All -
Let me introduce myself. I am W. David Ashley, the primary author of the
"Libvirt Application Development Guide Using Python" which will soon
be
published on the libvirt.org web site. I hope all of you will enjoy the
new guide when it becomes available.
I have multiple decades of experience in writing documentation and
training guides and I have about eight years of experience using libvirt
and qemu/kvm virtual machines. Most of that experience was in creating
and maintaining VM on-demand systems.
In the meantime, I am planning a new guide and I would appreciate some
feedback from the libvirt user community concerning the potential
usefulness and contents of the new guide. The proposed title of the
guide will be "Automating Virtual Machines". The current (very) rough
outline is:
Introduction
Intro to virtual machines
Installing virtual machines
Using virtual machines
Using Python to access VMs
A sample problem
Problem statement
Solution requirements
Using VMs to solve the problem
New problems introduced by using VMs
How to programmatically access VMs
Intro to the python libvirt module
How to connect to a VM
How to access and control a guest domain
Information the python libvirt module can not provide
Storing information about VMs
Deciding what information should be stored
Using simple text files
Using a simple database
Securing your information
How to set up a VM on demand environment
Discovering a VMs ip address
Using cron to start processes
Starting up a VM
Invoking a program on the VM
Using SSH to access a VM
Shutting down a VM
Alternatives to starting/stopping a VM
Using the libvirt guest agent
Installing the libvirt guest agent
Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS
openSuse, SuSE
Ubuntu, Debian, Mint
Using (querying) the libvirt guest agent
Logging VM activities
Host activities
VM activities
Securing your VMs
Host security
VM security
Any feedback/suggestions you have will be appreciated and I assure you
they will be given serious consideration. At this point, nothing has
been written except this rough outline so this is your chance to help
form the contents or even make suggestions for a completely different guide.
Feel free to post back to this list or send me private email.
W. David Ashley
w.david.ashley at gmail.com
On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 08:18:38PM -0500, David Ashley wrote:>All - > >Let me introduce myself. I am W. David Ashley, the primary author of >the "Libvirt Application Development Guide Using Python" which will >soon be published on the libvirt.org web site. I hope all of you will >enjoy the new guide when it becomes available. > >I have multiple decades of experience in writing documentation and >training guides and I have about eight years of experience using >libvirt and qemu/kvm virtual machines. Most of that experience was in >creating and maintaining VM on-demand systems. >Hi, that's awesome! I had just a quick look at the outline and added some comments in-line, but haven't though about anything major to mention or describe (like a new chapter) as it always takes me a huge amount of time to come up with such ideas.>In the meantime, I am planning a new guide and I would appreciate some >feedback from the libvirt user community concerning the potential >usefulness and contents of the new guide. The proposed title of the >guide will be "Automating Virtual Machines". The current (very) rough >outline is: > >Introduction > Intro to virtual machines > Installing virtual machinesI don't know if you are planning to do that, but in case you don't want to spend considerable amount of time explaining the XML and setting up everything from scratch, it would be better to drop a hint about virt-install and such.> Using virtual machines > Using Python to access VMsI was wondering what kind of access are you planning to talk about in this chapter, mainly since "How to programmatically access VMs" is the third chapter and there is an intro to python's libvirt module.>A sample problem > Problem statement > Solution requirements > Using VMs to solve the problem > New problems introduced by using VMsThis is very good thing to mention that people often forget to think about in cases when they already decided to move to VMs for example.>How to programmatically access VMs > Intro to the python libvirt module > How to connect to a VM > How to access and control a guest domain > Information the python libvirt module can not provide >Storing information about VMs > Deciding what information should be stored > Using simple text files > Using a simple databaseYou could mention the possibility of keeping some data in the XML itself, as there is a <metadata/> element just for that.> Securing your information >How to set up a VM on demand environment > Discovering a VMs ip address > Using cron to start processes > Starting up a VM > Invoking a program on the VM > Using SSH to access a VM > Shutting down a VM > Alternatives to starting/stopping a VM >Using the libvirt guest agent > Installing the libvirt guest agentlibvirt itself doesn't have any guest agent. But libvirt can utilize QEMU's guest agent and you probably meant that. There's also spice's guest agent called spice-vdagent that libvirt can setup, but does not utilize in any way.> Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS > openSuse, SuSE > Ubuntu, Debian, MintAre these that different or is it just the matter of s/yum/yast/ or s/yum/apt-get/ and similar? :)> Using (querying) the libvirt guest agent >Logging VM activities > Host activities > VM activities >Securing your VMs > Host security > VM security > >Any feedback/suggestions you have will be appreciated and I assure you >they will be given serious consideration. At this point, nothing has >been written except this rough outline so this is your chance to help >form the contents or even make suggestions for a completely different >guide. > >Feel free to post back to this list or send me private email. > >W. David Ashley >w.david.ashley@gmail.com > >_______________________________________________ >libvirt-users mailing list >libvirt-users@redhat.com >https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users
Hi David, this seems so great! Almost everyday I see people struggling with KVM - including myself. Specially for newcommers it isn't very clear what steps you have to take to deploy your VMs and be able to connect and manage them. I like your table of contents, I believe these things need to be covered in detail: -Examples of how to deploy servers (from an .iso file, but also from existing VMs) with an ssh key -Post install steps, or how to run a script after a server gets deployed -Access through VNC from remotely, because in most cases I believe the KVM server won't have a GUI (in order to use virt-manager) and the admin would be remotely. My personal experience with remote VNC through ssh X11 forwarding of virt-viewer and virt-manager is that they need a very fast connection otherwise they easily hung. Looking forward to see the guide! Markos On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 4:18 AM, David Ashley <w.david.ashley@gmail.com> wrote:> All - > > Let me introduce myself. I am W. David Ashley, the primary author of the > "Libvirt Application Development Guide Using Python" which will soon be > published on the libvirt.org web site. I hope all of you will enjoy the > new guide when it becomes available. > > I have multiple decades of experience in writing documentation and > training guides and I have about eight years of experience using libvirt > and qemu/kvm virtual machines. Most of that experience was in creating and > maintaining VM on-demand systems. > > In the meantime, I am planning a new guide and I would appreciate some > feedback from the libvirt user community concerning the potential > usefulness and contents of the new guide. The proposed title of the guide > will be "Automating Virtual Machines". The current (very) rough outline is: > > Introduction > Intro to virtual machines > Installing virtual machines > Using virtual machines > Using Python to access VMs > A sample problem > Problem statement > Solution requirements > Using VMs to solve the problem > New problems introduced by using VMs > How to programmatically access VMs > Intro to the python libvirt module > How to connect to a VM > How to access and control a guest domain > Information the python libvirt module can not provide > Storing information about VMs > Deciding what information should be stored > Using simple text files > Using a simple database > Securing your information > How to set up a VM on demand environment > Discovering a VMs ip address > Using cron to start processes > Starting up a VM > Invoking a program on the VM > Using SSH to access a VM > Shutting down a VM > Alternatives to starting/stopping a VM > Using the libvirt guest agent > Installing the libvirt guest agent > Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS > openSuse, SuSE > Ubuntu, Debian, Mint > Using (querying) the libvirt guest agent > Logging VM activities > Host activities > VM activities > Securing your VMs > Host security > VM security > > Any feedback/suggestions you have will be appreciated and I assure you > they will be given serious consideration. At this point, nothing has been > written except this rough outline so this is your chance to help form the > contents or even make suggestions for a completely different guide. > > Feel free to post back to this list or send me private email. > > W. David Ashley > w.david.ashley@gmail.com > > _______________________________________________ > libvirt-users mailing list > libvirt-users@redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users >