Recently in Virtualization Category

Windows dynamic disks and Sun xVM

By
Pascal Gienger
on December 24, 2009 11:51 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
windows-disk-30GB.png

The dynamic disk feature of Windows Server is quite efficient when it comes to work into a Sun xVM environment. The 30 GB disk "Disk 0" is handled by the OpenSolaris Dom-0 as a ZFS block volume:

Continue reading Windows dynamic disks and Sun xVM.

dladm: VLANs with OpenSolaris (and Sun xVM)

By
Pascal Gienger
on December 18, 2009 2:55 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
dladm-vlan.png
"dladm" also allows to define VLAN trunking and VLAN usage with OpenSolaris.

You may assign specific VLANs to xVM virtual domains/machines (DomU) as well as use them in Dom0 or in your bare OpenSolaris using zones or not.

The physical interface (e1000g0) will act as the native vlan interface in this example, producing packets without a 802.1q vlan tag.

Defining VLANs with dladm is simple:

Continue reading dladm: VLANs with OpenSolaris (and Sun xVM).

dladm: Virtual networks with Sun xVM

By
Pascal Gienger
on December 10, 2009 6:57 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
dladmetherstubbridge.pngSolaris has a nifty utility named "dladm" which creates "dynamic" links.

It can be used to:

  • work with virtual network interfaces
  • work with wireless interfaces (WiFi)
  • work with virtual switches (named etherstubs and bridges)

For our Xen-based xVM environment, a virtual switch to connect DomU's to an internal network is a common configuration. This virtual switch may even have an interface to the Dom0 system - the path to the outside world.
Continue reading dladm: Virtual networks with Sun xVM.

Sun xVM 3.4.2 available, dom0_min_mem

By
Pascal Gienger
on November 30, 2009 11:53 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)
win2008r2sysinfo.pngThe xvm-3.4-source tree has obviously reached 3.4.2, as there is no more "pre", "rc..." or other suffixes in the version number.

After a svcadm enable milestone/xvm (and a reboot if you don't already booted the Xen Hypervisor) all daemons are coming up, it seems to work.

Windows 2008 R2 in a HVM identifies the BIOS as "3.4.2-xvm" (click on the picture on the right to enlarge it).
Continue reading Sun xVM 3.4.2 available, dom0_min_mem.

Windows 2008 R2 on Sun xVM 3.4.2 / Xen

By
Pascal Gienger
on November 29, 2009 10:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
devices2008r2.pngWindows 2008R2 and Sun Xen xVM? Yes it works. In Testsigning-Mode with the free GPL Xen drivers. Flawlessly. Performant.

To the right you see the result (click for original size).

The Xen Block volume (zfs volume in Dom0) is shown as "XEN PV DISK SCSI Disk Device", the virtual network interface as "Xen Net Device Driver".

To install Win 2008 R2 on Sun xVM begin to create a zfs block volume to hold the Windows boot disk:

Continue reading Windows 2008 R2 on Sun xVM 3.4.2 / Xen.

Update: Xen Drivers for Windows 2003 and XP 32bit

By
Pascal Gienger
on November 29, 2009 10:17 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
The free GPL Xen driver files (which are perfect for Sun xVM) which can be found on

http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/

have changed their naming scheme.

XP drivers are named gplpv_xp_version.msi

2003 32bit drivers are named gplpv_2003x32_version.msi; actual version number is  0.10.0.138.

They'are also gplpv_Vista2008 (for Vista, 2008 and 2008R2 (only 64bit)).

A side note: To be able to use 64bit driver code on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 you have to turn testsigning on. Type as Administrator on the command line:

bcdedit /set testsigning on

reboot, install the 64bit drivers and your DomU Windows system will accept them.

New ZFS feature: deduplication - new in snv_128

By
Pascal Gienger
on November 24, 2009 2:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
With Nevada 128 you'll get zpool/zfs version 22 with new features.

A noticeabe new feature is named "deduplication" which means that identical blocks are only kept once on disk reducing real storage use.

pascal@denver:~# zpool list
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
rpool   135G  63.7G  71.3G    47%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
xvm     135G  29.3G   106G    21%  8.52x  ONLINE  -

The pool "xvm" has some nearly identical block volumes (zfs zvol) for Xen/xVM use and the result is noticeable.

Don't forget to allocate enough RAM to your Dom0-kernel when using Sun xVM.

Xen 3.4.2 Sun xVM (3.4.2-rc1-xvm)

By
Pascal Gienger
on November 3, 2009 12:03 AM | | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)
[Update:]
Sun xVM 3.4.2 is available via source. The version below is outdated, please look at
http://southbrain.com/south/2009/11/sun-xvm-342-dom0-min-mem.html



The result of the Mercurial source tree snapshot from opensolaris.org from Oct 06, 2009 built as non-debug packages - can be found here:

http://southbrain.com/software/xvm/3.4.2-rc1-xvm/

Be sure to remove the OpenSolaris packages with the same name before.  :)

Take this "AS-IS" without any warranty of any kind. I am not endorsed to Sun nor I take any responsibility for these packages. I used the OpenSolaris xvm-3.4 gate from Oct 06,2009. Xen version is 3.4.2-rc1-xvm.

It works well with snv_126.

OpenSolaris snv_126 and Xen 3.4.2-rc1-xvm

By
Pascal Gienger
on October 24, 2009 4:19 PM | | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)
There is snv_126 on the Mercurial repository at opensolaris.org.
xvm-gate 3.4 has also be taken to a new version: Xen 3.4.2-rc1-xvm (from 3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm).

Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_126 October 2009
bfu'ed from /export/home/pascal/archives-nightly-osol-nd/i386 on 2009-10-23
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_118 November 2008

pascal@priscilla:~$ uname -a
SunOS priscilla 5.11 snv_126 i86pc i386 i86xpv

Redhat Enterprise Server 5 on VMware ESX 4 - including PVSCSI boot

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 24, 2009 8:48 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
redhatbumper.png
A step-by-step instruction manual how to install RHEL 5 using a paravirtual SCSI boot device in VMware is described here:

http://southbrain.com/south/tutorials/installing-redhat-enterprise-5.html

Comments are welcome!

rtc! Sun xVM: Wrong timezone offset in PV DomU?

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 22, 2009 9:05 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Running paravirtualized Linux Kernels as DomU on Sun xVM/Xen 3.4.2 I had the "little" problem that timezone offsets are not correct. My machines are located in Germany so the Timezone in Linux is "Europe/Berlin". The result:

OpenSolaris Dom0: Tuesday, September 22, 2009  7:06:38 AM UTC
Linux SLES 11 DomU: Tue Sep 22 11:06:38 CEST 2009

"CEST" means Central European Summer Time, and the offset should be two hours, not four!

The solution:
Dom0's real time (hardware) clock has to be set to UTC!
Using Linux as Dom0 this would be a simple  "hwclock --utc" call. On OpenSolaris the command is:

rtc -z UTC

The result will be written permanently in /etc/rtc_config.
Don't forget to do a
 
svcadm disable ntp; ntpdate ...yourtimeserver...; svc enable ntp

DomU Linux machines are immediately changing to the right time (9:06 CEST in the example above).

How storage works in VMWare ESX?

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 20, 2009 11:19 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
As opposed to the Xen/Sun xVM storage virtualization is done in the ESX Kernel (the simple case where no dedicated hardware storage is reserved and defined as passthrough for the virtual machine):

esxstorage-480.png
Continue reading How storage works in VMWare ESX?.

How storage works in Sun xVM/Xen?

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 19, 2009 10:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
In the HVM case it is a little bit like this (simplified):
xenstorage-hvm-480.png
Continue reading How storage works in Sun xVM/Xen?.

Redhat Enterprise 5 Server in Xen!

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 17, 2009 7:35 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Yes we know, Redhat Inc. has its own virtualization technique named KVM but nevertheless it installs just painless in a Xen environment.

I spent 15 minutes with an interactive install in a paravirtualized Sun xVM/Xen domain and this is very fast.

I described the steps in my little article: Installing Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 on Sun xVM

It appears in the Redhat network as "Para-virtualized" which is 100% correct:

redhatoverviews.png



Virtualization techniques and approaches

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 15, 2009 3:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
virtualization-hypervisor-example-60.pngI began to compare some different approaches to virtualization available and to visualize them with graphical pictograms.

I am appreciating your feedback whether I achieved that goal or not.

The following articles are available so far:

  1. Why virtualization?
  2. Userspace-based virtualization (the easy way)
  3. Xen: Hypervisor-based virtualization
  4. ESX: Hypervisor-based virtualization
  5. Solaris Zones: A sharing approach
  6. Hybrid methods: KVM

ESX 4 (VMWare): SUSE Linux with paravirtual SCSI controller

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 11, 2009 1:58 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
[Remark: With Redhat Enterprise Server 5 it is a little bit more difficult, creation of the initial ramdisk image is not so straightforward: Click here for the redhat howto]

works out of the box:

SCSI subsystem initialized
VMware PVSCSI driver - version 0.0.0.6
pvscsi 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
pvscsi: found VMware PVSCSI rev 1 on bus 3:slot 0:func 0
pvscsi 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
pvscsi: enabled MSI-X
scsi0 : VMware PVSCSI storage adapter rev A, 256 reqs (8 pages), 1024 cmps (8 pages), cmd_per_lun=64
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     VMware   Virtual disk     1.0  PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
 sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
if you do the following steps:



Continue reading ESX 4 (VMWare): SUSE Linux with paravirtual SCSI controller.

vSphere 4 ESX vs Sun xVM Xen 3.4.2: Windows 2003 SP2

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 11, 2009 7:46 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
driversvmwarexen.png
I am not a Windows guy, I admit, but in our data center there are many Windows 2003 Server installations (32bit) and we are going to virtualize them.

Management's choice is VMWare vSphere 4 (ESX 4) but nevertheless I wanted to know how Sun xVM/Xen behaves compared to ESX. Forget all that nice Management tools offered by vmware, the only thing I was interested in is the performance feeling when actually using them.

The picture at the right (click on it to enlarge) shows the hardware list of the two "brothers": To the left you'll see the xVM DomU with paravirtualized disk and network drivers, to the right there's the vSphere ESX virtual machine with a paravirtualized SCSI disk device (and an IDE boot disk, you cannot boot in ESX from a paravirtualized disk).


Continue reading vSphere 4 ESX vs Sun xVM Xen 3.4.2: Windows 2003 SP2.

Assigning CPUs works even in Domain-0!

By
Pascal Gienger
on September 2, 2009 6:45 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Just a small note:

It was just a test, but it worked!

You can control the number of CPU cores Dom0 uses (named "Domain-0" in the Sun xVM environment).

This command:

# virsh setvcpus Domain-0 2

results in that:

Sep  2 18:35:16 pgt01 unix: cpu0: externally initiated on-line
Sep  2 18:35:17 pgt01 unix: cpu1: externally initiated on-line
Sep  2 18:35:17 pgt01 unix: cpu2: externally initiated powered-off
Sep  2 18:35:18 pgt01 unix: cpu3: externally initiated powered-off

Crazy.
OS is OpenSolaris snv_121, which was bfu'd from snv_118.

(Setting the memory use and max memory use via virsh setmem and virsh setmaxmen do also work as expected, the system begins to swap out pages and/or flushes zfs cache data on disk).

Xen Drivers for Windows 2003: Mission accomplished!

By
Pascal Gienger
on August 31, 2009 8:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
newhardware.png
After having installed Windows 2003 Enterprise Server in a Sun xVM (Xen 3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm)-Environment, performance was slow due to qemu-dm's tremendous task to emulate ATA/IDE disk access and the Realtek 8139 network chipset.

Xen Block and network drivers however for Windows seemed to exist only in commercial binary-only form supplied from some of the Xen vendors. After googling around, I found the Xen Wiki which included an article about GPL PV drivers for Windows:

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindowsGplPv

Inside this article there is a link where these drivers can be downloaded in binary form:

http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/

For Windows 2003 Server the driver binary Microsoft Installer Archive (msi) is "wnet".
For my 3.4.2-xen-Setp (Sun xVM with OpenSolaris snv_121 as Dom0) I had to use gplpv_fre_wnet_x86_0.10.0.98-dontuse.msi. The other two versions did not work (resulting in a bluescreening windows...). I did not take "dontuse" literally...



Continue reading Xen Drivers for Windows 2003: Mission accomplished!.

Windows Server 2003 in Sun xVM domU

By
Pascal Gienger
on August 28, 2009 9:54 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
w2k3_sun_xvm_domu.png
Using OpenSolaris (BFU't to snv_121) and xvm-3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm (cloned from hg.opensolaris.org) I am able to install Windows 2003 Server using VNC. Neat.

The problem remains that the "qm-demu" daemon running on the Dom0 side to emulate ATAPI disks and a RTL8139 network connection is quite resource consuming. Running online update on a Suse Linux HVM DomU results in qm-demu eating up a whole CPU. With Windows, the same.
« Unforgotten | Main Index | Archives

Search

Mon midi - blog français


About me

Pages

December 2009: Monthly Archives

Categories

Monthly Archives

Recent Entries

December 2009

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    

About

This blog is owned by:

Pascal Gienger
Kanzleistr. 14
78462 Konstanz
Phone +49 7531 584298
Fax +49 7531 584298-9

Phone USA 1-678-791-4182

YouTube Channel: pascalgienger