Difference between revisions of "Winter 2010 Presentations/VMs+Emulation"

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(Installation)
(Installation)
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<strong>Arm Emulation</strong>
 
<strong>Arm Emulation</strong>
  
The hypervisor that was chosen was QEMU because it supported the ARM architecture and was already available for Fedora.
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The hypervisor that was chosen was QEMU because it supported the ARM architecture and was already available for Fedora. Although QEMU can be run directly from the command line, there are advantages to using the libvirt management layer provided by Fedora, such as automatic start of virtual machines when the system boots, the ability to disconnect and later reconnect to a virtual machine, and a graphical mangement and monitoring tool, libvirt.
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//The hypervisor that was chosen to run Fedora-ARM under Fedora was QEMU. QEMU was chosen //over other hypervisors as it is a well known emulator that supports ARM platforms.
 
<br />
 
<strong>Libvirt</strong>
 
<br />
 
Libvirt is a virtualization management framework and is full of useful tools. Libvirt provides tools such as “virsh” virtualization shell, as well as the “virt-manager” GUI tool that <br />manipulates the command-line virtual machine management tools.
 
<br />
 
<br />Installing and starting the virtualization software <br />
 
<br />
 
yum groupinstall virtualization <br />
 
yum install qemu-system-arm <br />
 
service libvirtd start <br />
 
<br />
 
Installing the ARM root filesystem and XML<br />
 
<br />
 
cd /var/lib/libvirt/images <br />
 
wget    http://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/arm/fedora/qemu/zImage-versatile-2.6.24-rc7.armv5tel \ <br />
 
http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/arm/arm1.xml \<br />
 
http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/arm/arm1.img.gz <br />
 
gunzip arm1.img.gz <br />
 
restorecon * <br />
 
virsh define arm1.xml <br />
 
<br />
 
<strong>Booting the Virtual Machine</strong><br />
 
Currently there seems to be an issue while running SELinux and Arm emulation under libvirt management. To bypass this problem, issue the command<br /> “setenforce 0”.<br />
 
<br />
 
The virtual machine should now be bootable and can be accessed using the virt-manager tool located (Applications>System Tools>Virtual Machine Manager)<br />
 
<br />
 
Or from the command line: virsh start arm1<br />
 
<br />
 
Alternatively, you can access the graphical display using the virt-viewer command: virt-viewer arm1<br />
 
<br />
 
<strong>Creating Additional ARM Virtual Machines</strong><br />
 
<br />
 
In order to create additional ARM virtual machines: <br />
 
Make a new copy of the arm1.img file under a different name in /var/lib/libvirt/images <br />
 
Edit the XML, making the following changes: <br />
 
1.    Change the UUID (you can use uuidgen to generate a new one)<br/>
 
2.    Change the image filename (in the source tag in the devices section) to point to the new image file you just created.<br />
 
Use virsh define nameOfXMLFile to define the new VM from the modified XML file.<br />
 
  
 
<strong>Performance</strong> <br />
 
<strong>Performance</strong> <br />

Revision as of 16:54, 20 April 2010

Comments are on the Talk/Discussion page.

Title

Virtual Machines By: Daniel Gilloch (dgilloch@learn.senecac.on.ca)

Introduction

The goal was to attempt to install a hypervisor, a piece of emulation software that's used to run guest operating systems, on an already existing machine for our koji build farm and determine whether or not this would be a viable developement solution. Some issues taken into consideration:

  • Cost
  • Setup
  • Performance

Approach

Determining and comparing the cost of buying arm machines, vs utilizing already existing hardware.
Determining the process of setting up virtual machines and the setup of an arm machine.
A Performance benchmark using koji build as this is a real world example of the exact type of developement that will be done on the machines. Also taken into consideration is if other environmental effects on the machine could interfer with build times.

Process

Cost

OpenRD-Base: 149.99
OpenRD-Client: 249.99
Q6600 Existing Machine: apprx, $700 CAD


Installation

Arm Emulation

The hypervisor that was chosen was QEMU because it supported the ARM architecture and was already available for Fedora. Although QEMU can be run directly from the command line, there are advantages to using the libvirt management layer provided by Fedora, such as automatic start of virtual machines when the system boots, the ability to disconnect and later reconnect to a virtual machine, and a graphical mangement and monitoring tool, libvirt.





Performance
In order to benchmark the virtual machines and the openrd client the most ideal situation was to run time along with building in koji as this is the intended purpose of the machines and virtual machines. I selected a package and built it multiple times on both the virtual machine and the openrd client to ensure consistancy. The Openrd client's results were very consistant at a build time of about 17 minutes, however the virtual machine's build times were sparatic. They ranged from 25 minutes to an hour depending on the work being done.

Discovery

The ARM virtual machines are not a viable solution for our Fedora-Arm Koji Farm. The additional compilation times from the virtual machines can amount to ten times slower than that of the OpenRD client, which can really come into affect when compiling large packages which is not acceptable. The OpenRD clients were inexpensive and almost three OpenRD clients can be purchased at the cost of one of the existing machines.

Results