Branch 'f12' - en-US/Virtualization.xml
John J. McDonough
jjmcd at fedoraproject.org
Wed Sep 16 16:47:46 UTC 2009
en-US/Virtualization.xml | 269 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 268 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
New commits:
commit 40b69616ebc8836ee1bf746ca311bd4a99da11f4
Author: John J. McDonough <jjmcd at fedoraproject.org>
Date: Wed Sep 16 12:47:39 2009 -0400
Partial update of Virtualization
diff --git a/en-US/Virtualization.xml b/en-US/Virtualization.xml
index 6d33577..98faccb 100644
--- a/en-US/Virtualization.xml
+++ b/en-US/Virtualization.xml
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
<remark>This beat is located here: <ulink type="http"
url="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Virtualization">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Virtualization</ulink></remark>
<para>
+<indexterm><primary>Virtualization</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>KVM</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>Xen</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>qemu</primary></indexterm>
@@ -39,7 +40,7 @@
</para>
<section>
- <title>Kernel SamePage Merging and Reduced Guest Memory Usage</title>
+ <title>Kernel Same Page Merging and Reduced Guest Memory Usage</title>
<para>
<indexterm><primary>KSM</primary></indexterm>
<indexterm><primary>KVM</primary></indexterm>
@@ -57,6 +58,272 @@
<ulink url="http://lwn.net/Articles/306704/"></ulink>
</para>
</section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>KVM Huge Page Backed Memory</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>KVM</primary>
+ <secondary>Huge Page Backed memory</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+ Enable KVM guests to use huge page backed memory in order to
+ reduce memory consumption and improve performance by reducing
+ CPU cache pressure. Users of KVM guests using huge page backed
+ memory should experience improved performance with some savings
+ in host memory consumption. The performance benefit is workload
+ dependent.Using huge pages for guest memory does have a
+ downside, however - you can no longer swap nor balloon guest
+ memory.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to: <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_Huge_Page_Backed_Memory"
+ />.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>KVM NIC Hotplug</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>KVM</primary>
+ <secondary>NIC Hotplug</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+ Network interfaces may now be added to a running KVM guest using
+ <package>libvirt</package>/<package>virt-manager</package>
+ without the need to restart the guest.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to: <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_NIC_Hotplug" />.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>KVM qcow2 Performance</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>KVM</primary>
+ <secondary>qcow2 Performance</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+ The native disk image file format of <package>qemu</package> is
+ <command>qcow2</command>. Qcow2 provides enhanced features over
+ raw images, including: base images, snapshots, compression, and
+ encryption.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Users wishing to protect guest machine data from host crashes
+ commonly disable write caching on the host. Previously, this led
+ to very poor performance for guests in qcow2 images.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The I/O performance of qcow2 disk images has been greatly
+ improved. Users who did not use qcow2 because of the poor
+ performance may consider to switch and take advantage of the
+ additional features the format provides over raw disk images.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to: <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_qcow2_Performance"
+ /> and <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/qcow-image-format.html" />.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>KVM Stable Guest ABI</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>KVM</primary>
+ <secondary>Stable Guest ABI</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+ KVM guests are presented with an emulated hardware platform or
+ application binary interface that includes (e.g. a CPU model,
+ APIC, PIT, ACPI tables, IDE/USB/VGA controllers, NICs
+ etc.). When QEMU is updated to a new version, some aspects of
+ this platform may change as new hardware capabilities are
+ added. This is problematic for Windows guests where a guest ABI
+ change may require a installation to be reactivated.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Guest virtual machines will now be presented with the same ABI
+ across QEMU upgrades.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to: <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_Stable_Guest_ABI" />
+ and <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KVM_Stable_Guest_ABI_Design_Notes"
+ />.
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>libguestfs Library for Manipulation of Virtual Machines</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>libguestfs</primary></indexterm>
+ <indexterm><primary>guestfish</primary></indexterm>
+ <indexterm><primary>virt-df</primary></indexterm>
+ <indexterm><primary>virt-inspector</primary></indexterm> Added
+ very late in the Fedora 11 development cycle,
+ <package>libguestfs</package> is now an official feature in
+ Fedora 12. <package>libguestfs</package> is a library for
+ accessing and modifying guest disk images. Using Linux kernel
+ and <package>qemu</package> code, <package>libguestfs</package>
+ can access any type of guest filesystem that Linux and QEMU can.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The following tools are provided or augmented by libguestfs:
+ <itemizedlist>
+
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ Bindings for OCaml, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Java programming languages.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <package>guestfish</package> - Provides an interactive
+ shell for editing virtual machine filesystems and
+ executing commands in the context of the guest.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <package>virt-df</package> - Displays free space on
+ virtual machine filesystems
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <package>virt-inspector</package> - Displays OS version,
+ kernel, drivers, mount points, applications, etc. in a
+ virtual machine.
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to:
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/libguestfs" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://libguestfs.org/" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Network Interface management</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>libvirt</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+ <indexterm><primary>Virtualization</primary>
+ <secondary>Network Interface Management</secondary>
+ </indexterm>
+ Commonly used host network configurations, like bridges, bonds,
+ VLAN's and sensible combinations thereof may now be created
+ using the general-purpose network configuration library,
+ netcf. Enhancements to the <package>libvirt</package> API expose
+ this new functionality to remote managment hosts with
+ <package>libvirtd</package>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to:
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Network_Interface_Management" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedorahosted.org/netcf/" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://www.libvirt.org/remote.html" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>Single Root I/O Virtualizaton</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>Single Root I/O Virtualizaton</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+ Single Root I/O Virtualization is a PCI feature which allows
+ virtual functions (VF) to be created that share the resources of
+ a physical function (PF). The VF devices are assigned to guest
+ virtual machines and appear as physical PCI devices inside the
+ guest. Because the guest OS is effectively driving the hardware
+ directly, the I/O performance is on par with bare metal
+ performance.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to:
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SR-IOV" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/iov/" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_PCI_Device_Assignment" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
+ <section>
+ <title>gPXE now Default for Guests</title>
+ <para>
+ <indexterm><primary>gPXE</primary></indexterm>
+ <indexterm><primary>qemu</primary></indexterm>
+ QEMU guests now make use of the more modern and currently
+ maintained <package>gpxe</package> rather than the deprecated
+ etherboot tool for PXE booting.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ For further details refer to:
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtgPXE" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ <ulink type="http" url=
+ "http://etherboot.org/wiki/index.php" />
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </para>
+ </section>
+
</section>
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