Tommy McNeely wrote:
I am very new to Xen. I have used VMware and VirtualBox
> *desktop* products in the past. I am also familiar with
> zones and ldoms. I realize that none of that is particularly
> relevant to Xen, but I think it helps get a lot of the
> *really* basic stuff out of the way.
I followed the Wiki: http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+xen/2008_11_dom0 to
> setup dom0. I believe that is totally functional. (minus some milestone/xvm
issues I had).
I followed the wiki: http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+xen/virtinstall
> to setup a couple domU's. I have a PV OpenSolaris box, a HVM
> d0ze 2k8, and HVM S10u8 box, the S10 box can be live migrated
> between to dom0's which I am pretty excited about. (the other
> two are zvols on rpool)
I wanted to try to move/clone the opensolaris box to have its
> disks on NFS (vmdk?), but I am really going off the deep end
> there. I got vdiskadm figured out enough to supposedly migrate
> the disk to VMDK, but I haven't the foggiest idea how to "switch"
> it. virsh seems to indicate that you aren't supposed to edit the
> XML, even though there is an "edit" option that appears to do
just that :-/.
I had asked in ##xen
##xen is pretty linux specific.. You better off asking Solaris
dom0 questions on #solaris-xen on oftc.net.
and they said I shouldn't be using VMDK,
> I should be using tap:aio. As typical of open source support,
> instead of giving me the answer they lead me down another path.
> They also suggested that I use "xm" instead of virsh. Our man
> pages list virsh as the preferred mechanism and xm as the legacy.
> The best I can do to "extract" the configuration of the VM from
> xm is "xm list -l DOMAIN" ... but thats not really setting=value
> like I have seen elsewhere. I am not sure if tap:aio is supported
> on OpenSolaris, nor am I sure if its supported over NFS. I also
> need to change the network, as my dom0 will be on a "private"
> network, and I want my domU's to be on a "service" network. I
> usually use tagged vlans (vnics) with my zones, but I haven't
> figured that out either.
*** First question: Does OpenSolaris support tap:aio, as the
> ##xen people say thats the best performing "file" based virtual
> disk. Does it work over NFS?
No, Solaris uses a different blktap implementation based
on the VirtualBox disk code. (tap:vdisk vs tap:aio)
The VirtualBox code has much better support for vmdk, vhd, and
vdi files.. vdiskadm also provides zfs like snapshot, rollback,
etc functionality for file based disks. You can also use it to
move between block, and file based disks.
You can also move a file from VirtualBox or VMWare and use it on
Solaris on Xen (assuming the OS is somewhat flexible with the H/W
emulation used).
tap:vdisk works fine over NFS.. Remember that everything has
to be read/writeable by user xvm. We do need to improve the
performance some more though.
Although, if your looking towards a production'ish environment,
I would suggest using iscsi. We also have some modifications
which makes it possible to easily migrated a guest on an iscsi
disk.
phy:iscsi:/alias/<lun>/<iscsi-alias>
phy:iscsi:/static/<server IP>/<lun>/<target id>
phy:iscsi:/discover/<lun>/<alias or target id>
e.g.
virt-install -p -n nevada -l /export/snv108.iso --nographics \
--noautoconsole -r 1024 \
--disk
path=/static/192.168.0.70/0/iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:d5ab1c26-0a7a-c6b4-98f8-d6d267eb2561,driver=phy,subdriver=iscsi
virsh attach-disk nevada
/static/10.6.70.64/0/iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:01accb27-35a3-e45f-882d-dc4e48c5685d
xvdb --driver phy --subdriver iscsi
*** Next question: How do I find out what "drivers" are supported
> for disks for example. There are a couple examples on the wiki,
> but I didn't see anything in the man pages, I didn't see any help
> or list option to tell me what it would support. It seems like
> there should be a list somewhere that lists driver/subdriver and
> maybe some description. At the very least maybe there is a way to
> list a library directory or something?
For file based disks, you should use tap:vdisk.
*** Next question: virt-manage is broken in nv_126 (known bug),
> I symlinked the vte module per the workarounds in the bug, and
> now it opens, but its getting a libgnomebreakpad error (which I
> think is safe to ignore). I was able to change the "boot device"
> (net/disk) for my HVM S10 box, but the GUI seems very limited.
> I can't change the disk or network settings. I can delete the
> disk and re-add it, but it doesn't appear do it right.
A different group works on virt-manager, so we can't help you
very much there...
You need to use tap:vdisk for the vdisk though... e.g.
virsh attach-disk nevada /xendisks/s10-test/disk0 xvda --driver tap --subdriver
vdisk
virt-install -p -n nevada -l /export/snv108.iso --nographics \
--noautoconsole -r 1024 \
--disk
path=/export/nevada/disk0,size=10,driver=tap,subdriver=vdisk,format=vdi
*** Next question: virsh seems to have some sort of "remote"
> option, but apparently (from the libvirt.org page) requires
> some extra setup. Before I go too far down that road, has
> that been wrappered or automated in any way? I would assume
> not? have we got any documentation on OpenSolaris specifics,
> or can we mostly follow the linux docs?
We disable that by default today... I believe you would have
to rebuild libvirt to enable the remote support... But I'm
not 100% sure.
*** Next question: does XEN on OS support virtual fiber channel?
If you mean npiv, then yes... You can see the hotplug script
/usr/lib/xen/scripts/vbd-npiv
for some details.. I don't have any H/W which supports it
so I don't know that much about it.
MRJ
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