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Ubuntu Open Week - KVM and Virt-Manager - DustinKirkland - Thu, Nov 5, 2009

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(01:00:53 PM) kirkland: alright, so I'm talking about Virtualization in Ubuntu
(01:01:02 PM) kirkland: specifically, using something called KVM
(01:01:15 PM) kirkland: i'm going to throw a bunch of examples at you, that I hope you'll try at home
(01:01:25 PM) kirkland: you'll need a couple of things to get started
(01:01:36 PM) kirkland: first, your CPU must support something called Virtualization Technology
(01:01:45 PM) kirkland: you can easily check by running:
(01:02:07 PM) kirkland: egrep "flags.*:.*(svm|vmx)" /proc/cpuinfo && echo "Yay" || echo "Boo"
(01:02:22 PM) kirkland: if that comes back and says "Yay", you're good go
(01:02:38 PM) kirkland: otherwise, please listen along, save the logs, and try again when you find a computer that has VT
(01:02:53 PM) kirkland: or, better yet, next time you buy one, make sure it has VT before checking out ;-)
(01:03:23 PM) kirkland: next, you'll also need to have an Ubuntu ISO somewhere on your system
(01:03:33 PM) kirkland: as we're going to run an Ubuntu virtual machine, inside of Ubuntu
(01:03:48 PM) kirkland: you can download one from the nearest mirror at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
(01:03:56 PM) kirkland: or, hopefully you already have one lying around
(01:04:13 PM) mneptok left the room.
(01:04:14 PM) kirkland: you can do this on either an amd64 kernel, or an i386 kernel
(01:04:21 PM) kirkland: for Virtualization, I really prefer 64bit
(01:04:31 PM) kirkland: because a 64bit system can host either 32bit or 64bit VMs
(01:04:40 PM) kirkland: a 32bit system can only host 32bit VMs
(01:04:51 PM) kirkland: so if you have a 32bit system, make sure you download a 32bit iso
(01:05:01 PM) kirkland: if you have a 64bit system, you can download either
(01:05:28 PM) kirkland: also, you might want to start downloading http://people.canonical.com/~kirkland/hardy.img.bz2
(01:05:33 PM) kirkland: that's a 64bit image
(01:05:43 PM) kirkland: sorry, i forgot that some people still use 32bit when i created that
(01:06:00 PM) kirkland: my bad ... so it's only worth downloading that if you're running 64 bit, I'm afraid.  my bad....
(01:06:08 PM) kirkland: in any case, you're going to create your own VMs
(01:06:25 PM) kirkland: now, I'm also assuming you're running Ubuntu 9.10
(01:06:36 PM) kirkland: if you haven't already done so, install the utilities that we're going to use
(01:06:41 PM) kirkland: sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm virt-manager
(01:06:49 PM) kirkland: it'll pull a few dependencies if you don't already have them
(01:07:05 PM) kirkland: i'd like to spend about 15 minutes looking at using KVM from the command line first
(01:07:12 PM) kirkland: and then 15 minutes using the virt-manager GUI
(01:07:20 PM) kirkland: and spend the rest of the time taking questions
(01:07:23 PM) kirkland: cool....
(01:07:35 PM) kirkland: so qemu-kvm is the utility we're going to use from the command line
(01:07:47 PM) kirkland: qemu stands for "quick emulator"
(01:07:54 PM) kirkland: and kvm stands for "kernel virtual machine"
(01:08:13 PM) kirkland: the Linux kernel provides KVM as a virtualization layer ... a "hypervisor" built right into the kernel
(01:08:29 PM) kirkland: other virtualization options available in Ubuntu are not built into the kernel
(01:08:34 PM) kirkland: well, Xen kind of is ...
(01:08:42 PM) kirkland: but Xen is a giant patch to the kernel
(01:08:46 PM) kirkland: that's not entirely upstream yet
(01:08:54 PM) kirkland: so it's not something that we can support very well
(01:09:05 PM) kirkland: same goes for things like Virtual Box, etc.
(01:09:17 PM) kirkland: these are good virt options too, but not what we're talking about today
(01:09:23 PM) kirkland: or really what I work on, on a daily basis
(01:09:45 PM) kirkland: okay, so first, i'm going to create a backing disk image
(01:09:56 PM) kirkland: virtual machines have hard disks that fit entirely into a single file!
(01:10:03 PM) kirkland: this is really cool because you can move this file around
(01:10:07 PM) kirkland: to a different machine on the network
(01:10:12 PM) kirkland: onto a usb key, or whatever
(01:10:32 PM) kirkland: we're going to create a "sparse" file, which means that it small to start with
(01:10:39 PM) kirkland: but will grow as your virtual machine grows
(01:10:45 PM) kirkland: cd /tmp
(01:10:54 PM) kirkland: or somewhere that you want to put your virtual machine
(01:10:57 PM) kirkland: df -h .
(01:11:03 PM) kirkland: make sure you have sufficient disk space
(01:11:11 PM) kirkland: we're going to create a 6G disk image
(01:11:18 PM) kirkland: which is plenty big enough for the Ubuntu Desktop
(01:11:36 PM) kirkland: kvm-img create -f qcow2 foo.img 6G
(01:11:37 PM) kirkland: Formatting 'foo.img', fmt=qcow2 size=6442450944 encryption=off cluster_size=0
(01:11:41 PM) kirkland: that should happen very fast
(01:11:51 PM) kirkland: as it didn't actually write 6G of data to your disk
(01:12:01 PM) kirkland: now, assuming you have an ISO available, you can boot a virtual machine
(01:12:16 PM) kirkland: i'm going to give my VM 512MB of memory
(01:12:25 PM) kirkland: which is fine, because my host has 4G of memory
(01:12:31 PM) kirkland: but bear this in mind when you do this
(01:12:41 PM) kirkland: i'm going to point the first hard disk at foo.img
(01:12:50 PM) kirkland: and the cdrom at the iso file i'm going to use to install this
(01:13:05 PM) kirkland: /usr/bin/kvm -m 512 -hda foo.img -cdrom ../iso/karmic-desktop-amd64.iso
(01:13:19 PM) kirkland: if you get an error about not being able to enable KVM
(01:13:23 PM) kirkland: acceleration
(01:13:31 PM) kirkland: you might need to debug one or two things
(01:13:39 PM) kirkland: first, you might have to enable KVM in your BIOS
(01:13:48 PM) kirkland: unfortunately, a lot of new computers support KVM
(01:13:54 PM) kirkland: but don't enable it by default in BIOS
(01:13:56 PM) kirkland: stupid
(01:14:06 PM) kirkland: also, you might need to check the permissions on /dev/kvm
(01:14:12 PM) kirkland: make sure that you have write access to it
(01:14:19 PM) kirkland: you might need to add your user to the kvm group
(01:14:20 PM) kirkland: with
(01:14:29 PM) kirkland: sudo usermod -a -G kvm $USER
(01:14:37 PM) kirkland: you'll need to log out, and back in
(01:14:45 PM) kirkland: or, you can just use sudo on the kvm command itself
(01:14:50 PM) kirkland: i don't recommend that in general
(01:14:55 PM) kirkland: but for this demo, it's okay
(01:15:05 PM) kirkland: so in the mean time, my VM has now booted!
(01:15:21 PM) kirkland: i'm looking at the Karmic livecd desktop in my virtual machine
(01:15:44 PM) kirkland: has anyone else booted their iso at this point?  answer -> #ubuntu-classroom-chat
(01:16:23 PM) kirkland: now, from here, I've answered the 6 pages of questions
(01:16:31 PM) kirkland: and i'm installing Ubuntu desktop into a virtual machine!
(01:17:33 PM) kirkland: we'll pause for questions now, while our VMs install
(01:18:03 PM) akgraner: <Mindfulgeek> QUESTION: When you say 64bit system... does it have to be running a 64bit OS as well to run either 32 or 64 bit VM?
(01:18:16 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: yes
(01:18:24 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: i'm talking about the OS
(01:18:33 PM) kirkland: you can tell what you're running with:
(01:18:36 PM) kirkland: uname -a
(01:19:10 PM) kirkland: if that says x86_64, then your OS is 64bit
(01:19:18 PM) kirkland: if it says i686, your OS is 32bit
(01:19:22 PM) kirkland: akgraner: anything else?
(01:19:27 PM) akgraner: <cemc> QUESTION: I know it's not secure, but: can I remote connect to --vnc booted guest? by default it listens on localhost:590x
(01:19:57 PM) kirkland: cemc: that question is a little bit complicated....  it depends on the network configure your host has offered to the guest
(01:20:10 PM) kirkland: using the commands i did above, the networking setup is very basic
(01:20:19 PM) kirkland: the guest will be able to get out to the internet
(01:20:34 PM) kirkland: but no one else (not even your host) will be able to initiate network connections to the guest
(01:20:46 PM) kirkland: to do what you're asking, cemc, you need "bridged" networking
(01:20:58 PM) kirkland: which is a little bit invovled to configure on the command line
(01:21:05 PM) kirkland: but really easy using virt-manager
(01:21:10 PM) kirkland: which we're getting to :-)
(01:21:32 PM) kirkland: now, if you've managed to download that hardy.img.gz that I pointed you to earlier
(01:21:40 PM) kirkland: i hope you've unzipped it
(01:21:47 PM) kirkland: as this is a virtual machine ready to go!
(01:21:51 PM) kirkland: running the hardy server
(01:22:02 PM) kirkland: my laptop is a dual core
(01:22:11 PM) kirkland: so I should very easily be able to run 2 vm's at once
(01:22:17 PM) kirkland: actually, i can run more than that
(01:22:25 PM) kirkland: but 2 should be very doable
(01:22:34 PM) kirkland: so I'm also going to launch that hardy server vm
(01:22:35 PM) kirkland: with:
(01:23:00 PM) kirkland: /usr/bin/kvm -hda hardy.img
(01:23:27 PM) kirkland: this should boot up very quickly
(01:23:35 PM) kirkland: and now, i have a second VM up and running
(01:23:49 PM) kirkland: I do essentially all of my Ubuntu testing and development in "throw away" vm's like this
(01:23:56 PM) kirkland: I use this like scratch pads :-)
(01:24:00 PM) kirkland: to doodle ideas in code
(01:24:02 PM) kirkland: test them out
(01:24:14 PM) kirkland: all without polluting my oh-so-clean primary desktop environment :-)
(01:24:34 PM) kirkland: it really helps keep my fringe testing away from my pristine desktop
(01:24:43 PM) kirkland: and this is something *you* can help us with
(01:24:55 PM) kirkland: there's a lot of people complaining about the quality of Karmic right now
(01:25:08 PM) kirkland: and I hope you know that we're focusing on quality of Lucid, as an LTS
(01:25:27 PM) kirkland: but we can really use a lot of help from YOU testing this stuff earlier in the development cycle
(01:25:34 PM) kirkland: and this is something that you can do in Virtual Machines
(01:25:44 PM) kirkland: without b0rking your lovely desktop :-)
(01:26:00 PM) kirkland: so there are a lot more fancy things that you can do with kvm from the command line
(01:26:10 PM) kirkland: if you look at the manpage
(01:26:12 PM) kirkland: man kvm
(01:26:17 PM) kirkland: you should see dozens of other options
(01:26:22 PM) kirkland: lots of them are very useful
(01:26:35 PM) kirkland: i use an "alias" in my .bashrc that adds a bunch of them for me
(01:26:51 PM) kirkland: /usr/bin/kvm -m 512 -smp 2 -usb -usbdevice tablet -net nic,model=virtio -net tap,script=$HOME/bin/bridge.sh -soundhw es1370 $ARGS
(01:26:57 PM) kirkland: something like that, I find useful
(01:27:04 PM) kirkland: i like to give my guests 512M of memory
(01:27:08 PM) kirkland: and 2 cpus
(01:27:26 PM) kirkland: i use usbdevice tablet which makes the mouse/cursor behave a little better when moving in and out of vm's
(01:27:45 PM) kirkland: i also use "virtio" for networking and disk, which makes both of those about 10x faster
(01:28:00 PM) kirkland: and i have a bridging script that puts my VMs on the same network as my PC
(01:28:07 PM) kirkland: and i enable sound in my guests too
(01:28:10 PM) kirkland: OKAY
(01:28:15 PM) kirkland: so all of that is the command line KVM
(01:28:29 PM) kirkland: before I switch over to GUI virt-manager ... let's take a few more questions....
(01:28:35 PM) kirkland: akgraner: anything queued up?
(01:28:44 PM) akgraner: yep
(01:28:52 PM) akgraner: <Jeruvy> Question: is there specific BIOS's better suited to VT/KVM?
(01:29:28 PM) kirkland: Jeruvy: hmm, not really...  i have both AMD and Intel CPUs, both of which support KVM very well
(01:29:46 PM) kirkland: Jeruvy: i like AMD slightly better right now, because those CPUs support "nested" virtualization
(01:29:56 PM) kirkland: Jeruvy: which means that I can run VMs that run VMs :-)
(01:30:04 PM) kirkland: Jeruvy: but BIOS doesn't really matter
(01:30:05 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:30:13 PM) akgraner: <Mindfulgeek> QUESTION: With the commands you gave, will the guest OS be able to access the usb ports, etc?
(01:30:45 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: not with the commands I gave, however, there is a -usb option
(01:30:57 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: take a look at the kvm manpage
(01:31:02 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: look for the -usb option
(01:31:18 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: basically, you'll pass -usb Address:To:Usb:Device
(01:31:35 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: according to the addressing shown by lsusb
(01:31:53 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: note that the user launching the kvm line will need read/write access to that usb device
(01:32:06 PM) kirkland: Mindfulgeek: if you're looking for help online, search for "kvm usb passthrough"
(01:32:09 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:32:13 PM) akgraner: <erUSUL> QUESTION: but testing on a VM limits a lot the coverage basically all kvm are equal (same hardware)...
(01:32:55 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: perhaps...  KVM isn't suitable for really testing Ubuntu on different hardware
(01:33:08 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: however, it's really valuable for testing non-hardware features
(01:33:13 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: splash screens
(01:33:15 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: artwork
(01:33:19 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: user interface stuff
(01:33:36 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: any python/perl/ruby whatever code that doesn't care about what kernel or hardware you're running
(01:33:42 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: server stuff, like web applications
(01:33:47 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: etc. etc. etc.
(01:33:58 PM) kirkland: erUSUL: there's plenty of usefulness to testing in KVM
(01:34:11 PM) kirkland: akgraner: okay, let's get back to virt-manager, and i'll take some more questions shortly
(01:34:23 PM) kirkland: okay, so command line is fine and dandy, but it's not for everyone
(01:34:34 PM) kirkland: assuming you've installed virt-manager, launch virt-manager with:
(01:34:54 PM) kirkland: Applications -> System Tools -> Virtual Machine Manager
(01:35:23 PM) kirkland: double click on localhost (System)
(01:35:37 PM) kirkland: this will attach virt-manager to the libvirt daemon running on your local system
(01:35:42 PM) kirkland: however, this is what's cool ....
(01:35:56 PM) kirkland: let's say you're working on your little Dell netbook computer, which doesn't have VT
(01:36:10 PM) kirkland: but you have a big beasty quad-core under your desk that *does* have VT
(01:36:23 PM) kirkland: you can use virt-manager to remotely manage VMs over on big beasty
(01:36:43 PM) kirkland: to do that, you'd use File -> Add Connection
(01:36:55 PM) kirkland: and establish an SSH tunnel over to that other machine
(01:37:02 PM) kirkland: however, for now, let's work locally
(01:37:21 PM) kirkland: so once my connection to localhost (System) is Active, i can create a new virtual machine
(01:37:38 PM) kirkland: right click on localhost (System) and select New
(01:37:47 PM) kirkland: this should pop open a *really* straight forward wizard
(01:37:56 PM) kirkland: perhaps more what you're looking for than command line, i don't know
(01:38:04 PM) kirkland: give your vm a name
(01:38:05 PM) kirkland: "foo"
(01:38:17 PM) kirkland: and choose "local install media", ISO image or CDROM
(01:38:22 PM) kirkland: since we already have an ISO
(01:38:36 PM) kirkland: note that you could also pop in a CDROM into your computer's drive
(01:38:48 PM) kirkland: also, note that in my examples, we're running Ubuntu on Ubuntu
(01:39:01 PM) kirkland: you could also run Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Debian, SuSE, or even Windows
(01:39:21 PM) kirkland: click "Forward"
(01:39:30 PM) kirkland: and browse to your ISO image that you downloaded earlier
(01:39:54 PM) kirkland: you can select your OS Type and Version
(01:40:05 PM) kirkland: these aren't mandatory, but they do enable some advanced features if you do
(01:40:10 PM) kirkland: click forward
(01:40:17 PM) kirkland: choose some amount of RAM and CPU to give to your VM
(01:40:23 PM) kirkland: i'm giving 512M and 1 CPU
(01:40:27 PM) kirkland: since my other cpu is busy
(01:40:41 PM) kirkland: and now, create your disk image for the VM
(01:40:45 PM) kirkland: it defaults to 8G
(01:40:49 PM) kirkland: we did 6 earlier
(01:40:52 PM) kirkland: either should work
(01:40:57 PM) kirkland: depends really on what you're installing
(01:41:10 PM) kirkland: you can also either allocate your entire disk now, or just allocate it on the fly
(01:41:15 PM) kirkland: i usually just allocate it on the fly
(01:41:23 PM) kirkland: that allows me to store more VMs on my system
(01:41:36 PM) kirkland: however, i have to be mindful of how much disk space I have on my physical machine
(01:41:41 PM) kirkland: it's not good to over commit ;-)
(01:41:55 PM) kirkland: i click forward and i should get an opportunity to review my VM
(01:42:01 PM) kirkland: and I click Finish to launch it
(01:42:13 PM) kirkland: i see the boot loader screen
(01:42:20 PM) kirkland: and choose to Try Ubuntu
(01:42:33 PM) kirkland: about a minute later, I should be back in the Ubuntu desktop
(01:42:47 PM) kirkland: now, there's a few advantages of doing this using virt-manager instead of by the command line
(01:42:57 PM) kirkland: for one thing, it's much more useful if i want to use this vm again and again
(01:43:09 PM) kirkland: as it will be in my list in virt-manager until such time as I delete it
(01:43:15 PM) kirkland: it's also just a point and click away from launching
(01:43:21 PM) kirkland: rather than typing in the whole command line
(01:43:35 PM) kirkland: in the virtual machine window, you can also see the details of the vm
(01:43:38 PM) kirkland: click the Details tab
(01:44:20 PM) kirkland: you should see each of the items associated with this vm
(01:44:28 PM) kirkland: some of these can be changed dynamically
(01:44:39 PM) kirkland: others need to be added/removed when the VM is not running
(01:44:45 PM) kirkland: you can play around with this
(01:44:57 PM) kirkland: so there's a *lot* more that I could show
(01:45:09 PM) kirkland: but I feel like I should save the rest of the time for questions, since there seems to be a bunch
(01:45:20 PM) kirkland: I hope I've encouraged you to go play with virtualization in Ubuntu
(01:45:23 PM) kirkland: KVM is really cool
(01:45:32 PM) kirkland: and Virt-Manager uses KVM under the covers
(01:45:38 PM) kirkland: akgraner: fire away :-)
(01:45:44 PM) akgraner: <Jesi-Idle> Question: if you are running an OS that requires 256MB of RAM and run another in KVM that requires 256MB, will you need a total of 512MB, or does i
(01:46:31 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: yeah, pretty much right now
(01:46:46 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: there is some work upstream on something (badly) named KSM
(01:46:50 PM) kirkland: ksm = kernel shared memory
(01:47:08 PM) kirkland: which allows similar guests to use the same memory, where that memory is identical
(01:47:17 PM) kirkland: think about a VM farm launching 10 identical VMs
(01:47:28 PM) kirkland: a lot of the static kernel stuff will be similar among them
(01:47:36 PM) kirkland: so they could share certain portions
(01:47:47 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: but in general, it's a good idea not to over commit
(01:47:49 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:47:53 PM) akgraner: <cemc> QUESTION: do kvm guests have time issues like in vmware for example (clocks too fast, too slow etc) ?
(01:48:20 PM) kirkland: cemc: occasionally; though I think KVM is better about this than most hypervisors
(01:48:30 PM) kirkland: cemc: i actually use CPU frequency scaling on my hosts
(01:48:46 PM) kirkland: cemc: which definitely screws up other hypervisors, having a CPU who's frequency is jumping around
(01:48:51 PM) kirkland: cemc: it seems to work well for me
(01:49:06 PM) kirkland: cemc: there is one particular type of AMD processor with VT and freq scaling that is broken
(01:49:18 PM) kirkland: cemc: and I happen to have 4 of them, but there are work arounds
(01:49:41 PM) kirkland: cemc: i can either: a) pin the cpu at a certian speed, or b) boot the guest with noapic on the kernel line
(01:49:43 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:49:54 PM) akgraner: <Jesi-Idle> Question: if you are running an OS that requires 256MB of RAM and run another in KVM that requires 256MB, will you need a total of 512MB, or does it not work this way? in other words, how do requirements stack?
(01:50:02 PM) akgraner: sorry
(01:50:02 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next
(01:50:10 PM) akgraner: <brettalton> kirkland: I have an older P4 640 which as some sort of 64-bit extension, but I've never tried installing a 64-bit OS with it. The same goes with KVM; how do I know if it's supported?? What can I do to test?
(01:50:26 PM) kirkland: brettalton: cat /proc/cpuinfo
(01:50:36 PM) kirkland: brettalton: that will tell you everything about it
(01:50:48 PM) kirkland: brettalton: if it's older than 2 years, it almost certainly does not have VT
(01:51:08 PM) kirkland: brettalton: look in the flags for "vmx" or "svm".  if you have either of those, you have VT.  if not, you don't.
(01:51:23 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:51:27 PM) akgraner: <amichair> QUESTION: can u boot a vm from a physical disk? e.g. in a dual
(01:51:45 PM) kirkland: amichair: you can
(01:51:55 PM) kirkland: amichair: and performance can actually be really high
(01:52:08 PM) kirkland: amichair: you can even give vm's their own partition or LVM volume
(01:52:19 PM) kirkland: amichair: i don't like to do this, though, as there's not enough flexibility for me
(01:52:32 PM) kirkland: i have 27 vm's on my laptop right nwo
(01:52:37 PM) kirkland: in .img file format
(01:52:43 PM) kirkland: but I don't have 27 disk, or 27 partitions ;-)
(01:52:48 PM) kirkland: it's a matter of choice though
(01:52:50 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:52:57 PM) akgraner: <Jesi-Idle> Question: so it dosent matter what your chipset architecture is if your testing Ubuntu in KVM because it doesnt apply to how KVM works?  just want to make sure I understand here
(01:53:21 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: hmm, well, it does sort of matter
(01:53:37 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: KVM (accelerated virtualization) only really works on i686 and amd64
(01:53:55 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: it sort of works on PPC and s390, but we don't really support those in Ubuntu
(01:54:00 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: there's also QEMU
(01:54:05 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: which is pure *emulation*
(01:54:10 PM) kirkland: Jesi-Idle: but that's ungodly slow
(01:54:18 PM) kirkland: akgraner: next?
(01:54:35 PM) akgraner: <brettalton> kirkland: so what's the consensus with all the different hypervisors out there? for open source ones that can run on Ubuntu, use KVM if your processor has it, use virt-manager if you want a GUI, use Xen if that's your personal preference and use VirtualBox if your CPU doesn't support KVM??
(01:55:03 PM) mode (+v stgraber ) by jcastro
(01:55:07 PM) kirkland: brettalton: it's going to be hard for me to answer that one objectively
(01:55:16 PM) kirkland: brettalton: so I'm not going to try to be objective ....
(01:55:26 PM) kirkland: brettalton: Use KVM if you can (ie, if your CPU supports it)
(01:55:36 PM) kirkland: you'll get by far the best performance out there
(01:55:45 PM) kirkland: and full support from Ubuntu, Canonical, and upstream
(01:55:54 PM) kirkland: this is really where the momentum is with developers right now
(01:56:06 PM) kirkland: Xen is a reasonable option if your hardware doesn't support KVM
(01:56:26 PM) kirkland: but Xen is not officially supported by Canonical;  it is in Universe, and there are some good people looking after it
(01:56:39 PM) kirkland: but every day that goes by, more new hardware ships with VT
(01:56:46 PM) kirkland: and Xen slowly eeks its way out
(01:56:53 PM) kirkland: I don't have much experience with VirtualBox
(01:56:59 PM) mode (+v highvoltage ) by ChanServ
(01:57:00 PM) kirkland: though I understand it's quite popular
(01:57:05 PM) kirkland: it's slow compared to KVM
(01:57:13 PM) kirkland: and it, like Xen, is a universe-only project
(01:57:26 PM) kirkland: if it meets your needs, that's great; i'm glad you're happy with it
(01:57:33 PM) kirkland: as for virt-manager, it's a useful GUI
(01:57:38 PM) kirkland: not perfect, by any stretch
(01:57:55 PM) kirkland: but if you want to use virt, and need a GUI, it's a decent option
(01:58:01 PM) kirkland: me, i'm a command-line only sort of guy
(01:58:05 PM) kirkland: akgraner: one more ...
(01:58:09 PM) akgraner: <cemc> QUESTION: how much is the performance penalty on using an img vs. a physical partition?
(01:58:36 PM) kirkland: cemc: i'm not sure exactly
(01:58:57 PM) kirkland: cemc: but I always use disk images and virtio, and that's really quick
(01:59:16 PM) kirkland: cemc: i can't really say;  if you benchmark it, let me know
(01:59:22 PM) kirkland: all, thanks for your attention
(01:59:24 PM) kirkland: and good questions
(01:59:32 PM) kirkland: I hope you enjoyed this presentation
(01:59:53 PM) jcastro: thanks kirkland!
(02:00:00 PM) kirkland: with that, I'm handing it back to akgraner ....
(02:00:13 PM) akgraner: Thanks kirkland  Awesome session!!