Re: KVM usability

Ingo Molnar
2010-03-02T14:30:00Z

* Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 03/02/10 14:37, Nikolai K. Bochev wrote:
> >I don't see where this argument is leading to. So far there are
> >arguments that qemu/kvm sucks as a desktop virtualization, now
> >suddenly the gui tools are shitty and everything should be done cli ,
> >because there's no man pages for virt-manager. Explain.
>
> Lets face it: virt-manager has a big bunch of problems. For
> starters there is no (gui) way to create a virtual machine other
> than installing one from a iso image or via pxe. So if you
> downloaded a disk image and want to boot it -> no cookie for you.
> Likewise if you have a bunch of already installed guests and want to
> migrate from $othertool to virt-manager you can't do that easily.
>
> virt-manager builds on top of libvirt, so you always have the option
> to use other tools (virsh command line shell for example) to get
> something done which virt-manager doesn't provide a gui for.
> libvirt can handle everything Peter asked for without problems. It
> still sucks though. The whole point of a GUI is that you do *not*
> have to go to libvirt.org to figure how to tweak the virtual machine
> config xml using "virsh edit $vmname".

>From the short exposure i had to the VirtualBox GUI, that app certainly looks
usable. I was able to create & manage a virtual machine without any hassle,
and everything Just Worked (tm). The various GUI controls for
suspending/snapshotting/halting the virtual machines were intuitive as well,
and mouse integration and various graphics details were what i'd expect from a
modern solution.

So if Qemu/virt-manager/libvirt reached parity with the VirtualBox GUI, that
would go a long, long way in satisfying non-expert virtualization users.

I guess the first step would be to move away from the 'lets support lots of
crappy virtualization solutions at once, poorly' model, and pick one good
combo (i'd go for Qemu+KVM) and turn it into a heck of an all-around solution.
Then all the other combos will catch up as well. (or will wither away)

( Sidenote: i also looked at the VirtualBox kernel driver. Oh my ... i really
shouldnt have! They should migrate to the KVM kernel-side code ASAP ... )

Thanks,

Ingo