xen discuss - Jul 2010 - Can a guest LDOM discover the identity of the host system?

That is...is there a mechanism provided to do this?

As an afterthought, this also applies to non-global zones, although
one can stick something in the oem-banner eeprom variable that is identically
visible on all the zones, which is not the case on LDOMs.
However, that''s not a supported mechanism.  Having something that
was would be better.  Ideal if the same mechanism (on what might
or might not be a zone, LDOM, or virtualized instance running under
for example Xvm (xen) or VirtualBox) could be used for a guest of any
of those sorts to determine its current host for informational purposes
only - and for no other purpose, if one wishes to leave
migration of guests unaffected!  If such a mechanism existed, I
imagine that a null string response could be construed as running
directly on hardware.  If a situation were to exist where both LDOMs
and zones within a guest LDOM were in effect (or some other hypothetical
nested virtualization), it should only be report its parent.  Come to
think of it, this facility could even be applicable to dynamic domains,
although less important there, since AFAIK there''s no mechanism
for moving them from one frame to another.


In a support situation, we may have monitoring software
(perhaps BigBrother or Hobbit, or something more; but those
are extensible and more or less open).  Even if a monitored
system is down, the monitoring history can still be seen.

If a client could report where it was running, and had problems,
that would simplify investigating whether the host was having
problems, how to obtain console access (dynamic if guests get
moved around), etc.

If there were a standard mechanism that worked with multiple
virtualization situations, it would also be helpful in that it could
make it possible for the monitoring software to look up the
details of providing remote console access.

I really think this would help to make virtualization more manageable,
particularly if it applied equally to all the different techniques.
-- 
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