Re: KVM usability

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 03/04/2010 02:13 PM, Zachary Amsden wrote:
>
> The biggest problem with virt-manager isn't virt-manager, it's that it 
> is trying to do a nearly intractable task.  Because a qemu virtual 
> machine is not a machine at all, just a disk image without the proper 
> metadata to track the important properties of the machine, like what 
> revision of PCI chipset, how many disk controllers the thing is using, 
> what kind of graphics card, etc.
>
> These are all basic things that are left completely undefined by 
> qemu's lack of a top-level configuration file, and it's an inexcusable 
> disgrace.
>
> So virt-manager or any other management tool has the burden of 
> creating and maintaining a bunch of metadata around this workhorse 
> tool called qemu and invoking libvirt to figure out which set of 
> 100,000 blasted command line options to pass on.
>
> That's why it falls short of expectations at times, not because 
> virt-manager is crap, but because there is no well defined, well 
> designed infrastructure for it to manage and the ad-hoc solution here 
> is total crap.

And this is why we're doing QMP and qdev.  It's long overdue 
infrastructure.  It's not just the problem that you describe though.  
virt-manager is limited by what libvirt provides and today libvirt does 
not expose nearly enough qemu features for virt-manager to even attempt 
to solve the problem on it's own.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> Zach