Basic support for running kvm virtual machine in rockstor

Features
1

As a “Cloud Server”, i believe support to run virtual machine is a must have function. There many people run freenas inside esxi, and without support to run virtual machine I have to do the same with rockstor. But that create tons of problems.

Beacause rockstor is base on centos, it already have the kvm, and it is good enough. The only thing missing is a proper way to manage it.

it can achieve by simply intergrate other kvm web manage tool and make sure rockstor’s backup and snapshot function can do well on running vm’s disks. or build rockstor’s own web manage tools.

2

Thanks for starting this discussion. Pretty interesting usecase.

FRXDQ, if you are able to set this up manually on Rockstor, please add your notes to this discussion. They will be very helpful.

Everyone, please leave a comment in support if you need this feature and help us prioritize.

3

I have installed kimchi from https://github.com/kimchi-project/kimchi and installed another rockstor instance as a kvm virtual machine running in rockstor.

Just follow their guide for centos and change the default http port. I didn’t enconter any problem.

kimchi isn’t stable and miss a lot of function, i choose to try with it first just because it’s the most simple web manage tool i find.

I think the qemu should add to rockstor as a service and the actural manage tool can install as a Rock-on.

4

If i want to snapshot all vms, i need to suspend the vms then do a share snapshot in rockstor, and resume them after snapshot. It will be better it rockstor can do it automatically.

It is same if rockstor have a external share backup function.

5

That sounds pretty good. I was thinking of wrapping this functionality as a Rock-on so only users who are interested can get it. check you docker hub, may be there’s an image for this already.

6

This is actually a pretty big up and coming movement called “HyperConvergence.” I would love to see something like this as well.

I really like the clean interface that RockStor has, if you were to implement KVM management in the UI, that would be pretty slick. Doing something like BTRFS + KVM + CephFS would be a pretty killer solution.

1 Like
7

I’m not sure if anyone is still paying attention to this thread, or working on this as a feature, but I though it would be worth noting that if you store your VM images in a rockstor btrfs share, and want it to autostart at boot, you will need to add the rockstor service as a prerequisite for starting the libvirtd (and maybe libvirt-guests) service(s) in the systemd configs.

-Allie

2 Likes
8

I suppose I should have added that without this dependency, systemd will start libvirt, and thus the libvirt managed autostart VMs before rockstor gets around to mounting all of it’s btrfs shares, and thus libvirtd will not be able to find the VM’s disk image.

-Allie

1 Like
9

Hi

Is there still somebody working on this?
I tried to install kimchi, but it doesn’t work.
What is the minimum installation of kvm you need?

-Seb

10

There are several success attemps to run libvirtd in container, you can start with those and add any manage software you want. My personal preference is mist.io .or simply remote controll it from other linux workstation.

11

Thanks for the answer.
I’am really new to linux and most of the how to’s are not that easy to understand for a newbie.
By running libvirtd in a container do you mean run it in Docker/Rock-on?
Do you have a link to one i could try?
For the base installation of kvm/libvirt i used the guide in the end of the article

It worked, but the managment part of kvm/VM’s is the problem, since i don’t use linux on any other machine.

Thanks in advance

Seb