In this post, creating a file-backed virtual block device (VBD) and installing Fedora 20 in the Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. This domain is created on a Fedora 20 Dom0 as introduced in https://www.systutorials.com/installing-xen-on-fedora-20-as-domain-0/. For better performance, you may consider using LVM backed VM. Create file-backed VBD The actual space of VBD will
Read more
Tag: vbd
Setting Up LVM Backed Xen DomU
Posted onLVM volumes as backing for DomU’s file system is an appealing solution to Xen VBD. LVM volumes can dynamically grow/shrink and snapshot. These features make it simple and fast to duplicate DomU and adding storage to DomU. Creating LVM-backed Xen DomU is introduced in this post. Create LVM-backed VBD Suppose we have a LVM volume
Read more
Duplicating LVM Backed Xen DomU
Posted onLVM’s snapshot feature enables us to duplicate an LVM backed Xen DomU in seconds rather than minutes. We no longer need to copy the entire file system image like backing up file backed Xen DomU. We just need to make a snapshot of the current Xen DomU in seconds. When there are changes to the
Read more
Duplicating and Backing Up LVM Backed Xen DomU from a Remote Server
Posted onLVM’s snapshot feature enables us to duplicate an LVM backed Xen DomU in seconds inside of the same volume group. When we want to duplicate LVM backed Xen DomU from a remote server, we need to make use of LVM’s snapshot function and tools like scp and dd. Backing up the DomU is only part
Read more
Xen DomU’s I/O Performance of LVM and loopback Backed VBDs
Posted onThis posts list benchmark (using bonnie++) result of I/O performance of Xen LVM and loopback backed VBDs. The configuration of machines Dom0 VCPU: 2 (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz) Memory: 2GB Xen and Linux kernel: Xen 3.4.3 with Xenified 2.6.32.13 kernel DomU VCPU: 2 Memory: 2GB Linux kernel: Fedora (2.6.32.19-163.fc12.x86_64) DomU’s profile: name=”10.0.1.200″ vcps=2
Read more
Set up and Run Linux Xen Dom0 and DomU VMs
Posted onThe Xen solutions including installing and configuring Dom0 and DomU are summarized here. LVM volumes as backing for DomU’s file system is an appealing solution to Xen VBD. LVM volumes can dynamically grow/shrink and snapshot. These features make it simple and fast to duplicate DomU and adding storage to DomU. LVM backed DomU is recommended.
Read more
Setting Up Xen DomU on Fedora Linux (Fedora 12)
Posted onCreating file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for Xen virtual machines and installing Fedora 12 in Xen DomU via internet will be introduced. Note that this tutorial is based on a pretty old OS (Fedora 12). But the method here is still valid while some minor details may need to be changed for latest Xen and
Read more
Automatically Backing Up Xen File-backed DomU
Posted onA script for backing up file-backed Xen DomU is introduced in this post. This script can be changed to similar platform. In our cluster, virtual machines are stored under /lhome/xen/. Virtual machine with id vmid is stored in directory vmvmid. The raw image disk file name can also be derived from vmid. Some more details
Read more
An I/O Performance Comparison Between loopback Backed and blktap Backed Xen File-backed VBD
Posted onI have done some I/O performance benchmark test of Xen DomU. For easier management, some of our DomU VMs are using file-backed VBDs. Previously, our VMs are using Loopback-mounted file-backed VBDs. But blktap-based support are recommended by Xen community. Before considering changing from loopback based VBD to blktap based VBD, I have done this performance
Read more
How to Duplicate Xen DomU Virtual Machines
Posted onAssumption: There are VBD based Xen DomU virtual machines stored under /home/xen/vm-f11-sample/. There are two files under vm-f11-sample: vm0-f11.run (The configuration file) and vmdisk0 (The virtual disk). Now we want to duplicate the virtual machine vm0 stored under vm-f11-sample to vm-10.0.0.213 which is stored under vm-10.0.0.213. And vm-10.0.0.213’s ip will be 10.0.0.213. The steps to
Read more
Add More Loop Device in Linux
Posted onWe need more loop devices on Linux than the default number (most commonly 8) some time, such as we are building 12 or more virtual machines on top of xen using loop device backed VBD. In this post, we want to use 32 loops. 1. If loop device is compiled directly in the kernel Pass
Read more
Create and Manage Virtual Machines on Xen
Posted onIn this post, these content are introduced: Create and manage file-backed virtual block device (VBD) for virtual machines on xen. Install Fedora 11 via internet as DomU on top of xen. Manage virtual machines using xm. Create file-backed VBD: The actual space of VBD will be the amount of disk the virtual machine used. And
Read more