On Tue, 2014-06-10 at 17:21 +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
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. ...
I've chosen the virt-install method on CentOS 5 precisely because it is like KVM. I was hoping it would fulfill the promise of being hypervisor agnostic. I'm hoping it continues to be available on future versions of CentOS with Xen.
Though it is a waste of resources, I make all my virtual machines, Linux and MS Windows alike, fully virtualized. I can then move any of the VM's with the same virt-install --import or virsh dumpxml/edit/virsh define process.
When moving a VM, usually the only thing I have to do outside of virt-install/virt-manager is add <acpi/>, <apic/> or <pae/>, which can be done with virsh edit. I don't know why some of my virtual servers need them and other don't but I have higher priority things to think about.
I'm the only technical support person and I don't work 24/7. The graphical interface of virt-manager makes it possible for non-tech people to see what is running and see consoles to restart any misbehaving VM's (usually MS Windows VM's).
I have completely eliminated my use of xm.