RHEL5.2 VIRTUALIZATION GUIDE
REVIEW
Erroneous content:
The table needs two
additional lines:
Para-virtualized ia64
ia64
Fully virtualized ia64
ia64
unclear whether the planning
questions are referring to the host (dom0) or to the guest (domU)
should mention this is
restricted to i686 and x86_64; ia64 doesn't support Windows as a guest
should mention this is
restricted to i686 and x86_64; ia64 doesn't support Windows as a guest
much easier to use M suffix
on dd. Use count=0 instead of count=1 to
avoid writing the single block of zeros.
With these two changes, the examples become:
sparse:
dd if=/dev/zero of=FileName.img bs=1M seek=4096 count=0
non-sparse: dd if=/dev/zero of=FileName.img
bs=1M count=4096
this page refers to running
applications on the hypervisor;
this is confusing and should
probably be changed to dom0,
especially since the next
chapter refers to dom0
There are several ways to
implement security you should know about when integrating Red Hat
Virtualization into your systems.
- remove "you should know about"
Together with other people
in your organization,you should create a 'deployment plan'
- could it be considered presumptuous to
tell the customer
"Together with other people in your
organization"
The less things running on
dom0, the higher the level of security.
- s/less/fewer/
in the
“Configuring NAT…” example why isn’t there any case for status and restart
disk
= [ "file:/var/lib/xen/images/rhel5_64_fv.dsk,hda,w",
"tap:aio:/var/lib/xen/images/UserStorage1.dsk,xvda,w" ]
"tap:aio:/var/lib/xen/images/UserStorage2.dsk,xvdb,w" ]
-- obvious typo
[root@rhel5]# df /mnt/pvdisk_p1
-- /mnt/pvdisk_p1 doesn't appear anywhere
else on the page
There should
be a statement that clarifies that the “Minimum guest operating system version”
are architecture dependant
To
be consistent w/ the rest of the document you should put the following
paragraph into a “Note”:
“After
installing the para-virtualized drivers on a guest operating system you should
only use the xm command or virsh to start
the guests. If xm is not used the network interfaces (for
example, eth1 and so on) will not be connected correctly during boot. This
problem is known and the Bugzilla number is 300531 and a bug fix is in
progress. The bug connects the network interface to qemu-dm
and subsequently limits the performance dramatically. “
At
the beginning of this section there should be a statement around the fact that
people should check the support table to verify that the PV drivers are
supported in their environment.
"The chkconfig
xendomains off command terminates all running
domains and shuts down the
domains on the next boot."
-- this is ambiguous or wrong, it should be
written more like
the explanation for "chkconfig
xendomains on"
What is the default value of
xend_unix_server?
Are there any default values
for xend_reallocation_address and xend_address?
seems to be missing useful
content, such as *how* to manage cpus
seems to be mostly a repeat
of the information at
This section only talks
about para-virtualized guests migration; what about fully virtualized guests
which is supported for x86 but not for ia64. There should be a paragraph on
fully virtualized guests and the limititations related to the different archs.
inconsistent use of
parens/non-parens when referrring to configuration parameters, pick one...
same page,
(xend-relocation-address ") and others have a strange lonely
double-quote. This is probably an
accident of formatting conversion. It
appears on other pages too.
Title could be simpler,
"An example configuration for live migration", i.e. drop "of
a"
This paragraph
should be highlighted in a “Warning” or a “Note”:
“Make sure the
directory is exported with the correct options, if you are exporting the
default directory /var/lib/xen/images/ make sure you ONLY export /var/lib/xen/images/
and NOT /var/lib/xen/
as this directory is used by the xend daemon and other Xen components, sharing
it will likely cause unpredictable behavior”
s/the exampled used/the
example used/
"Run a simple loop
inside the guest to print out time and hostname every 2 seconds." ... but
the sample loop uses "sleep 3"
The text doesn’t match the
commands – this whole first example of migration from et-virt07 to et-virt08 is
all messed up. For example:
“Initiate
a live migration to et-virt08”
does NOT match the command
“[et-virt08
~]# xm migrate --live xentesttravelvm01 et-virt07”
One of the samples starts
with the line:
# doit script
This will prevent the
following line from being processed (by the kernel):
#!/bin/bash
The doit line should be
removed.
instructions end early. There needs to be some example of how to make
use of the stuff that was just explained, such as how to connect to those
machines using virt-manager
http://libvirt.org/remote.html should
be a link instead of plain text
using grep is unnecessary,
just do:
lsof -i :5900
Chapter 21. Managing guests
with virsh
23.1. virsh the command line
interface tool for virtualization
These
two sections are doubly documenting the same tool.
Bad
sentence structure:
“You can make a new guest session from an XML machine
definition. If you have a pre-existing guest that you created previously with
the xm tool or
the virt-install
command.
s/ To terminate, destroy or delete guest use the virsh
command with the destroy/ To terminate, destroy or delete guest use the virsh
command with destroy/
s/ To display
the guest list and the current state with virsh/ To display the guest
list and their current state with virsh/
Confusing
statement, why use “the” CPU? What CPU?
“running
domains are currently active on the CPU”
“Configuring
Memory allocation” and “Configuring max memory” is 2 different version of the
same info- please delete one.
The
following sentence is repeated twice:
“This
limits the amount of memory that is available for domain0. “
Chapter 25. Starting a
guests during boot
The main comment for this section is that
it has nothing to
do with starting guests at boot. It provides a single
example of starting a guest manually, and
even that is just
a rehash of explanation given in previous
chapters.
Right after the brctl
examples, there's a line that starts with "Other
utilities which can be
used...". This sentence ends prematurely. Was
it supposed to be a
subsection title?
Could tools (such as iostat,
lsof, etc) listed at the start of the Troubleshooting section also have one
lines describing them like done for strace, vncviewer, vncserver?
Is 'sysstat' an RPM package
containing iostat and sar? The
description
on p.253 make it sound like
a command.
First sentence of Section 4
missing some words - you should do what with the log files?
In Section
"Troubleshooting with a serial console", the example shown
uses grub, which isn't used
on ia64. Should something be noted for
ia64?
In this section it says
"you must edit
the configuration file in
the /etc/xen directory". What do
you edit in there? It doesn't say. In addition, this is a grub example. Should something be noted for ia64?
Reference is made to the
boolean parameter xend_disable_trans, but it is not used in the example
(xend_disable_t is used).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Typos:
s/Fiber Channel/Fibre Channel/
s/(see(see
Chapter 13/(see Chapter 13/
Also
in the last sentence in the “note”
s/presen/present/
s/manaully/manually/
s/install/install/
in paragraph 8.
s/installtion/installation/
The
sentence “After your guest has completed it is initial bootstrap …” should be
“After your guest has completed its initial bootstrap …” i.e “its” instead of
“it is”
virt-install output should be properly
aligned; that
would make the sample output a lot easier
to read
Title has inconsistency “in
a Red Hat….environments” word “environment should be singular
s/4 device/4 devices/
In “Those
chapters provide a details description…”
s/details/detailed
in Note s/Chapter. Chapter
13/Chapter 13/
s/ it has
access the same interface all the time/ it has access to the same interface all
the time/
s/ the
procedure outline below / the procedure outlined below
s/ allow the the
guests/allow the guests/
s/configuration to suite
your local/configuration to suit your local/
s/dom0 cpus/dom0-cpus/
s/its typically better/it’s
typically better/
s/with shell privilages on
the host/with shell privileges on the host/
s/xm create –c va base/ xm create –c va-base/
s/depreciation/deprecation/