oVirt Testing
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The same is true for SCVMM. You don't install and use SCVMM for a small environment where you only have one hypervisor. It just over complicates things and actually makes simple tasks take longer.
This isn't how you use something like SCVMM or oVIrt.
If you have a single server, just have a couple VMs you want to run on it, and have KVM management skills... I think oVirt may not be the best thing.
If you have multiple servers, need high-availability, will be going through Virtual Machines, need integrated backups, one-touch migrations and checkpoints, templates, virtual networks, and everything else... then yes, oVirt is for you.
oVirt is a virtualization management platform. It requires at least 2 servers (or one if doing self-hosted) just to run it. You wouldn't do this just for a single hypervisor.
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@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
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@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
The same is true for SCVMM. You don't install and use SCVMM for a small environment where you only have one hypervisor. It just over complicates things and actually makes simple tasks take longer.
This isn't how you use something like SCVMM or oVIrt.
If you have a single server, just have a couple VMs you want to run on it, and have KVM management skills... I think oVirt may not be the best thing.
If you have multiple servers, need high-availability, will be going through Virtual Machines, need integrated backups, one-touch migrations and checkpoints, templates, virtual networks, and everything else... then yes, oVirt is for you.
oVirt is a virtualization management platform. It requires at least 2 servers (or one if doing self-hosted) just to run it. You wouldn't do this just for a single hypervisor.
I've two enterprise server with CentOS at the moment, for this home-lab project alone. I understand perfectly the role of oVirt, I'm also a vSphere ops.
And I still find much simple to script anythin in a few lines than to use all this oVirt mess... the template thing can be done easily and without hide VMs under a blob of UUIDs. The same goes for migration and storage HA (gluster, DRBD). Checkpoints AKA... snapshots :D? The OpenvSwitch integration of oVirt is instead a big selling point, I've never got OVS right in plain KVM.
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@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
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@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
Not sure what you mean. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.... I have no problems at all opening up a console for a virtual console for a VM in any way.
I can view the VM in virt-viewer/remote-viewer, VNC, noVNC, RDP... even launch the console via Cockpit. What else do you need? If you need to edit the configuration the VM, you can do it all through oVirt as easily as you can in straight VMM. Even via Cockpit you can create VMs via templates and other simple things.
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@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
Not sure what you mean. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.... I have no problems at all opening up a console for a virtual console for a VM in any way.
I can view the VM in virt-viewer/remote-viewer, VNC, noVNC, RDP... even launch the console via Cockpit. What else do you need? If you need to edit the configuration the VM, you can do it all through oVirt as easily as you can in straight VMM. Even via Cockpit you can create VMs via templates and other simple things.
He's talking about virsh commands.
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@black3dynamite said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
Not sure what you mean. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.... I have no problems at all opening up a console for a virtual console for a VM in any way.
I can view the VM in virt-viewer/remote-viewer, VNC, noVNC, RDP... even launch the console via Cockpit. What else do you need? If you need to edit the configuration the VM, you can do it all through oVirt as easily as you can in straight VMM. Even via Cockpit you can create VMs via templates and other simple things.
He's talking about virsh commands.
Oh I see, I misunderstood. Makes sense now.
But with oVirt, I don't have any need to run virsh commands... it's all doable through the oVirt GUI.
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@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@black3dynamite said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
Not sure what you mean. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.... I have no problems at all opening up a console for a virtual console for a VM in any way.
I can view the VM in virt-viewer/remote-viewer, VNC, noVNC, RDP... even launch the console via Cockpit. What else do you need? If you need to edit the configuration the VM, you can do it all through oVirt as easily as you can in straight VMM. Even via Cockpit you can create VMs via templates and other simple things.
He's talking about virsh commands.
Oh I see, I misunderstood. Makes sense now.
But with oVirt, I don't have any need to run virsh commands... it's all doable through the oVirt GUI.
Everything? Maybe you are talking about a very tiny and non-production environment now… you are missing the best part, scripting and automation!
How can you possibly manage without automation
an environment of 50+ VMs without babysitting everyday?For instance, in one of my KVM environment I’ve done a tiny script that 1) check the uuid and automatic mount an external esata HDD inside a VM 2) trigger the borg backup script 3) cleanly unmount the disk and email the operator when the task is finished. It tooks half an hour write and ha saved a lot of time in the last 4 years. (Ok, I know the esata hdd is not the best backup target, but it’s the third-offsite one and there are five of that)
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@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@black3dynamite said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
@tim_g said in oVirt Testing:
@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Other than that, the virtual console of the VMs is accesible only with a VNC/spice client, when Cockpit get it right with integrated console.
Maybe there is much of unknowed to me in oVirt, but I find it really a mess compared to KVM.
You can use remote-viewer, VNC, whatever software you want to access VMs.
And even more, in the oVirt web interface (HTML5), you can simply right-click on a VM and click console. You can use spice/vnc/RD from there. Doing the spice options opens up remote-viewer anyways.
You have the same access options as you do with just straight KVM... I'm not sure what you mean here.
Not working from the web interface in 4.2, yet.No, I haven't access to virsh anymore, with any user included root. And saslpasswd2 won't help this time.
Not sure what you mean. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.... I have no problems at all opening up a console for a virtual console for a VM in any way.
I can view the VM in virt-viewer/remote-viewer, VNC, noVNC, RDP... even launch the console via Cockpit. What else do you need? If you need to edit the configuration the VM, you can do it all through oVirt as easily as you can in straight VMM. Even via Cockpit you can create VMs via templates and other simple things.
He's talking about virsh commands.
Oh I see, I misunderstood. Makes sense now.
But with oVirt, I don't have any need to run virsh commands... it's all doable through the oVirt GUI.
Everything? Maybe you are talking about a very tiny and non-production environment now… you are missing the best part, scripting and automation!
How can you possibly manage without automation
an environment of 50+ VMs without babysitting everyday?For instance, in one of my KVM environment I’ve done a tiny script that 1) check the uuid and automatic mount an external esata HDD inside a VM 2) trigger the borg backup script 3) cleanly unmount the disk and email the operator when the task is finished. It tooks half an hour write and ha saved a lot of time in the last 4 years. (Ok, I know the esata hdd is not the best backup target, but it’s the third-offsite one and there are five of that)
I suppose it depends on the environment. I don't have 50+ VMs running in KVM. I have one production level KVM hypervisor only running a handful. Backups automated in ReaR to an NFS file share, which goes to tape. Updates via dnf-automatic. I guess I don't really have many virsh-CLI automation needs for KVM. I can't really see needing anything at the hypervisor level beyond updates and backups... but I don't need virsh CLI to do that.
All the other hypervisors are Hyper-V Server totalling around 60-70 VMs. Everything there is automated via PowerShell scripts, Group Policy, and Scheduled Tasks. Linux VMs via SaltStack and GitLab.
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I seen that oVirt can be automated via Ansible Playbooks. So I assume it's possible with Salt as well (maybe not, just assuming).
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How exactly are your VMs set up in KVM that they all require babysitting at the hypervisor level? You gave one example, but obviously there are a ton of better ways to do backups.
Usually, you create a VM for whatever purpose, and let it run. Within the VM, you do your automation via your favourite method. At the hypervisor level, it's really just backups and hypervisor updates. Neither one of those needs to use the virsh cli. If you need automated migrations or VM provisioning, that can be done in oVirt from what I've seen... but I didn't get that far yet as I don't have a 2nd and 3rd node set up for testing.
I've never used oVirt in production, and probably won't until I have a lot more time to test it out in a way that mimics production. I've only just begun playing with oVirt for the first time a couple months ago, then had to sideline it for a while for something else, only getting back into it now.
If there are too many caveats to it, I just simply won't use it.
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The only need for automation at the hypervisor level would be automated spin up and down of servers, and that does not exist in the SMB for all intents and purposes.
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This may be interesting, and also linking full links for my own reference later:
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/tutorials/cloud_controller.html
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/topics/cloud/libvirt.html
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/states/all/salt.states.virt.html
https://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/ref/modules/all/salt.modules.virt.html
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Testing oVirt 4.2 stable. Does anyone know how to manually start a VM on the ovirt node (EG when the engine is down)? Seems like vdsm-client can do a lot of stuff with VMs, but not start it.
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@francesco-provino said in oVirt Testing:
Testing oVirt 4.2 stable. Does anyone know how to manually start a VM on the ovirt node (EG when the engine is down)? Seems like vdsm-client can do a lot of stuff with VMs, but not start it.
Nothing in the man page?
It’s weird that you can stop and resume but start.
