Saturday, August 01, 2009

F11: service libvirtd restart

Fedora Core 4 introduced the ability to run Xen virtualization, but it required a kernel recompile. When 5 came out, it was a question of significant config, but no recompile. Fedora Core 6 allowed for single click Xen virtualization during install. It was easy, stable, and effectively the same model deployed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

From a Xen standpoint Fedora 7 and 8 were incremental releases, with 9 being a breakthrough release. I say that, because Xen was pulled as a feature of 9-- if you wanted virtualization, you were back to compile and manual module load. The reason was a decision by Red Hat to move away from Xen (as Xensource had been purchased by Citrix) and to adapt Qemu-KVM.

With Fedora 10, Qemu-KVM was the native virtualization engine, but there was a major problem. The virtualization layer was running as service. This meant that if the service was restarted, all the VM's reboot. Mucho bado.

The good news is that in F11, it looks like the kernel virtualization modules (KVM) have been integrated with the kernel such that a restart of the service only effects the Qemu management layer. So, go ahead:
service libvirtd restart

No comments:

Post a Comment