[et-mgmt-tools] Features request

[Cole Robinson]

On 06/17/2009 07:02 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 04:14:02PM -0600, bodhi zazen wrote:
>> I normally run KVM from the command line and it work well.
>>
>> I appreciate and am impressed with the work that has gone into virt-manager.
>>
>> I am wondering what the process is to put in requests for additional
>> features ?
> 
> It depends what your request is for, but typically either this mailing
> list, or the libvirt mailing list, or file a bug report requesting the
> feature. If you have ability to create patches even better :-)
> 
>> I would like to suggest adding some of the command line options to
>> virt-manager, or at least a way to specify options manually.
> 
> This is an often requested feature, but afraid we explicitly do not 
> allow for specifying extra KVM arguments. libvirt defines a XML 
> config model that is idependant of any virtualization technology.
> So exposing KVM command line args in this would break our goal of
> compatability.  If there are KVM command line args we don't currently
> support that you need, please mention them so we can come up with a
> generic way to represent them in libvirt XML.
> 
>> Options / features I use on a regular basis on the command line not
>> available in virt-manager are :
>>
>> 1. Bridged networking. Yes I know this can be manually configured and once
>> configured works with virt-manager, still would be nice to see this
>> automated.
> 
> This is coming real soon .... scheduled for Fedora 12
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Shared_Network_Interface
> 
>> 2. Snapshots. KVM has a rich set of options for snapshots. Boot a snapshot,
>> save changes, save the machine state, etc. Any consideration being given to
>> adding these options.
> 
> Our storage APIs in libvirt allow for creating LVM snapshots, and creating
> qcow2 files with a backing file. We don't yet support internal qcow2
> snapshots for snapshotting the whole VM state, but that is planned for
> the future. We don't have a target date yet though.
> 

Just a minor point, the existing snapshot support in libvirt isn't supported
in virt-manager (yet).

Thanks,
Cole