Xen & XCP Tutorial

Unit 1 - 2011 Xen Day Boston

Steve Maresca Zentific

Todd Deshane Xen.org

Josh West One.com

Patrick F. Wilbur Clarkson University

Copyright Notice
Copyright 2011, Patrick F. Wilbur. Last modified: December 12, 2011 2:39 PM EST. The Xen panda logo is property of Xen.org . == LICENSE:

Patrick F. Wilbur
http://pdub.net Current slides available at: http://cosi.clarkson.edu/docs/installingxen/ These slides and content are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, available online at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ You may share (copy, distribute, and transmit) this work, and remix (adapt) this work, as long as you attribute this work to the author and share adapted works under the same or similar license by leaving this entire notice in place (including the original author's name/contact information/URL and this license notice).

Acknowledgments
Portions of this 2011 Xen Day work are derived from the 2010 Xen Training / Tutorial, by Todd Deshane and Patrick F. Wilbur, which is derived from the 2009 Xen Training / Tutorial as updated by Zach Shepherd and Jeanna Matthews from the original version written by Zach Shepherd and Wenjin Hu, originally derived from materials written by Todd Deshane and Patrick F. Wilbur.

Portions of this work are inspired by Jeremy Fitzhardinge's Pieces of Xen slides.

Patrick F. Wilbur Biography

Patrick F. Wilbur is a computer science Ph.D. student at Clarkson University, where he is a member of the Applied C.S. Labs. His research and teaching interests include usable security, virtualization, operating systems, file systems, artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, systems biology, and human-computer interaction. He is a co-author of Running Xen and has taught several Xen tutorials. In his spare time, he enjoys being involved with his local church, near-space weather balloons, hiking, cooking, and writing essays, poetry, and music. http://pdub.net

Unit 1
Xen & XCP Tutorial

Unit 1: Xen & XCP Tutorial - Overview

Introduction & Xen vs. Xen Cloud Platform Xen/XCP Installation & Configuration XCP Concepts: pools, hosts, storage, networks, VMs

Introduction & Xen vs. Xen Cloud Platform

Xen, XCP, Project Kronos

Types of Virtualization
Emulation: Fully-emulate the underlying hardware architecture Full virtualization: Simulate the base hardware architecture Paravirtualization: Abstract the base architecture

OS-level virtualization: Shared kernel (and architecture), separate user spaces

What is Xen?
Xen is a virtualization system supporting both paravirtualization and hardware-assisted full virtualization Name from neXt gENeration virtualization

Initially created by University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

Open source (licensed under GPL)

What is Xen Cloud Platform (XCP)?

Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) is a turnkey virtualization solution that provides out-of-the-box virtualization/cloud computing
XCP includes: o Open-source Xen hypervisor o Enterprise-level XenAPI (XAPI) management tool stack o Support for Open vSwitch (open-source, standards-compliant virtual switch)

What is Project Kronos?

Port of XCP's XenAPI toolstack to Debian and Ubuntu dom0 Gives users the ability to install Debian or Ubuntu, then
apt-get install xcp-xapi

Provides Xen users with the option of using the same API and toolstack that XCP and XenServer provide
Early adopters can try new changes to the XenAPI before they get released in mainstream XCP and XenServer versions Now much, much easier to build tools outside of an SDK VM

XCP/XenServer Class Diagram

XCP Architecture

The Case for Xen

True Type 1 virtualization: o Reduced size trusted computing base (TCB) o Versatile Dom0 (Linux, BSD, Solaris all possible) o Dom0 disaggregation (storage domains, stub domains, restartable management domain) o Inherent separation between VMs & system resources Best security, isolation, performance, scalability mix

The Case for Xen

Xen is mature Open source (even XenAPI) XenAPI is better than libvirt, especially for enterprise use*

* Detailed by Ewan Mellor: http://wiki.openstack.org/XenAPI

The Case for Xen

Proven enterprise use (Citrix XenServer, Oracle VM, etc.) Hypervisor of choice for cloud (Amazon, Rackspace, Linode, Google, etc.)

Hypervisor of choice for client (XenClient, Virtual Computer's NxTop, Qubes OS, etc.)

So, Why Xen?

Open source Proven to be versatile Amazing community Great momentum in various directions

Xen Definitions
Xen provides a virtual machine monitor (or hypervisor), which a physical machine runs to manage virtual machines There exist one or more virtual machines (or domains) running beneath the hypervisor

A virtual machine is an encapsulated operating system which can run applications as if on a physical machine
The management virtual machine (called Domain0 or dom0) interacts with the hypervisor & runs device drivers Other virtual machines are called guests (guest domains)

Xen: Hypervisor Role

Thin, privileged abstraction layer between the hardware and operating systems Defines the virtual machine that guest domains see instead of physical hardware: o Grants portions of physical resources to each guest o Exports simplified devices to guests o Enforces isolation among guests

Xen: Domain0 (dom0) Role

Creates and manages guest VMs xl (Xen management tool)
A client application to send commands Xen, replaces xm

Supplies device and I/O services: o Runs (backend) device drivers o Provides domain storage

Normal Linux Boot Process

BIOS

Master Boot Record (MBR)

GRUB Kernel Module Linux

The Xen Boot Process

GRUB starts Kernel Hypervisor starts Module Domain0 starts xl Guest domain starts Guest OS boots

Virtualization in Xen
Paravirtualization: Uses a modified Linux kernel Guest loads Dom0's pygrub or Dom0's kernel Front-end and back-end virtual device model Cannot run Windows Guest "knows" it's a VM and cooperates with hypervisor Hardware-assisted full virtualization (HVM): Uses the same, normal, OS kernel Guest contains grub and kernel Normal device drivers Can run Windows Guest doesn't "know" it's a VM, so hardware manages it

Virtualization in Xen
Paravirtualization: High performance (claim to fame) High scalability Runs a modified operating system

Hardware-assisted full virtualization (HVM): "Co-evolution" of hardware & software on x86 architecture Uses an unmodified operating system

Guest Relocation (Migration) in Xen

Cold Relocation Warm Migration Live Migration

Cold Relocation
Motivation: Moving guest between hosts without shared storage or with different architectures or hypervisor versions Process: 1. Shut down a guest on the source host 2. Move the guest from one Domain0's file system to another's by manually copying the guest's disk image and configuration files 3. Start the guest on the destination host

Cold Relocation
Benefits: Hardware maintenance with less downtime Shared storage not required Domain0s can be different Multiple copies and duplications Limitation: More manual process Service should be down during copy

Warm Migration
Motivation: Move a guest between hosts when uptime is not critical
Result: 1.Pauses a guest's execution 2.Transfers guest's state across network to a new host 3.Resumes guest's execution on destination host

Warm Migration
Benefits: Guest and processes remains running Less data transfer than live migration Limitations: For a short time, the guest is not externally accessible Requires shared storage Network connections to and from guest are interrupted and will probably timeout

Live Migration
Motivation: Load balancing, hardware maintenance, and power management Result: 1.Begins transferring guest's state to new host 2.Repeatedly copies dirtied guest memory (due to continued execution) until complete 3.Re-routes network connections, and guest continues executing with execution and network uninterrupted

Live Migration
Benefits: No downtime Network connections to and from guest often remain active and uninterrupted Guest and its services remain available Limitations: Requires shared storage Hosts must be on the same layer 2 network Sufficient spare resources needed on target machine Hosts must be configured similarly

What's New in Xen 4.0+?

Better performance and scalability blktap2 for virtual hard drive image support (snapshots, cloning) Improved IOMMU PCI passthru VGA primary graphics card GPU passthru for HVM guests Memory page sharing (Copy-on-Write) between VMs Online resize of guest disks

What's New in Xen 4.0+?

Remus Fault Tolerance (live VM synchronization) Physical CPU/memory hotplug libxenlight (libxl) replaces xend PV-USB passthru WHQL-certified Windows PV drivers (included in XCP)

Xen/Xen Cloud Platform Installation & Configuration

Xen Light, XCP Installer

Installing Xen
Xen4 installation instructions, including from source: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Xen4.0 1. Install Linux distro

2. Install Xen hypervisor package

3. Install a dom0 kernel (packages available for many distros)

4. Modify GRUB configuration to boot Xen hypervisor instead

Result: A working Xen hypervisor and "Xen Light" installation

Installing XCP
1. Download latest XCP ISO: http://xen.org/download/xcp/index.html 2. Boot from ISO and proceed through XCP installer

Result: A ready-to-go Xen hypervisor, dom0, XAPI

Xen Cloud Platform Concepts

Pools, hosts, storage, networks, VMs

Xen Cloud Platform (XCP)

XCP was originally derived from Citrix XenServer (a free enterprise product), is open-source, and is free
XCP promises to contain cutting-edge features that will drive future developments of Citrix XenServer

Xen Cloud Platform (XCP)

Again, XCP includes: o Open-source Xen hypervisor o Enterprise-level XenAPI (XAPI) management tool stack o Support for Open vSwitch (open-source, standards-compliant virtual switch)

XCP Features
Fully-signed Windows PV drivers
Heterogeneous machine resource pool support

Installation by templates for many different guest OSes

XCP XenAPI Management Tool Stack

VM lifecycle: live snapshots, checkpoint, migration
Resource pools: live relocation, auto configuration, disaster recovery Flexible storage, networking, and power management Event tracking: progress, notification Upgrade and patching capabilities Real-time performance monitoring and alerting

XCP's xsconsole (SSH or Local)

XCP's XAPI Viewer

XCP Command Line Interface (CLI)

# xe template-list (or # xe vm-import filename=lenny.xva

# xe vm-install template=<template> new-name-label=<name> # xe vm-param-set uuid=<uuid of new VM> otherconfig:install-repository=http://ftp.debian.org/ #xe network-list #xe vif-create network-uuid=<network uuid from above> vmuuid=<uuid of new VM> device=0 # xe vm-start vm=<name of VM>

Further Information
http://pdub.net/2011/12/03/howto-install-xcp-in-kvm/ ...

Useful Resources and References

Community: Xen Mailing List: http://www.xen.org/community/ Xen Wiki: http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/ Xen Blog: http://blog.xen.org http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenCommonProblems

Books: The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization Discussion: http://www.xen.org/community/xenpapers.html Abstracts, slides, and videos from Xen Summits
http://pcisecuritystandards.org/organization_info/special_interest_groups.php