[libvirt] Thoughts on adding a domain type of jvm

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2013 at 02:20:25PM -0500, Scott Stark wrote:
> I'm working with a java vm vendor that is developing a multi-tenancy
> jvm and is trying to leverage the libvirt framework for the domain
> configuration. Right now the java language binding leverages the
> libvirt c library for parsing the domain.xml file. What are the
> thoughts on adding a 'jvm' domain type?

It is an interesting idea. You can certainly view a multi-tenancy jvm
as another type of virtualization / hypervisor, and from that POV it
would seem relevant for libvirt.

I guess from my POV the big unknown is just how well it would fit in
with the APIs and XML description that libvirt currently defines. ie
are the current libvirt APIs / XML too focused on virtualizing
operating systems to be practical for interaction with the JVM
capabilities

> I believe there would need to be a jvm specific section in a
> separate namespace similar to the qemucmdline section.

This ties into my question above, about how it would fit in with
the current XML. The current QEMU specific namespace is something
that we consider to be *unsupported* in libvirt - it is just there
as a "get out of jail free" card. The goal is that anything in the
QEMU namespace will be mapped to real libvirt APIs / XML over time.

So I wouldn't want to have a JVM driver where use of a custom
namespace was a fundamental part of its usage.  For it to be viable,
a JVM driver needs to be useable with the standardized XML schema,
and any JVM specific namespace would just be for temporary hacks/
edge cases that should rarely be used.

Regards,
Daniel
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