Xen users - Jun 2010 - Graphical virtualisation management system

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and the docs are all horribly out-of-date making it very hard to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

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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



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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 


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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
> 

      


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