[CentOS-virt] Preferred method of provisioning VM images
Lars Kurth
lars.kurth at xen.org
Tue Jun 10 16:21:03 UTC 2014
Hi all,
following the discussion on about documentation, I was wondering whether
we need to look at a standard way in which we recommend how to provision
images for VMs. Am starting this with a Xen hat, but the discussion
should not be specific to this. There are a number of options, but all
have some trade-offs
== #1 virt-install ==
Advantages: similar to KVM
Disadvantages: may cause weird issues / confusion with people switching
back to xl. The core issue is that with the current version of xen and
libvirt, this only works with xm (when xl is used, this can create some
undefined behavior). However as we have seen in some recent threads on
this list, people tend to mix which can cause problems.
== #2 xen-tools ==
Advantages: Very flexible. Many other distros use xen-tools, so we have
lots of beginners docs that just need to be tweaked
Disadvantages: needs porting/packaging for CentOS. Does not work for
kvm. Says "xen". (Maybe that's an advantage.)
We know that xen-tools works with Fedora (see
http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2013/01/24/using-xen-tools-on-fedora/), so
the porting effort may be small
Unknowns: What would be needed to make it work for CentOS
== #3 virt-builder (http://libguestfs.org/virt-builder.1.html) ==
Advantages: supports KVM, Xen and other VM inages. Seems easy to use.
- if so, it would avoid xm / xl confusion.
Unknowns: Not sure at which level virt-builder integrates with Xen and
other hypervisors. It seems to operate at disk image format (similar to
xen-tools) . I don't know whether virt-builder is restricted to some
hypervisors in RHEL7.
Disadvantages: may need porting/packaging for CentOS. It appears as if
it will be in RHEL7, so it may just appear with CentOS 7. If not, some
porting work may need to be done.
== #4 Cloud Image from Cloud Image SIG ==
We could rely on pre-built cloud images from the Cloud Images SIG.
People could just download the cloud image once it's done and customize
it, rather than installing / building their own.
Advantages: seems easy
Disadvantages: coordination with Cloud Images SIG. May not be flexible
enough
I just wanted to start a discussion about this and ask for input. This
topic which has come up a number of times in SIG meetings as a facgtor
influencing libvirt and other package versions.
Regards
Lars
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