What is everyone using to manage their virtualisation setup? Anyone using a pre-packaged management system like ConVirt, oVirt, Virt-Manager, etc? Everyone rolling their own management scripts? Something else? Right now, we''re using our home-grown kvmctl script (as seen in the KVM wiki) to manage KVM-based VMs on Debian and Ubuntu Server. It''s working ok, but limited to a single host, so there''s no redundancy or shared storage or migration possible in our current setup. We want to move to a multi-tiered, SAN-based virtualisation setup, but can''t find a VM management tool that handles both KVM and Xen (we have some old Opteron hardware that doesn''t support SVM), and does not require Linux from end-to-end. For example, we want to run FreeBSD + ZFS on our storage servers, exporting storage via iSCSI (or NFS). We want to run a minimal Debian/Ubuntu install on the VM hosts (just to boot and run the management agents), with all of the VMs getting their storage via iSCSI. With a separate box acting as the management system. Preferably with a web-based management GUI, but that''s more of an "nice to have" than a hard requirement.>From the research I''ve done into the VM management systems availablefor KVM/Xen, either Linux is required on every host (including the storage servers), or they don''t support iSCSI (or off-server shared storage of any kind), or they require an X server installed, or they only support one of Xen/KVM, or they are geared toward managing a single server (desktop). So, if you have a setup similar to above (multiple physical servers, separate storage, etc), what are you using to manage it? Is it free, open-source, shareware, pay-ware, proprietary, abandonware, something else? So far, I''ve looked at: * Convirture 2.0 which looks pretty, but doesn''t work with iSCSI, and the docs are all horribly out-of-date making it very hard to troubleshoot; * oVirt which requires Fedora/CentOS/RedHat on everything; * virt-manager which requires X and seems to be more desktop-oriented; * ProxMox which doesn''t support Xen. What else is available? Where else should I be looking? Any suggestions on what to look at greatly appreciated. Any suggestions on how to improve our setup also greatly appreciated. Thanks. -- Freddie Cash fjwcash@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Greg Woods
2010-Jun-24 19:08 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Graphical virtualisation management system
On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 11:32 -0700, Freddie Cash wrote:> Everyone rolling their own management scripts?I ended up doing this, because I also needed to integrate with running heartbeat and pacemaker (high availability). The program I wrote has grown into 3000 lines of Python code, but it handles just about anything from creating a new VM, adding or removing a VM from pacemaker, keeping track of the running status of VMs, migration, backup/restore of VMs, mounting VM images so they can be modified or individual files extracted without having to boot the VM, also used by a setup script to take care of all the per-VM-specific setup stuff (network configuration and so forth). Having this management program really makes things easier, although it has taken me 6 months to complete it. It''s not graphical either. But it has made it possible to do something like create and configure a new VM and integrate it into the cluster in less than 5 minutes. Unfortunately, it has a lot of things in it that are specific to our local environment and our software choices (Xen, CentOS, heartbeat, pacemaker, DRBD, etc.) so I don''t think I''d recommend that anybody else try to use it for anything other than a template for rolling your own. --Greg _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Frank Pikelner
2010-Jun-24 21:37 UTC
Re: [Xen-users] Graphical virtualisation management system
On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 11:32 -0700, Freddie Cash wrote:> What is everyone using to manage their virtualisation setup? Anyone > using a pre-packaged management system like ConVirt, oVirt, > Virt-Manager, etc? Everyone rolling their own management scripts? > Something else? > > Right now, we''re using our home-grown kvmctl script (as seen in the > KVM wiki) to manage KVM-based VMs on Debian and Ubuntu Server. It''s > working ok, but limited to a single host, so there''s no redundancy or > shared storage or migration possible in our current setup. > > We want to move to a multi-tiered, SAN-based virtualisation setup, but > can''t find a VM management tool that handles both KVM and Xen (we have > some old Opteron hardware that doesn''t support SVM), and does not > require Linux from end-to-end. For example, we want to run FreeBSD + > ZFS on our storage servers, exporting storage via iSCSI (or NFS). We > want to run a minimal Debian/Ubuntu install on the VM hosts (just to > boot and run the management agents), with all of the VMs getting their > storage via iSCSI. With a separate box acting as the management > system. Preferably with a web-based management GUI, but that''s more > of an "nice to have" than a hard requirement. > > >From the research I''ve done into the VM management systems available > for KVM/Xen, either Linux is required on every host (including the > storage servers), or they don''t support iSCSI (or off-server shared > storage of any kind), or they require an X server installed, or they > only support one of Xen/KVM, or they are geared toward managing a > single server (desktop). > > So, if you have a setup similar to above (multiple physical servers, > separate storage, etc), what are you using to manage it? Is it free, > open-source, shareware, pay-ware, proprietary, abandonware, something > else? > > So far, I''ve looked at: > * Convirture 2.0 which looks pretty, but doesn''t work with iSCSI, > and the docs are all horribly out-of-date making it very hard to > troubleshoot; > * oVirt which requires Fedora/CentOS/RedHat on everything; > * virt-manager which requires X and seems to be more desktop-oriented; > * ProxMox which doesn''t support Xen. > > What else is available? Where else should I be looking? > > Any suggestions on what to look at greatly appreciated. Any > suggestions on how to improve our setup also greatly appreciated.If you are looking to manage several operating system platforms and your primary requirements include configuration/activity profiling, management and monitoring, you may want to have a look at Versiera. Please note we are the developers. Versiera is offered as a free SaaS on the Internet (full featured), though we do sell enterprise appliance versions. Versiera is intended to profile, manage and monitor hosts rather than a VM management system. Versiera uses a push architecture for all communications and authenticates/encrypts all traffic with digital certs - i.e. there is no traffic entering your hosts/environment. Some of the capabilities include Jobs/Scheduling that may be used to perform some of the capabilities you are looking to accomplish such as migrations, though the concept of jobs is generic and may perform many other tasks including the ability to chain jobs together. Best, Frank _______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
Thanks for sharing your views.> So far, I''ve looked at: > * Convirture 2.0 which looks pretty, but doesn''t > work with iSCSI, > and the docs are all horribly out-of-date making it very > hard to > troubleshoot;ConVirt 2.0 does support iscsi. Also, could you point out "out of date" documentation. We would like to fix this pronto. Thanks /Jd --- On Thu, 6/24/10, Freddie Cash <fjwcash@gmail.com> wrote:> From: Freddie Cash <fjwcash@gmail.com> > Subject: [Xen-users] Graphical virtualisation management system > To: "XEN Mailing List" <xen-users@lists.xensource.com> > Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 11:32 AM > What is everyone using to manage > their virtualisation setup? Anyone > using a pre-packaged management system like ConVirt, > oVirt, > Virt-Manager, etc? Everyone rolling their own > management scripts? > Something else? > > Right now, we''re using our home-grown kvmctl script (as > seen in the > KVM wiki) to manage KVM-based VMs on Debian and Ubuntu > Server. It''s > working ok, but limited to a single host, so there''s no > redundancy or > shared storage or migration possible in our current setup. > > We want to move to a multi-tiered, SAN-based virtualisation > setup, but > can''t find a VM management tool that handles both KVM and > Xen (we have > some old Opteron hardware that doesn''t support SVM), and > does not > require Linux from end-to-end. For example, we want > to run FreeBSD + > ZFS on our storage servers, exporting storage via iSCSI (or > NFS). We > want to run a minimal Debian/Ubuntu install on the VM hosts > (just to > boot and run the management agents), with all of the VMs > getting their > storage via iSCSI. With a separate box acting as the > management > system. Preferably with a web-based management GUI, > but that''s more > of an "nice to have" than a hard requirement. > > >From the research I''ve done into the VM management > systems available > for KVM/Xen, either Linux is required on every host > (including the > storage servers), or they don''t support iSCSI (or > off-server shared > storage of any kind), or they require an X server > installed, or they > only support one of Xen/KVM, or they are geared toward > managing a > single server (desktop). > > So, if you have a setup similar to above (multiple physical > servers, > separate storage, etc), what are you using to manage > it? Is it free, > open-source, shareware, pay-ware, proprietary, abandonware, > something > else? > > So far, I''ve looked at: > * Convirture 2.0 which looks pretty, but doesn''t > work with iSCSI, > and the docs are all horribly out-of-date making it very > hard to > troubleshoot; > * oVirt which requires Fedora/CentOS/RedHat on > everything; > * virt-manager which requires X and seems to be more > desktop-oriented; > * ProxMox which doesn''t support Xen. > > What else is available? Where else should I be > looking? > > Any suggestions on what to look at greatly > appreciated. Any > suggestions on how to improve our setup also greatly > appreciated. > > Thanks. > -- > Freddie Cash > fjwcash@gmail.com > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-users mailing list > Xen-users@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users >_______________________________________________ Xen-users mailing list Xen-users@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users