Virtualization on the bin

SPARC Logical Domains: Alternate Service Domains Part 3

Wed, 17 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In Part One of this series we went through the initial configuration of our Logical Domain hypervisor, and took some time to explain the process of mapping out the PCI Root Complexes, so that we would be able to effectively split them between the primary and an alternate domain.

In Part Two of this series we took the information from Part One and split out our PCI Root Complexes and we configured and installed an alternate domain. We were also able to reboot the primary domain without impacting the operation of the alternate domain.

SPARC Logical Domains: Alternate Service Domains Part 2

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In Part Two (this article) we are going to take that information and split out our PCI Root Complexes and configure and install an alternate domain. At the end of this article you will be able to reboot the primary domain without impacting the operation of the alternate domain.

SPARC Logical Domains: Alternate Service Domains Part 1

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In this series we will be going over configuring alternate I/O and Service domains, with the goal of increasing the serviceability the SPARC T-Series servers without impacting other domains on the hypervisor. Essentially enabling rolling maintenance without having to rely on live migration or downtime. It is important to note, that this is not a cure-all, for example base firmware updates would still be interruptive, however minor firmware such as disk and I/O cards only should be able to be rolled.

SPARC Logical Domains: Live Migration

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

One of the ways that we are able to accomplish regularly scheduled maintenance is by utilizing Live Migration, with this we can migrate workloads from one physical machine to another without having service interruption. The way that it is done with Logical Domains is much more flexible than with most other hypervisor solutions, it doesn’t require any complicated cluster setup, no management layer, so you could literally utilize any compatible hardware at the drop of the hat.

Linux KVM: Bridging a Bond on CentOS 6.5

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are going to hop back into the KVM fray, and take a look at using CentOS as a hypervisor., and configuring very resilient network connections to support our guests. Of course these instructions should be valid on Red Hat Linux and Oracle Linux as well, though there is a little more to be done around getting access to the repos on those distributions…

Enable Bonding

I am assuming this is a first build for you, so this step might not be applicable, but it won’t hurt anything.

Oracle VM 3: Connecting to MySQL Backend

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Starting in Oracle VM 3.2.1 the built in database of the Oracle VM Manager was MySQL. I had hoped that this change would also signal a change in the database schema. In prior versions of OVM 3.x all data was populated in the database in a completely useless longblob form.

 bash
 
 
mysql ovs -u root -p
Enter password:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock'

As we can see it is attempting and failing to use /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock as the connection. So lets take a look at the process and see if it has any clues.

Linux KVM: Ubuntu 12.10 with Openvswitch

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today I am revisiting my previous post on Openvswitch on Ubuntu 12.04. Things have changed since then. Previously Openvswitch was relatively new and as such the userland tools (with libvirt being the one I use) didn’t support it yet, so while you could have used Openvswitch by executing the kvm processes for each VM manually. Since this was a predictable problem the Openvswitch guys created a brcompat module, which would take the place of the bridge_utils functionality and expose Openvswitch bridges as legacy bridges. This allowed the existing userland which already had the legacy bridge functionality builtin to continue to operate the same way. Anyways as of libvirt 0.9.11 the native Openvswitch functionality is present and supported. As such I am updating my documentation to include this alternate and preferred method of operation.

Solaris Virtualization: Using Logical Domains on Solaris 11 Part Two

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In our previous article we went through the process of preparing a Solaris 11 for SPARC machine as a Logical Domain hypervisor. Now that we have laid out our foundation we are ready to create some Logical Domains.

Solaris Virtualization: Using Logical Domains on Solaris 11 Part One

Create the Logical Domain

bash

ldm add-domain t4-g1

Configure Devices

We will need to add devices to our newly created domain. Here we will add virtual CPUs, memory, and a network device.

Solaris Virtualization: Using Logical Domains on Solaris 11 Part One

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Solaris 11 for SPARC, as well as previous versions of Solaris, include a neat little technology called Logical Domains (which has been rebranded as Oracle VM for SPARC). Logical Domains are implemented in the SPARC processor.

This series is going to focus on the basic administration of a Logical Domains environment using the basic command line tools of the Solaris 11 Operating System. In Part One we will go over what it takes to configure a Solaris 11 installation to be a Logical Domains hypervisor. In Part Two we will document defining and configuring Logical Domains. In Part Three we will discuss connecting to the Logical Domain in order to perform an installation of the operating system.

Oracle VM: Using Oracle VM Manager 3 from Ubuntu Linux

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In my initial work with Oracle VM, I have run into a few fringe cases, which are not well documented, but actually have rather simple solutions. This one actually cropped up over the weekend for me. Over the weekend I decided to rebuild my company-issued laptop with Ubuntu Linux (12.04 amd64) to be specific. I did this for a number of reasons…

1) I am far more effective with Linux, due to the nature of the shell, and tools which I am familiar with (vim, dd, really take your pick they are everywhere).

Oracle VM 3.x: Reset Agent Password

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Oracle VM, is a centrally managed hypervisor. All administrative actions must be performed from the Oracle VM Manager. In order to facilitate the initial discovery of the Hypervisor by the Management Server part of the setup requires that we not only set the password for the root user, but also the password for the ovs-agent. We then initiate a discovery process from the management server to the hypervisor and end up able to manage our hypervisor.

Installing Oracle VM Manager 3.1.1

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In my new role at Keste, I am tasked with staying on the bleeding edge of software release cycles, so that we can be knowledgeable and authoritative about technology when we engage with customers. One of the areas where Keste leads is on Oracle’s Virtualization Offerings. So I will be posting more and more content with respect to those offerings.

Today I will be documenting the steps to install Oracle VM Manager 3.1.1. Oracle VM (OVM) is a Xen-based Virtualization Technology. An OVM Deployment consists of the OVM Server (the bare metal hypervisor) and the OVM Manager, the application stack which manages the afforementioned hypervisors (organized into Server Pools).

ESX 5: Command Line VM Manipulation

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t been working with ESX for a bit, but while I was I was mostly interacting with it via the command line. Here is a list I had compiled while I was going through that exercise, and since I while be starting a job next week where I will no longer be interacting with much ESX I will just publish this one as-is. It is by no means complete and frankly it is not even that helpful. Notice that the commands which reference a specific virtual machine have a number, this is the VM ID for the VM you’d like to interact with.

Linux-KVM: Ubuntu 12.04 with Openvswitch

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: October 29, 2012

This article doesn’t work on Ubuntu 12.10, to use Ubuntu 12.10 please refer to my new article here.

Openvswitch is a better way of managing your virtual networking stacks for KVM and Xen. This can be used instead of the bridge-utils package, and has the ability to use VLANs, LACP, QoS, sFlow, and others. In this article we will be using Ubuntu 12.04 (beta1) to configure Openvswitch to hand out networking interfaces to KVM guests.

vCenter: VPXD Crash

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recently I was trying to resolve an issue on a small vCenter 5.0.0 deployment. Basically the primary symptom of the issue was that the service the vmware-vxpd service was crashing and needing to be restarted frequently.

The first thing I did was examine the log files, while the service was still in a failed state.

bash

cat /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxd.log

I won’t bore you with an entire excerpt, however I will put some of the more helpful pieces of data from the log file here, perhaps it will help someone identify this article if they are having a similar issue but not really gaining any traction.

KVM Guests: Graceful Shutdown

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So a fairly trivial (but critical) aspect of using KVM is of course performing graceful shutdowns of your domains, without having to reach inside of the guest to perform the shutdown. Now when it comes to turning off your guests you have two ways of proceeding (with virsh)…

bash

virsh destroy vmname

Which is a HARD power off of your guest. This is the same as pulling the power cord from the wall, nothing is shutdown, but the noise stops just the same. This method can result in data corruption if writes are interrupted.

Installing OpenIndiana in a Xen DomU

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

So I am on the ground in Dallas and trying to get my head around some of the technologies that we use in my new environment. One of those being the Xen kernel. I have never actually used Xen before, though I have used xenserver a bit. Anyways so my first foray into the Xen world is trying to get OpenIndiana (successor to OpenSolaris) running on it, and see what sort of performance issues it might have. We are hoping to be able to leverage its CIFS and vscan functionality to provide some security for a secured network file server.

Linux-KVM: Converting Raw Disk Images to LVM Logical Volumes Redux

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This really is an update to my previous article “Linux-KVM: Converting Raw Disk Images to LVM Logical Volumes“, but the process is significantly different and thus requires more explaining than a simple inline update would do it justice. Now the big flaw with my first article was that by using dd on the hypervisor level, we are opening ourselves up to unintentional data loss due to incompetence or even a very competent slip of the finger.

Linux-KVM Management: Live Migration Without Shared Storage

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Everyday I learn something new about Linux-KVM, this is why I love this platform. Today we are going to talk about Live Migration. The kicker? Shared storage not required. Now please keep in mind that just because shared storage is not required, doesn’t mean there is not a benefit to it. Shared storage will accelerate this process, since the data will not have to move. However virtualization is all about flexibility and so is Linux for that matter, so why shouldn’t we be able to make the choice? That said this process is not documented by the libvirt team, as such it sounds like an “undocumented” feature. Please use this at your own risk, and for heaven’s sake please test and understand thoroughly before using this in production.

Linux-KVM Management: Offline Migration

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When you compare Linux-KVM to Hyper-V or VMWare your initial results will indicate that Linux-KVM is lacking when it comes to management tools, and basic functionality. You would be correct, however you would also be incorrect. You see with Linux-KVM we can leverage the underlying power of the Linux userland, and with this frankly all things are possible. Here is one of the basic bits of management functionality which can be attained with a little bit of bash scripting knowledge. I started by writing a VM backup script, then a VM export script, and of course a VM import script. Eventually I ended up with a full-blown end-to-end VM migration script.

Linux-KVM: Migrating Hyper-V VHD Images to KVM

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I have always been a big fan of Hyper-V, and was actually a Virtualization MVP 2 years in a row. However recently I haven’t been able to get past the really poor support for Linux on the Hyper-V platform. We run a large number of hypervisors in our international sales offices (15+) and have a need to run both Linux and Windows on them. This has necessitated our switch to Linux-KVM as their Windows support is far better than Hyper-V’s Linux support. As such with an upcoming trip planned to our European offices I have been planning exactly how our migration will look, of course the first iteration of this plan consisted of me deploying replacement VMs on the KVM stack then migrating to the VMs individually. Though this plan was lengthy and cumbersome it would work.

KVM Guests: Install VirtIO Drivers for Windows Guests

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Windows guests on the KVM hypervisors can get a very large kick in the pants when it comes to performance if you install the drivers necessary to leverage the VirtIO bus. So first here are the necessary download links so that you can download the drivers.

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/virtio-win-1.1.16.iso

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/

Inside of the ISO we will find four directories Balloon, NetKVM, vioserial, and viostor. We are only concerned with viostor and NetKVM, for the storage and networking drivers. Vioserial is a serial interface which essentially lifts the single serial device limitation within KVM, and Balloon is a balloon memory driver I personally do not find this necessary due to the efficacy of the Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM) which is essentially memory deduplication.

Linux-KVM: Managing KVM Guests Using Virt-Manager on Windows

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When I first started using KVM, I was quite disappointed with the graphical management abilities of KVM. Basically if you want to manage via the command line KVM is a fantasical dream world where anything is possible and it is all “musical sunshine” and “double rainbows” but if you want the ability to manage graphically it was a world which was very one sided in that if you wanted the ability to graphically manage your VMs then you had to use Linux. Or so I thought…

KVM Guests: Manipulating Libvirt XML for Guest Creation

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Today we are going to discuss using the underlying XML which libvirt uses to define a VM to either create VMs or to make simple changes. This method has the advantage of more control over what you are creating, although it is more manual. Now first off, when you use virt-install, virt-manager, or another tool which uses libvirt under the covers an XML file is created for every VM that you define, libvirt stores these in /etc/libvirt/qemu/ and names them vmname.xml.

KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install VMs from a CD or ISO Image

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous article KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Import an Existing Disk Image we discussed how to use virt-install to import an existing disk image, which already has an OS installed into it. Additionally in KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install Debian and Ubuntu Guests I documented how to initiate an install directly off of the apt mirror of your choice for Debian and Ubuntu Guests using virt-install. In this article we will use virt-install to create a guest and begin the installation using a CD or ISO image for installation media.

Linux-KVM: Taking Advantage of Memory Deduplication

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM) is essentially active memory deduplication. What does this means for our KVM guests? Basically the more similar guests we have running, the more of a memory footprint they share, which means less memory they actually hold. These free pages can then be reutilized by the host to provide improved i/o through some of the caching that KVM does or by an increased capacity for other guests.

Linux-KVM: Converting Raw Disk Images to LVM Logical Volumes

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Linux Logical Volume Manager provides a better method for managing your disks in the home and even more so in the datacenter. I briefly outlined some of the benefits afforded us by LVM2 in a previous article Linux LVM2: Flexible Local Storage Management. In this article I will provide you with some very simple steps and scenarios to migrate your existing KVM VMs to LVM2 Logical Volumes.

In this article I am going to make an assumption that your disk images are raw disk images and that you are not using qcow2, vhd, vdi, vmdk or any other disk image format. Additionally this process should work for a physical or RAID device as well, though I have not verified that.

KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Import an Existing Disk Image

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous article KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install Debian and Ubuntu Guests we identified how we can use the virt-install command to create a KVM VM and instead of using an iso or physical cd for the install media we can instead use a boot image from an apt mirror via http. Now obviously this does not harness the true power of the virt-install command. Today we will discuss how we can take an existing disk image and import it as a VM with the appropriate devices, this would most commonly be done with sysprepped Windows images, to speed up deployment. Though these instructions will easily work with any OS.

KVM Guests: Using Virt-Install to Install Debian and Ubuntu Guests

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I like to be able to spin up a VM without looking for CD media so for a while now I have been using ISO images for all of my installs directly, however I found my self scurrying around “digitally” looking for the correct iso in much the same way I used to scurry about looking for physical CDs, except I was not physically moving. So anyways the time was wasted either way, I figured it is time that I find a better (read: lazier) way to do this. So the idea is that since the apt package manager contains all the packages and files needed to install and upgrade a system, we ought to be able to find a way to initiate the install over the wire.

Installing Linux Integration Components v2.1 Beta

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

On March 31, 2010 Microsoft released the beta of version 2.1 of the Linux Integration Components. The Linux ICs allow Linux VMs running on Hyper-V to be “enlightened” and have access to synthetic device drivers which perform much faster than their emulated counter parts. It can be downloaded by registering for the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V on http://connect.microsoft.com

What is new in Linux Integration Components v2.1 Beta?

There are three new features, time sync, shutdown, and SMP. Time sync is communication through the vmbus which updates the guest’s time to match the hosts (without this time is only synced on boot up of the VM). Shutdown simply makes that little shutdown button in Hyper-V Manager work, previously you only had the option of using the Stop command or entering the guest via ssh or some other mechanism and initiating the shutdown. SMP is some fixes in the vmbus module which make the module SMP-safe, and in addition Microsoft will now support Linux guests (RHEL 5.3 & 5.4, and SUSE 10 & 11) with up to 4 vCPUs, previously only 1 vCPU was supported. InputVSC (Citrix’s Project Satori) will continue to work with this release.

Hyper-V Guests: Compile Linux Kernel 2.6.32 on Debian

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I will be detailing the steps needed to compile a new kernel in Debian Linux 5. This particular case we are purpose building a kernel with the drivers necessary for Hyper-V Guests to take advantage of synthetic devices. Additionally I plan on expanding this series with instructions for manual compiles of other distributions as well as some pre-compiled image based installs.

DISCLAIMER: These instructions are not provided with any guarantee of support. Microsoft (company behind Hyper-V) does not acknowledge Debian as a supported guest operating system.

Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components (v2) on Oracle Enterprise Linux

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In this article I am documenting the process for installing the Hyper-V Integration Components (v2) within a Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 VM. My environment consists of x64 VMs, I have not taken the time to test this process for x86 VMs, however it should hold true, as long as you update the package names to reflect the appropriate architecture.

In my testing I have found that the current versions (v1 and v2) do not work with linux kernels 2.6.20 or newer (with some exceptions for v2), which means in order to use the ICs you will need to have 2.6.19 or older. Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 included the Linux 2.6.18-128 kernel.

Hyper-V Guests: Linux Integration Components Ubuntu and Debian

Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In this article I am documenting the process for installing the Hyper-V Integration Components within a Ubuntu or Debian VM. I am specifically writing this for Ubuntu 8.04.2 and Debian 5, however I have additionally confirmed that this process works on both Ubuntu 8.10 and Ubuntu 9.04. My environment consists of x64 VMs, I have not taken the time to test this process for x86 VMs, however it should hold true, as long as you update the package names to reflect the appropriate architecture.