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Intro<\/p>\n<\/h1>\nIntro<\/p>\n<\/h1>\n
It has been a while since I wanted to blog about nested virtualization, but the good news is I now have a vagrant build to share with you so you can vagrant it up:)<\/strong>. KVM started to interest me as soon as I learned that Oracle allowed for hard partitioning on KVM boxes if installed on top of Oracle Linux. I instantly thought of the benefit for customers that were struggling with Oracle licensing under Vmware farms. Anyway, today Oracle Cloud and engineered systems are relying hugely on KVM and the old OVM is slowly being replaced by OLVM manager which orchestrate vm administration on top of KVM hosts. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/font><\/p>\n C:Usersbrokedba> C:Usersbrokedba> Virsh<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n Is a command line interface that can be used to create, destroy, stop start and edit virtual machines and configure the virtual environment (such as virtual networks etc). >> see Cheatsheet<\/a> <\/p>\n Virt-install<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n Although this tool is a reference in terms of vm creation, it has never succeeded to create qemu vms on my vm. Which is why I won\u2019t talk about a it today.<\/p>\n KCLI<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n This is a wonderful CLI tool that\u2019s created by karmab<\/a> and interacts with libvirt API to manage KVM environments from configuring to managing the guest vms. It even interacts with other virtualization providers (KubeVirt, oVirt, OpenStack, VMware vSphere, GCP and AWS) and easily deploy and customize VMs from cloud images. See details in the official Github repository<\/a>. Virt-manager \/Ovirt\/OLVM<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n All these 3 are a set of GUI based management tools to manage VM Guests.<\/p>\n Virt-viewer<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n Is a Utility to display graphical console for a virtual machine<\/p>\n Virsh : <\/strong>Create and build a default storage pool (already done in my nested vagrant vm) and describe the host<\/p>\n # mkdir \/u01\/guest_images\n# virsh pool-define-as default dir - - - - \"\/u01\/guest_images<\/font>\"\n# virsh pool-build default\n<\/font><\/p> # virsh pool-list --all\n Name State Autostart\n------------ --------- -------------\n default<\/font> active<\/font> yes\n\n[root@localhost ~]# virsh pool-info default<\/font>\n Name: default<\/font>\n UUID: 2b273ed0-e666-4c52-a383-c47a03727fc1\n State: running\n Persistent: yes\n Autostart: yes\n Capacity: 49.97 GiB\n Allocation: 32.21 MiB\n Available: 49.94 GiB<\/font><\/font><\/p> [root@localhost ~]# virsh nodeinfo <\/font> ---> the host is actually my virtualbox vm \nCPU model: x86_64\nCPU(s): 2\nCPU frequency: 2592 MHz\nCPU socket(s): 1\nCore(s) per socket: 2\nThread(s) per core: 1\nNUMA cell(s): 1\nMemory size: 3761104 KiB\n\n---- vm \n# virsh list --all<\/font> (list all guest vms including shutdown vms)\n# virsh dominfo db2<\/font> (describe a \u201cdb2\u201d vm)\n# virsh edit db2<\/font> (edit \u201cdb2\u201d vm attributes) \n<\/font><\/font><\/p> --- Reboot Shutdown start VMs \n# virsh start my-vm<\/font> \n# virsh reboot my-vm<\/font> \n# virsh shutdown my-vm<\/font> <\/font> I will be using KCLI in my example where I will<\/p>\n Create a default storage pool and configure it (already done in my vagrant vm)<\/p>\n Since kcli<\/strong> uses docker we will need to update the kcli alias according to the pool path <\/p>\n Create a default network (already done in my vagrant vm)<\/p>\n # kcli create network -c 192.168.122.0\/24<\/font> default\n# kcli list network\n+---------+--------+------------------+------+---------+------+\n| Network | Type | Cidr | Dhcp | Domain | Mode |\n+---------+--------+------------------+------+---------+------+\n| default | routed | 192.168.122.0\/24<\/font> | True | default | nat |\n+---------+--------+------------------+------+---------+------+ KCLI<\/strong> makes it very easy to download an image from the cloud repository as shown in below example<\/p>\n Download ubuntu 1803 from ubuntu cloud image repository<\/p>\n # kcli download image ubuntu1804 -p default<\/font>\nUsing url <\/font>https:\/\/cloud-images.ubuntu.com\/bionic\/current\/bionic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img<\/font><\/a>...<\/font>\n\n# kcli list image\n+----------------------------------------------------+\n| Images |\n+----------------------------------------------------+\n| \/u01\/guest_images\/bionic-server-cloudimg-amd64.img<\/font> |\n+----------------------------------------------------+<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n<\/li>\n # curl \u2013sL image-URL \u2013o \/Pool\/Path\/image.img<\/font>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Once the image is in the storage pool you only have to run the kcli create<\/font><\/em><\/strong> command as below ( see syntax<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n # kcli create vm ubuntuvm<\/font> -i ubuntu1804 -P network=default -P virttype=qemu \u2013P memory=512 -P numcpus=1\n<\/font>\nDeploying vm ubuntu_vm from profile ubuntu1804...\n<\/font>ubuntu_vm created on local<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p> # kcli list vm\n+----------+-------+--------------------------------------+-----+------------+\n| Name | Status| Ips | Source |Plan | Profile |\n+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------------+-----+------------+\n| ubuntuvm | up<\/font> | 192.168.122.5| bionic-server*md64.img|kvirt| ubuntu1804 |\n+----------+-------+--------------+-----------------------+-----+------------+\n\nSyntax: \nusage : kcli create<\/font> vm [-h] [-p PROFILE] [--console] [-c COUNT] [-i IMAGE]\n [--profilefile PROFILEFILE] [-P PARAM]\n [--paramfile PARAMFILE] [-s] [-w]\n [VMNAME]<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n # kcli ssh<\/font> ubuntuvm\nWelcome to Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS (GNU\/Linux 4.15.0-163-generic x86_64)\nubuntu@ubuntuvm:~$<\/font><\/a> uname -a<\/font>\nLinux ubuntuvm 4.15.0-163-generic #171-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 11:55:11 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU\/Linux<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>\n<\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n # kcli create vm ubuntuvm<\/font> -i ubuntu1804 -P network=default -P virttype=qemu \n-P cmds=['echo root:unix1234 | chpasswd']\n<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p> #<\/font> virsh <\/font>console ubuntuvm\nConnected to domain ubuntuvm\nubuntuvm login: root\nPassword:<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p> Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS (GNU\/Linux 4.15.0-163-generic x86_64)\nroot@ubuntuvm:~#\n<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/a><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\nNested virtualization<\/h1>\n
KVM inside VirtualBox <\/h2>\n
\nSo how to make a Hypervisor (KVM) aware of the Host hardware when it’s itself installed under another Hypervisor layer (virtualbox)? well this is today possible thanks to nested virtualization feature available in the latest version of Virtualbox and it is very simple to enable even after your vm has been provisioned. More on how to enable it in my previous blog<\/a>.
\nPlease note<\/strong> that it\u2019s actually qemu-kvm<\/strong> that\u2019s available using nested virtualization here , which is a type 2 hypervisor (virtual hardware emulation<\/strong>). <\/span><\/p>\nHow to get started <\/h2>\n
\nCan\u2019t afford a dedicated host for KVM? I got you covered,<\/strong> you can start exploring KVM right now on your laptop with my vagrant build<\/strong>. Sharing is good, but live labs are even better.
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\nGitHub repo<\/strong> : https:\/\/github.com\/brokedba\/KVM-on-virtualbox <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n
git clone https:\/\/github.com\/brokedba\/KVM-on-virtualbox.git\n<\/font>C:Usersbrokedba> cd KVM-on-virtualbox<\/font><\/font>\n<\/font><\/a><\/code><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\nvagrant up\n<\/font><\/a><\/code><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\n<\/ul>\n\nKVM Tools<\/h1>\n
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\nI will do some examples using KCLI in this post since It is already shipped with my nested vagrant build<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<\/h4>\n
Examples<\/h1>\n
\n<\/font><\/code><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p><\/pre>\nCREATE A VM INSIDE A NESTED VIRTUAL MACHINE<\/h2>\n
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# kcli create pool -p \/u01\/guest_images<\/font> default\n# kcli list pool\n+--------------+-------------------------+\n| Pool | Path |\n+--------------+-------------------------+\n| default | \/u01\/guest_images |\n+--------------+-------------------------+<\/font><\/pre>\n
# alias kcli='docker run --net host -it --rm --security-opt label=disable -v \/root\/.kcli:\/root\/.kcli -v \/root\/.ssh:\/root\/.ssh -v \/u01\/guest_images:\/u01\/guest_images<\/font> -v \/var\/run\/libvirt:\/var\/run\/libvirt -v $PWD:\/workdir quay.io\/karmab\/kcli'
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Create a vm
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Download an Image<\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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