Running Xen: A Hands-on Guide to the Art of Virtualization

This accessible and immediately useful book expertly provides the Xen community with everything it needs to know to download, build, deploy and manage Xen implementations.

Ian Pratt, Xen Project Leader VP Advanced Technology, Citrix Systems

 

The RealWorld, 100% Practical Guide to Xen Virtualization in Production Environments

 

Using free, open source Xen virtualization software, you can save money, gain new flexibility, improve utilization, and simplify everything from disaster recovery to software testing. Running Xen brings together all the knowledge you need to create and manage highperformance Xen virtual machines in any environment. Drawing on the unparalleled experience of a worldclass Xen team, it covers everything from installation to administrationsharing field-tested insights, best practices, and case studies you can find nowhere else.

The authors begin with a primer on virtualization: its concepts, uses, and advantages. Next, they tour Xens capabilities, explore the Xen LiveCD, introduce the Xen hypervisor, and walk you through configuring your own harddiskbased Xen installation. After youre running, they guide you through each leading method for creating guests and migrating existing systems to run as Xen guests. Then they offer comprehensive coverage of managing and securing Xen guests, devices, networks, and distributed resources. Whether youre an administrator, data center manager, developer, system integrator, or ISP, Running Xen will help you achieve your goals with Xenreliably, efficiently, with outstanding performance, and at a surprisingly low cost.

 

Understanding the Xen hypervisor: what it does, and how it works

Using pre-built system images, including compressed file systems

Managing domains with the xm console

Populating and storing guest images

Planning, designing, and configuring networks in Xen

Utilizing Xen security: special purpose VMs, virtual network segments, remote access, firewalls, network monitors, sHype access control, Xen Security Modules (XSM), and more

Managing guest resources: memory, CPU, and I/O

Employing Xen in the enterprise: tools, products, and techniques

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Jeanna Matthews is an associate professor of Computer Science at Clarkson University (Potsdam, New York) where she leads several hands-on computing laboratories including the Clarkson Open Source Institute and Clarkson Internet Teaching Laboratory. Students in these labs and in her classes have been winners in a number of prestigious computing contests including the 2001, 2002, and 2004 IBM Linux Challenge, the 2005 IBM North American Grid Scholar's Challenge, the 2005 Unisys Tuxmaster competition and the 2006 VMware Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge. Her research interests include virtualization, operating systems, computer networks, and computer security. She is actively involved in the Association for Computing Machinery as treasurer of the Special Interest Group on Operating Systems, editor of Operating Systems Review, and is a member of the Executive Committee ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee, US-ACM. She is also the author of a computer networking textbook, "Computer Networking: Internet Protocols in Action," that has been translated into several languages. Jeanna received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. Eli M. Dow is a software engineer in IBM's Test and Integration Center for Linux in Poughkeepsie, NY. He holds a B.S. degree in computer science and psychology as well as a M.S. in computer science from Clarkson University. He is passionate about open source software and is an alumnus and founding member of the Clarkson Open Source Institute. His interests include Virtualization, Linux systems programming, the GNOME desktop, and human-computer interaction. He is the author of numerous IBM developerworks articles focused on Linux and open source software. Additionally he has coauthored two books on the mainframe hypervisor z/VM, entitled "Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/VM Basics" and "Linux for IBM System z9 and IBM zSeries." His first published experience with Xen was coauthoring an early academic paper entitled "Xen and the Art of Repeated Research". Recently he has focused on developing highly available, enterprise customer solutions deployed on virtualized Linux using the z/VM hypervisor. Todd Deshane expects to attain a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from Clarkson University in 2008. He also has a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering from Clarkson. While at Clarkson University, he has had a variety of research publications[md]many involving Xen. In 2005, a project that was based on Todd's Masters thesis[md]an open source collaborative, large database explorer[md]won first place in the UNISYS TuxMasters Invitational. Todd's primary academic and research interests are in the area of operating system technologies, such as virtual machine monitors, high availability, and file systems. His doctoral dissertation focuses on using these technologies to provide desktop users with an attack-resistant experience, with automatic and autonomic recovery from viruses, worms, and adverse system modifications. During his PhD years, Todd has been a Teaching Assistant and an IBM PhD Fellowship recipient. At IBM, Todd has worked on internship projects involving Xen and IBM technologies. Todd enjoys teaching, tutoring, and helping people. Wenjin Hu graduated from Clarkson University in 2007 with the master degree of Computer Science and is currently working on his PhD. His masters thesis was "A Study of the Performance Isolation Properties of Virtualization Systems." His research field is applying virtualization techniques to operating system and security. Jeremy Bongio is currently a Master's student at Clarkson University. He won second place in the Unisys Tuxmaster Competition in 2005 with a project called Xenophilia, an early effort to make Xen more user friendly. He is a current member and former student director of the Clarkson Open Source Institute where

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    Foreword xxi

    Preface xxiii

Chapter 1: XenBackground and Virtualization Basics 1

    Common Uses and Benefits of Virtualization  2

    Types of Virtualization 5

        Emulation 6

        Full Virtualization 7

        Paravirtualization  8

        Operating System Level Virtualization  9

        Other Types of Virtualization 11

        Overview of Virtualization Types 12

    Virtualization Heritage 13

        The IBM Mainframe 14

        Virtualization on Commodity Hardware 15

        Virtualization Extensions for x86 15

        Xen Origins and Time Line 15

    Other Virtualization Systems for Commodity Hardware 18

        Emulation 18

        Full Virtualization 19

        Paravirtualization 21

        Operating System Virtualization 23

        Popular Virtualization Products 24

    Summary 25

    References and Further Reading 26

Chapter 2: A Quick Tour with the Xen LiveCD 27

    Running the LiveCD 28

    Step 1: Downloading the LiveCD Image and Creating the CD 29

    Step 2: Choosing a Domain0 Image from the GRUB Menu 30

    Step 3: Logging In and the Desktop 31

    Step 4: Creating Guests  33

    Step 5: Deleting a Guest  38

    Step 6: Interacting with Your Guests 38

    Step 7: Testing Your Networking 41

    Too Many Guests 44

    Summary 44

    References and Further Reading 45

Chapter 3: The Xen Hypervisor 47

    Xen Hypervisor 48

    A Privileged Position 50

        Protection Rings 50

    Domain0 51

    Xen Boot Options 54

    Choosing an OS for Domain0 59

    xend 60

      ...

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