Re: two mysteries

2016-01-25 Thread Yasha Karant

On 01/25/2016 04:30 PM, David Sommerseth wrote:

On 25/01/16 19:32, Yasha Karant wrote:

On 01/24/2016 06:06 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

On 01/23/2016 01:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:

Perhaps someone else has experienced what I related below and can comment
-- SL 7x.

1.  ... For 802.3, I prefer to use a manual configuration, not NetworkManager.

For a dynamic connection even with a wired Ethernet you should use the
supported NetworkManager stack, your personal preferences aside.  NM works
and doesn't require munging for a simple DHCP wired connection.


2.  ...Note that I must use MS Win to work with these devices as the
application software for the device in question is *NOT* available for
linux, the device is proprietary (no source code available), and
CrossOver/Wine does not support USB -- forcing the use of a VM running a MS
Win gues

Neither VMware nor VirtualBox ship as part of SL.  KVM does, and USB
passthrough works very well with Windows 7 running in a KVM virtual machine
on my laptop.  It just works, and it's already part of SL; why not use it?
Performance is very good in my experience, and I'm running a few pieces of
software in Win 7 for the same reasons as you.  You're also far more likely
to get useful help using KVM, either from the list or from other sources,
such as the Red Hat or Fedora documentation.

 From the KVM site (http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools) that has a
RedHat logo, there is a list of management interfaces, including VMM (Virtual
Machine Manager -- https://virt-manager.org/screenshots/ ) that also appears
to be a Red Hat entity.  Anyone using VMM?  VMM appears to allow a true host
OS (supervisor, not hypervisor) with the VM ("hypervisor") running under the
OS (as with VMWare workstation/player or VirtualBox), thus booting an OS, not
a hypervisor that actually provisions for guest supervisors.  Is this correct?

This was a bit confusing for me (getting late, so probably stupid to reply now).

But  KVM is the core hypervior.  It is in fact just a kernel module which
you can load at any time on systems with CPUs supporting hardware
virtualization (VT-d or similar, most modern Intel, AMD and IBM Power 7/8
supports KVM).

libvirt is the management backend, which provides a generic API.  libvirt can
be used against other hypervisors as well, such as Xen, but probably more
often used with KVM.

qemu-kvm is the KVM virtual machine process.  Each qemu-kvm process is started
per VM.  You seldom start these processes manually, but they are kicked off by
libvirt.

virt-manager is a management GUI front-end.  And virsh is a console based
management tool.  Both connects to the libvirt API.

Further, you can also download an oVirt Live image and boot that on a
bare-metal or virtual machine.  oVirt can then connect to libvirt and provide
an even more feature rich management tool.

virt-manager and oVirt can also connect to several systems running libvirt
simultaneously, so you can manage more hypervisors from a single front-end.
And there are probably even more front-ends, like "Boxes" (not really tried it).


I dunno much about vmware stuff, so I will refrain to comment that.  But
VirtualBox is also two-fold.  My experience with VirtualBox is now quite old
(5-6 years ago).  You can start VirtualBox guests without a kernel support
module loaded, which would work on most hardware.  But performance was not too
good at all.  If you got the init.d script to build the kernel module, you
could get quite acceptable performance.  However, I see VirtualBox more like a
single package which gives you both hypervisor and management tool in a single
software package.

Even though VirtualBox is more a "single unit" and KVM/Qemu/libvirt consists
of more components ... you normally don't notice that when you start VMs via
the management tools.


I hope this gave a broader perspective.


--
kind regards,

David Sommerseth

Thank you for your detailed exposition.  My primary concern is that I do 
*NOT* want a hypervisor actually controlling the physical hardware; we 
have enough security vulnerabilities with a "hardened" supervisor such 
as EL 7.  My secondary issue is the actual human clock execution time in 
the VM as contrasted with the same OS/environment running on the 
physical hardware.  I have found that current production releases of 
VirtualBox and VMware (e.g., VMware player) provide acceptable 
performance, although the USB interface on VMware now does seem better 
than VirtualBox that evidently still has issues (one of the mysteries).  
As neither VMware player nor VirtualBox seem capable of providing a MS 
Win guest with any form of Internet access to an 802.11 connection from 
the host (in both cases, the claim from a MS Win 7 Pro guest is that 
there is no networking hardware, despite being shown by the guest as 
existing), it is possible that the "native" (ships with) vm 
functionality of EL 7 may address this issue.  Note that older versions 
of VirtualBox with older (pre EL 7) 

Re: two mysteries

2016-01-25 Thread David Sommerseth
On 25/01/16 19:32, Yasha Karant wrote:
> On 01/24/2016 06:06 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
>> On 01/23/2016 01:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>> Perhaps someone else has experienced what I related below and can comment
>>> -- SL 7x.
>>>
>>> 1.  ... For 802.3, I prefer to use a manual configuration, not 
>>> NetworkManager.
>>
>> For a dynamic connection even with a wired Ethernet you should use the
>> supported NetworkManager stack, your personal preferences aside.  NM works
>> and doesn't require munging for a simple DHCP wired connection.
>>
>>>
>>> 2.  ...Note that I must use MS Win to work with these devices as the
>>> application software for the device in question is *NOT* available for
>>> linux, the device is proprietary (no source code available), and
>>> CrossOver/Wine does not support USB -- forcing the use of a VM running a MS
>>> Win gues
>>
>> Neither VMware nor VirtualBox ship as part of SL.  KVM does, and USB
>> passthrough works very well with Windows 7 running in a KVM virtual machine
>> on my laptop.  It just works, and it's already part of SL; why not use it? 
>> Performance is very good in my experience, and I'm running a few pieces of
>> software in Win 7 for the same reasons as you.  You're also far more likely
>> to get useful help using KVM, either from the list or from other sources,
>> such as the Red Hat or Fedora documentation.
> 
> From the KVM site (http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools) that has a
> RedHat logo, there is a list of management interfaces, including VMM (Virtual
> Machine Manager -- https://virt-manager.org/screenshots/ ) that also appears
> to be a Red Hat entity.  Anyone using VMM?  VMM appears to allow a true host
> OS (supervisor, not hypervisor) with the VM ("hypervisor") running under the
> OS (as with VMWare workstation/player or VirtualBox), thus booting an OS, not
> a hypervisor that actually provisions for guest supervisors.  Is this correct?

This was a bit confusing for me (getting late, so probably stupid to reply now).

But  KVM is the core hypervior.  It is in fact just a kernel module which
you can load at any time on systems with CPUs supporting hardware
virtualization (VT-d or similar, most modern Intel, AMD and IBM Power 7/8
supports KVM).

libvirt is the management backend, which provides a generic API.  libvirt can
be used against other hypervisors as well, such as Xen, but probably more
often used with KVM.

qemu-kvm is the KVM virtual machine process.  Each qemu-kvm process is started
per VM.  You seldom start these processes manually, but they are kicked off by
libvirt.

virt-manager is a management GUI front-end.  And virsh is a console based
management tool.  Both connects to the libvirt API.

Further, you can also download an oVirt Live image and boot that on a
bare-metal or virtual machine.  oVirt can then connect to libvirt and provide
an even more feature rich management tool.

virt-manager and oVirt can also connect to several systems running libvirt
simultaneously, so you can manage more hypervisors from a single front-end.
And there are probably even more front-ends, like "Boxes" (not really tried it).


I dunno much about vmware stuff, so I will refrain to comment that.  But
VirtualBox is also two-fold.  My experience with VirtualBox is now quite old
(5-6 years ago).  You can start VirtualBox guests without a kernel support
module loaded, which would work on most hardware.  But performance was not too
good at all.  If you got the init.d script to build the kernel module, you
could get quite acceptable performance.  However, I see VirtualBox more like a
single package which gives you both hypervisor and management tool in a single
software package.

Even though VirtualBox is more a "single unit" and KVM/Qemu/libvirt consists
of more components ... you normally don't notice that when you start VMs via
the management tools.


I hope this gave a broader perspective.


--
kind regards,

David Sommerseth


Re: two mysteries

2016-01-25 Thread Michael Duvall
I have used both VMM and VirtualBox.  Yes, you are correct both KVM/QEMU
(VMM is the GUI) and Virtual Box run on a true host OS and both boot
other guest OSs.  For example, the host OS could be SL7 running a SL6
guest and some other guest such as Windows.  I have run as many as seven
guests concurrently on my laptop; performance was marginal.  The more
RAM the better.

Good Luck,
-- 
Michael Duvall
Systems Analyst, Real-Time
michael.duv...@ccur.com
(954) 973-5395 Office
(954) 531-4538 Mobile
2881 Gateway Drive | Pompano Beach, FL 33069 | www.ccur.com




-Original Message-
From: Yasha Karant 
To: scientific-linux-us...@fnal.gov 
Subject: Re: two mysteries
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 13:32:30 -0500

On 01/24/2016 06:06 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 01/23/2016 01:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> Perhaps someone else has experienced what I related below and can 
>> comment -- SL 7x.
>>
>> 1.  ... For 802.3, I prefer to use a manual configuration, not 
>> NetworkManager.
>
> For a dynamic connection even with a wired Ethernet you should use the 
> supported NetworkManager stack, your personal preferences aside.  NM 
> works and doesn't require munging for a simple DHCP wired connection.
>
>>
>> 2.  ...Note that I must use MS Win to work with these devices as the 
>> application software for the device in question is *NOT* available 
>> for linux, the device is proprietary (no source code available), and 
>> CrossOver/Wine does not support USB -- forcing the use of a VM 
>> running a MS Win gues
>
> Neither VMware nor VirtualBox ship as part of SL.  KVM does, and USB 
> passthrough works very well with Windows 7 running in a KVM virtual 
> machine on my laptop.  It just works, and it's already part of SL; why 
> not use it?  Performance is very good in my experience, and I'm 
> running a few pieces of software in Win 7 for the same reasons as 
> you.  You're also far more likely to get useful help using KVM, either 
> from the list or from other sources, such as the Red Hat or Fedora 
> documentation.

 From the KVM site (http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools) that 
has a RedHat logo, there is a list of management interfaces, including 
VMM (Virtual Machine Manager -- https://virt-manager.org/screenshots/ ) 
that also appears to be a Red Hat entity.  Anyone using VMM?  VMM 
appears to allow a true host OS (supervisor, not hypervisor) with the VM 
("hypervisor") running under the OS (as with VMWare workstation/player 
or VirtualBox), thus booting an OS, not a hypervisor that actually 
provisions for guest supervisors.  Is this correct?

Yasha Karant


Re: two mysteries

2016-01-25 Thread Yasha Karant

On 01/24/2016 06:06 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:

On 01/23/2016 01:30 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
Perhaps someone else has experienced what I related below and can 
comment -- SL 7x.


1.  ... For 802.3, I prefer to use a manual configuration, not 
NetworkManager.


For a dynamic connection even with a wired Ethernet you should use the 
supported NetworkManager stack, your personal preferences aside.  NM 
works and doesn't require munging for a simple DHCP wired connection.




2.  ...Note that I must use MS Win to work with these devices as the 
application software for the device in question is *NOT* available 
for linux, the device is proprietary (no source code available), and 
CrossOver/Wine does not support USB -- forcing the use of a VM 
running a MS Win gues


Neither VMware nor VirtualBox ship as part of SL.  KVM does, and USB 
passthrough works very well with Windows 7 running in a KVM virtual 
machine on my laptop.  It just works, and it's already part of SL; why 
not use it?  Performance is very good in my experience, and I'm 
running a few pieces of software in Win 7 for the same reasons as 
you.  You're also far more likely to get useful help using KVM, either 
from the list or from other sources, such as the Red Hat or Fedora 
documentation.


From the KVM site (http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Management_Tools) that 
has a RedHat logo, there is a list of management interfaces, including 
VMM (Virtual Machine Manager -- https://virt-manager.org/screenshots/ ) 
that also appears to be a Red Hat entity.  Anyone using VMM?  VMM 
appears to allow a true host OS (supervisor, not hypervisor) with the VM 
("hypervisor") running under the OS (as with VMWare workstation/player 
or VirtualBox), thus booting an OS, not a hypervisor that actually 
provisions for guest supervisors.  Is this correct?


Yasha Karant
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