[virt-tools-list] Question on host/guest management ...

[al pat]

Thanks Richard! Very comprehensive answers. I will investigate in depth.

Appreciate your response!

-a

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 06:13:59PM -0400, al pat wrote:
> > I was looking at replacing vmware in our appliance with kvm and wanted to
> > get a feel for some
> > of the utilities vmware provides that I will need to have equivalent
> > function in kvm/qemu environment.
> >
> > I had a few question, and was looking at some help/pointers to
> investigate
> > further:
> >
> > 1. How to send log files to host log? I can use syslog for event
> reporting,
> > but is there a way, I can move  a file from guest to host?
>
> It's best (and most secure) to send logs to a remote server in real
> time.  Standard syslog can do this.
>
> Just treat your virtual machines like networked real machines, and you
> won't go far wrong.
>
> > 2. guest to host communication - logging messages (probably to appear in
> a
> > host log file), providing guest information like guest name, IP address
> etc
>
> You can set up an ordinary TCP/IP network connection or a
> virtio-serial connection.  There are about a dozen different options
> for guest to host communications:
>
> http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsConsole
>
> > 3. Is there a way for the host to execute programs/scripts in guest?
>
> Again, thinking of this from a network point of view, just use 'ssh'.
> It's widely available and secure.
>
> > Looking for things like power down of guest
>
> You can send an ACPI signal to the guest which (if the guest is
> listening) will power it off:
>
> http://virt-tools.org/learning/start-vm-with-virt-manager/
>
> > 4. Is there a way to have heartbeat message between host and guest?
>
> Depends what you want the heartbeat to do.  A watchdog maybe?  We
> support them in qemu and KVM:
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Watchdog_timer
> https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/what-is-a-watchdog/
>
> > 5. Way for host to find the process and network information about the
> guest
>
> virt-top
>
> It depends on exactly what information you want to find out.  Using
> ordinary network methods is best if you have a lot of detailed
> information to collect from the guest, eg. using collectd.
>
> http://collectd.org/
>
> > 6. how to find "hostid" of the guest in host?
>
> Not sure what you mean by "hostid".  The UUID and MAC address is
> available through libvirt, eg:
>
> virsh dumpxml Guest | grep '<uuid>'
>
> The hostname is accessible from virt-inspector.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat
> http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
> virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
> powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
> http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top
>
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