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