Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

libvirt

KVM News In Short

by Leave a Comment

Over the past couple of weeks different new releases of KVM and related software saw the light . Virt-manager 0.8.0 was officially announced the most interesting new feature probably being the the Clone VM wizard but also a bunch of system tray icons for smooth desktop integration and CPU pinning support are very interesting.

Daniel Berrange noticed that Redhat has released windows kvm virtio drivers under GPLv2 This means that apart from the paravirtual network drivers that were already available now also the paravirtual block device drivers are available

It shows that RedHat is working towards a much more featureful KVM management framework into their upcoming RHEL release as they also updated their virtualization management layer libvirt 0.7.0. Most interesting new features include initial VMWare ESX driver support, added support for VBox 3 , QEmu hotplug network card support , and improved storage management .

If you have a recent Fedora 11 box and you want to test all these new features, you might want to be enable the fedora-virt-preview repository

[virt-preview]
name=Virtualization Rawhide for Fedora 11
baseurl=http://markmc.fedorapeople.org/virt-preview/f11/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

AbiCloud from Abiquo

by 1 Comment

Last month Abiquo announced the release of their “abiCloud”, an open source cloud computing platform for allowing companies to create and manage large, complex IT infrastructures (virtual servers, networks, applications, storage…) in a quick, simple and scalable way.

We had a chat with Diego Mariño, Co-founder & CEO of Abiquo , he told us that
one of the key differences of AbiCloud is the the web rich interface for managing the infrastructure. He told us “You can deploy a new service just dragging and dropping a virtual machine. This version allows to deploy instances over VirtualBox, but we support VMware, KVM and Xen too.”

As their first tester had its infrastructure on Virtualbox and because its very simple to have it up and running in different architectures that’s where their first focus is at.

Today they support Xen & KVM through libvirt, and the connectors for these hypervisors will be offered during Q2. Support for VMware, is offered to hosting providers with closed modules.

Basically, Abiquo allows to companies to convert their infrastructure into a service. Other competitors in the field include the recently founded Eucalyptus, Enomaly, and sun via it’s Qlayer acquisition.

Abiquo says it has a different focus and approach , what they are offering is the ability to create private clouds for more complex infrastructures.

The have their own open API which will be released in Q3 , with no plans to support the Amazon’s API

AbiCloud is available for Download from SF.net

Floss Virtualization Doesn’t Care About Marketing …

by 1 Comment

It cares about Quality and Frequent code releases. The Open Source community doesn’t
wait till the week before VMWorld to announe big news, they just code along happily and when the coding is done.. they release their software.

And there was plenty of it last couple of weeks. Here’s an overview ..

  • The New Virt Manager 0.70 is out , it s featuring a Redesigned New Virtual Machine Wizard, a file browser for storage pools and volumes, there are now features to add physical device assignment (PCI,USB) for existing virtual machines.
  • Qemu, the open source processor emulator, has now a 0.10.0 Stable Branch which will be used to receive bug fixes until at least the next major release .
  • The qemu-0.10.0 changelog liss better KVM acceleration support, Bluetooth emulation and host passthrough support , Nokia N-series tablet emulation multiple vnc clients, and much more platform and hardware support. Eventually this might lead to qemu making current kvm-userspace obsolete, but that’s not for tomorrow yet.
  • Reuven announced Enomaly ECP 2.2.3, a maintenance release fixing some bugs .
  • And Matt announced openQRM 4.4 with SOAP Webservices for it’s Cloud , openQRM 4.4 now also implements “persistent appliances” which means that users can now “pause”, “unpause” and “restart” their Cloud appliances via the User-Portal. The internal billing mechanism will only charge active Cloud appliances and now fully provides the “pay-on-demand” Cloud Computing model. Also better integration for Puppet and Sshterm were added. More about it’s new features can be read on the openQRM site ..
  • And last but not least is the new ConVirt project that has just announced it’s 1.0 release .
    ConVirt is a centralized management solution that lets you provision, monitor and manage the complete lifecycle of your Xen deployment.

So that’s it’s for this week’s Open Source Virtualization updates 🙂
Be expecting more updates around the next VMWorld, or when the code is done 🙂

Karma Koala

by Leave a Comment

With all the fuzz around Cannes.. oh wait .. nothing happened there.. that was the most boring event ever wasn’t it … we forgot to focus on where the real action is happening …

When the 9.10 Ubuntu Release, Karmic Koala, hits the wire it will be Cloud Ready or Virtualization ready or whatever you want to call it. Ubuntu wants to keep Open Source and Free software where it belongs, the key components of Cloud Computing. We have to agree that it are the Open Source Hypervisors that are the being used in the fundaments of Cloud Computing.

Ubuntu will be embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2 and will make it easier for every body to build their own Private Clouds using Open Source tools. Ubuntu-vmbuilder allows you to create a custom AMI , however they also provide a set of standard images to be used. Apart from deploying Ubuntu instances on the existing clouds, Karma Koala will live very happy in his favourite Eucalyptus trees

In Plain English, Ubuntu has recently welcomed the Eucalyptus framework in it’s software repositories, and it will be part of the upcoming release 9.4 already. (Eucalyptus being the open-source infrastructure for implementing Elastic Cloud computing using computing clusters which has an interface-compatible that is with Amazon.com’s EC2 which we covered earlier)

Now if you remember Ubuntu was one of the first Linux distributions to go for KVM rather than Xen, given its desktop-oriented nature. Amazon build it’s infrastructure on Xen. So Originally Eucalyptus was a mostly Xen supporting Framework, but lots of things have changed and today Eucalyptus supports both Xen, KVM and VMWare mostly using LibVirt, making it hypervisor-agnostic.

Red Hat announced Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor

by Leave a Comment

Today RedHat sent out 2 press releases obviously in an attempt to get Virtual visibility during VMWorld. Europe, The biggest news in those 2 press releases is the announcement of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, or the RHEV . Red Hat announced their new strategy regarding to Virtualization which they call the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products.

First in the Lineup is

Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Red Hat’s strategic direction for the future development of its virtualization product portfolio is based on KVM, making Red Hat the only virtualization vendor leveraging technology that is developed as part of the Linux operating system. Existing Xen-based deployments will continue to be supported for the full lifetime of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Red Hat will provide a variety of tools and services to enable customers to migrate from their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Xen deployment to KVM.

Well, we already knew that, given the fact that Fedora is heading KVM-wards and that they have to support Xen in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for the full life cycle of RHEL 5, therefore at least till 2014
KVM will enter the RHEL product line as part of RHEL 5.4, due to be released later this year
RedHat is also announcing Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers

A new, richly featured virtualization management solution for servers that will be the first open source product in the industry to allow fully integrated management across virtual servers and virtual desktops, featuring Live Migration, High Availability, System Scheduler, Power Manager, Image manager, Snapshots, thin provisioning, monitoring and reporting. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers will be able to manage both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 hosts, as well as the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor

a framework based on LibVirt and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Desktops ,

A new management system for virtual desktops that will deliver industry-leading VDI cost-performance for both Linux and Windows desktops, based on Qumranet’s SolidICE and using SPICE remote rendering technology.

With confirmation that the Qumranet code will be open sourced just as RedHat has done with all their other products so far.

And last but not least RedHat is launching a new standalone hypervisor : Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor

Which is

KVM unbundled from RHEL, in a package dubbed RHEV-H(ypervisor). RHEV-H is a stateless hypervisor, with a tight footprint of under 128MB, which presents a libvirt interface to the management tier. Enterprise servers will no longer need to go through an installation process, and will instead be able to boot RHEV-H from flash or a network server, and be able to immediately begin servicing virtual guests. This stateless model drives down OPEX and enables the scalability required by terascale grids, large datacenters and cloud class compute environments.

RedHat also announced that its broad ecosystem of applications tested and certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are certified to run in a Red Hat virtualized platform with no modifications.

Ubuntu Releases “Hardy Heron”, OS Version 8.04 In Beta

by 1 Comment

After four Alpha releases, Ubuntu has now released version 8.04 of the popular Operating System, code-named “Hardy Heron”, in beta. Apart from the boat load of new features, libvirt and virt-manager have been integrated in Ubuntu. They allow for easy guest creation and basic management of virtual machines out of the box. Virt-manager can be used to administer guests on a remote server.

The kernel also includes virtio, greatly improving I/O performance in guests.

virtualization-kvm-ubuntu.png

The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 also comes with the following new features:

Xorg 7.3

The latest Xorg, Xorg 7.3, is available in Hardy, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration with a minimal configuration file. This Beta brings a new Screen Resolution utility that allows users to dynamically configure the resolution, refresh rate, and rotation of a second monitor. This will be particularly handy for laptop users that connect to a projector or external monitor.

Linux kernel 2.6.24

This Beta includes the 2.6.24-12.13 kernel based on 2.6.24.3. This brings in significant enhancements and fixes that have been merged in the last few months into the mainline kernel.

GNOME 2.22

Hardy Heron Beta brings you the latest and greatest GNOME 2.22 with lots of new features and improvements, such as a new Nautilus that uses GVFS as its backend. GVFS makes it possible to fix shortcomings of Nautilus such as the inability to restore files from trash, pause and undo file operations, and will make it possible to escalate user privileges for certain operations using PolicyKit for authentication. It also brings a significant performance boost to many operations.

PolicyKit

PolicyKit is now integrated in the administrative user interfaces. PolicyKit allows fine-grained control over user permissions and enhances usability and security, by allowing administrative applications to be run as a normal user and gaining extra privileges dynamically only for privileged operations instead of requiring the whole application to run as root.

PulseAudio

PulseAudio is now enabled by default. Some non-GNOME applications still need to be changed to output to pulse/esd by default and the volume control tools are not yet integrated.

Firefox 3 Beta 4

Firefox 3 Beta 4 replaces Firefox 2 as the default browser, bringing much better system integration including GTK2 form buttons and common dialogs. and icon theming that matches the system.

Transmission

The GTK version of the popular Transmission BitTorrent client comes preinstalled in Ubuntu, replacing the Gnome BitTorrent downloader.

Vinagre

The new Vinagre VNC client is installed by default in Beta, replacing xvnc4viewer. Vinagre allows the user to view multiple machines simultaneously, can discover VNC servers on the network via Avahi, and can keep track of recently used and favorite connections.

Brasero

The Brasero CD/DVD burning application, which will complement the CD/DVD burning functions of Nautilus and replace the Serpentine audio CD burning utility, is installed by default in Beta.

World Clock Applet

Integrating the features of the intlclock applet, the GNOME panel clock in Beta can display the time and weather in multiple locations.

Inkscape

Inkscape 0.46 introduces native PDF support, providing an easy, open source solution to editing text and graphics in PDF documents. Users will appreciate being able to draw up flyers, posters, and other docmuents, save them as PDF in inkscape, and send them to a print shop for printing without ever leaving Ubuntu or loading a proprietary tool.

ActiveDirectory integration

Likewise Open, available from the universe repository, enables seamless integration of Ubuntu within an Active Directory network. Users can use their AD credentials to log onto Ubuntu machines and access any kerberized services provided by an Ubuntu Server.

iSCSI support

iSCSI Initiator has been fully integrated in the kernel, allowing Ubuntu to mount iSCSI targets as a block device. iSCSI is available in the Ubuntu Server installer if iscsi=true is passed on the kernel command line at the beginning of the install process.

Firewall

Ubuntu 8.04 Beta includes ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall), a new host-based firewall application configurable from the command line which is designed to make administering a firewall easier for end users while not getting in the way of network administrators.

Memory Protection

Additional access checks have been added so that /dev/mem and /dev/kmem can only be used to access device memory. These changes will help defend against rootkits and other malicious code.

The lower 64K of system memory is no longer addressable by default. This will help defend against malicious code that attempts to leverage kernel bugs into security vulnerabilities.

Applications compiled as Position Independent Executables (PIE) are now placed into memory in unpredictable locations, making it harder for security vulnerabilities to be exploited.

Wubi

There is a new installation option for Windows users. Wubi allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation. Wubi works with a physical CD or in stand-alone mode, by downloading an appropriate ISO to install from. It can be found on the root of the CD as Wubi.exe. A full installation within a dedicated partition is still recommended, but Wubi is a great way to try Ubuntu for a few days and weeks before committing dedicated disk resources.

umenu

WinFOSS and the Windows open source software have been replaced by umenu, a simple launcher that lets the user install Ubuntu from Windows using Wubi, install Ubuntu to a partition without having to make their CD-ROM the first boot device.

To download the Ubuntu 8.04 Beta check out this page. The full and final OS is expected to be released next month.

[Source: TechConnect Magazine]