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KVM Virtualization Cookbook

By : Konstantin Ivanov

1 (1)

KVM Virtualization Cookbook

1 (1)

By: Konstantin Ivanov

Overview of this book

Virtualization technologies such as KVM allow for better control over the available server resources, by deploying multiple virtual instances on the same physical host, or clusters of compute resources. With KVM it is possible to run various workloads in isolation with the hypervisor layer providing better tenant isolation and higher degree of security. This book will provide a deep dive into deploying KVM virtual machines using qemu and libvirt and will demonstrate practical examples on how to run, scale, monitor, migrate and backup such instances. You will also discover real production ready recipes on deploying KVM instances with OpenStack and how to programatically manage the life cycle of KVM virtual machines using Python. You will learn numerous tips and techniques which will help you deploy & plan the KVM infrastructure. Next, you will be introduced to the working of libvirt libraries and the iPython development environment. Finally, you will be able to tune your Linux kernel for high throughput and better performance. By the end of this book, you will gain all the knowledge needed to be an expert in working with the KVM virtualization infrastructure.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Getting Started with QEMU and KVM

Getting Started with QEMU and KVM

Introduction

Installing and configuring QEMU

Managing disk images with qemu-img

Preparing images for OS installation with qemu-nbd

Installing a custom OS on the image with debootstrap

Resizing an image

Using pre-existing images

Running virtual machines with qemu-system-*

Starting the QEMU VM with KVM support

Connecting to a running instance with VNC

Using libvirt to Manage KVM

Using libvirt to Manage KVM

Introduction

Installing and configuring libvirt

Defining KVM instances

Starting, stopping, and removing KVM instances

Inspecting and editing KVM configs

Building new KVM instances with virt-install and using the console

Managing CPU and memory resources in KVM

Attaching block devices to virtual machines

Sharing directories between a running VM and the host OS

Autostarting KVM instances

Working with storage pools

Managing volumes

Managing secrets

KVM Networking with libvirt

KVM Networking with libvirt

Introduction

The Linux bridge

The Open vSwitch

Configuring NAT forwarding network

Configuring bridged network

Configuring PCI passthrough network

Manipulating network interfaces

Migrating KVM Instances

Migrating KVM Instances

Introduction

Manual offline migration using an iSCSI storage pool

Manual offline migration using GlusterFS shared volumes

Online migration using the virsh command with shared storage

Offline migration using the virsh command and local image

Online migration using the virsh command and local image

Monitoring and Backup of KVM Virtual Machines

Monitoring and Backup of KVM Virtual Machines

Introduction

Resource usage collection with libvirt

Monitoring KVM instances with Sensu

Simple KVM backups with tar and rsync

Creating snapshots

Listing snapshots

Inspecting snapshots

Editing snapshots

Reverting snapshots

Deleting snapshots

Deploying KVM Instances with OpenStack

Deploying KVM Instances with OpenStack

Introduction

Preparing the host for the OpenStack deployment

Installing and configuring the OpenStack Keystone identity service

Installing and configuring the OpenStack Glance image service

Installing and configuring the OpenStack Nova compute service

Installing and configuring the OpenStack Neutron networking service

Building and inspecting KVM instances with OpenStack

Stopping KVM instances with OpenStack

Terminating KVM instances with OpenStack

Using Python to Build and Manage KVM Instances

Using Python to Build and Manage KVM Instances

Introduction

Installing and using the Python libvirt library

Defining KVM instances with Python

Starting, stopping, and deleting KVM instances with Python

Inspecting KVM instances with Python

Building a simple REST API server with libvirt and bottle

Kernel Tuning for KVM Performance

Kernel Tuning for KVM Performance

Introduction

Tuning the kernel for low I/O latency

Memory tuning for KVM guests

CPU performance options

NUMA tuning with libvirt

Tuning the kernel for network performance

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Simple KVM backups with tar and rsync

In this recipe, we are going to create a backup of a KVM instance using tar and rsync and store it on a remote server. This is the easiest way to backup a KVM instance. In the next few recipes, we are going to create snapshots and use them as a cold backup.

Getting ready

For this extremely simple recipe, we are going to need:

A libvirt host with a running KVM instance, using an image file as its backing store
The tar and rsync Linux utilities
A remote server to transfer the backup

How to do it...

To back up a virtual machine using tar and rsync, perform the following steps:

Create the backup directory and change to it:

root@kvm:~# mkdir backup_kvm1 && cd backup_kvm1
root@kvm:~/backup_kvm1#

Find the location of the image file of the KVM guest:

root@kvm:~/backup_kvm1# virsh dumpxml kvm1 | grep "source file"
 <source file='/var/lib/libvirt/images/kvm1.img'/>
root@kvm:~/backup_kvm1#

Save the current instance configuration to disk:

root@kvm:~/backup_kvm1...

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