after the release
Only in testing: libxenstore and xenstore-utils packages
In Sid: Xen kernel ﬂavor - binaries work for Xen guests
NOT there: Debian packaged dom0 Kernel!
Workaround: Use a 2.6.18 Kernel from Xensource (Etch xen
Kernels said to be incompatible with Xen 3.2)
There are eﬀorts and development for pvops dom0 Kernel –
my tests not successful


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

Xen management – overview I

Xen-specific stuff:
xen-tools (combined with FAI, rinse, rpmstrap, debootstrap)
xenman (no release for a while, no Debian guest
instalation,but can control running guests)
xen-shell (since Lenny)
dtc-xen and dtc-xen-firewall
Ganeti


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

Xen management – overview II

Generic stuff useful for Xen bootstrapping:
FAI – class based, automated installs (see BoF later today)
dirinstall – straight into a mounted directory
netinstall – configure nfsroot in Xen config
fai-cd – only for HVM domains
rinse – rpm-distro bootstrapping – best tool for this task
rpmstrap – bootstrap RPM distributions
yum – as rpmstrap, more up-to-date
mach (make a chroot)


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-tools I

Pure, simple command line tool, written in Perl
Generates Xen config-files and creates block deviced based on:

Main config file
Preset files (–config)
Command line input
New in Lenny: Partitioning profiles
Installs guests with debootstrap, rinse, tar-archive . . .
Simple extensible with custom “roles” and hooks, custom
config templates(Text::Template)
New in Lenny: Build Xen Configs for booting guest via
NFSRoot

Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-tools – install and config

apt-get install xen-tools
Latest stuff in CVS repo, builds debs easily (nice: if you still
want make install, there’s even make uninstall to clean up)
Config file: /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf
Important options to set: dir/lvm, kernel, initrd, debootstrap,
dhcp
create dir for block-dev-files / volume group


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-tools – usage

Create vm and install
xen-create-image –hostname xen-tools-test
Delete:
xen-delete-image –hostname xen-tools-test
Complex partitions: see /etc/xen-tools/partition.d/*
Do more complex install tasks and class-based stuﬀ:
Combine xen-tools with FAI dirinstall(or softupdates, if you
insist)
FAI not covered here – see Thomas Lange’s talk later today in
the upper Bof room . . .


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-tools – combine with FAI

Get more complex install tasks done in a structured way
Use a class based install system
Set conﬁg option “no-install=1” to supercede standard install
Use the role “fai-install” – simple script:
#!/bin/sh
TARGET=$1
CMD=quot;fai -N -v -u $hostname dirinstall $TARGETquot;
echo running $CMD
$CMD


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-shell I

Also written by Steve Kemp and maintained by Radu Spineanu
A shell, bound to a ssh login, that lets you manage guest
domains(permissions defined in domU config file):
connect to it’s serial console
start/stop/reboot
check status
Re-Install
...
As xen-tools, it’s easy to build a Debian package of from CVS
Support for public key auth, reverse DNS (disabled
dynamically if it isn’t detected at startup)


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-shell II

Very easy to conﬁgure and use – interesting for hosting
environments. . .


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xen-shell III


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

Ganeti

A Xen management tool in use and developed by Google
See http://code.google.com/p/ganeti
Simple setup of Xen clusters with mirrored disks
High quality, works simply out of the box – no mess with drbd
Available in Lenny, Sid, Backports
New versions from upstream immediately available in Debian
Just read the install.html doc ﬁle and ge going in minutes!
Can also be combined with the well-known FAI


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

xenman (project ConVirt)

GUI for starting, stopping, connecting to the console, some
performance data
Functionality for provisioning of Debian guests lacking –
can/has to be build
New tests von Lenny: feels slow and less responsive
No upstream release since quite a while – project still alive?
Remote-management: on the feature list – no success trying
this. . .


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

dtc-xen

Extension module for dtc(Domain Technologie Control), a
web hosting management console
Provides a soap interface to control Xen hosts
Generates some performance graphs quickly and easily


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

dtc-xen – installation and usage

Just install from unstable with apt-get install dtc-xen
Graphs are immediately available at
http://hostname/dtc-xen
Soap management API to be tested
New addition: dtc-xen-ﬁrewall – setup package ﬁltering for
dom0


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

dtc-xen – screenshot


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm

Autopkgtest-xenlvm

Scripts to make autopkgtest run in Xen instances
Using lvm to easily reset the test instance to normalized state
Written by Ian Jackson
No time to test it yet – sounds very interesting


Core Xen packages
Introduction
Ganeti
dtc-xen
Thanks
Autopkgtest-xenlvm


debootstrap works well on other dists – must add –arch
because no dpkg
xen-tools, too
Don’t use host’s kernels(when used to use kernels from /boot
you are tempted to) – use native kernel via pygrub or copy it
to host


Introduction
Thanks

Thanks

Thanks to all Maintainers and developers for the great
Virtualization packages in Debian!


Introduction
Thanks

Advertisement
If you liked this talk, and are able to read German, you might
also like our book:
“Xen. Virtualisierung unter Linux.” – by Timo Benk, Jaroslaw
Zdrzalek, Ralph Dehner, Henning Sprang
ISBN: 3-937514-29-5
Accompanying website: http://www.xen-info.de
(errata, mailing list, wiki, . . . )
Translation pending – english publishers???
The talk, our book and my other works around Open Source
Xen and related tools is sponsored by:
Silpion IT Solutions GmbH – http://www.silpion.de
B1 Systems GmbH – http://www.b1-systems.de


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