[ubuntu-cloud] Question- could an Ubuntu EC2 "host" instance detect use by a Qemu guest OS of XEN Paravirtualization Driver (GPLPV) I/O driver requests

[brian mullan]

 Scott & Ahmed...

The discussion about running UEC on EC2 is interesting because it relates
somewhat to something I was looking at last month.
A month ago I spent some time looking at the XEN Paravirtualization Drivers
(GPLPV) <http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindowsGplPv>.

My initial thought was maybe I could somehow:

   - using EC2 Ubuntu instance
   - install a Windows OS on that instance using Qemu

then ... Install in Windows install the Xen Paravirtualization drivers
(GPLPV)

It was actually a "Duh" moment because I soon realized that although I could
install the GPLPV drivers on the Windows Qemu vm within
the Ubuntu EC2 instance... that the Qemu Windows VM was still NOT going to
be able to directly access the XEN environment
*because the Qemu Windows was running inside Ubuntu* which was between
Windows Qemu vm and EC2's XEN hypervisor environment.

Anyway, although it obviously didn't work for me it made me wonder about the
following:

   - Could there be a way for Ubuntu running on an EC2 to *detect* the use
   of the *XEN Paravirtualization (PV) Drivers* by any embedded Qemu VM.

If there was then
There might be a way for Ubuntu to somehow "pass-through" the PV device I/O
requests from Qemu "through" Ubuntu directly to EC2's XEN which
would provide the Qemu Guest OS much greater performance for Disk and
network I/O.

The Xen PV drivers would implement both Network and Disk I/O enhancements
for Qemu guest OS's.

This would look as if the Qemu guest OS embedded inside the EC2 Ubuntu
instance was actually running by itself on EC2 without being "inside" the
Ubuntu instance.

If there was a way to do this then using PV drivers with Qemu on an EC2
Ubuntu Instance "could" provide a very large increase in the performance
of the Qemu VM.... perhaps nearly as good as running the Qemu VM as a native
EC2 instance itself.

I don't think this exists today but it seems logical to me that it "could"
be made to work.

This would open up a whole range of possibilities of using EC2 instance to
host Qemu sub-VMs without a great deal of performance degredation.

It could possibly all running UEC or even a Windows OS in Qemu on an EC2
Ubuntu instance with much better performance.

Brian


 ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:42:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Scott Moser <smoser at ubuntu.com>
> Subject: Re: [ubuntu-cloud] Can "Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud" be installed
>        and tested in Oracle Virtual Box?
> To: Stephen Liu <satimis at yahoo.com>
> Cc: ubuntu-cloud at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID:
>        <alpine.DEB.2.00.1010221138260.14353 at localhost6.localdomain6>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Thu, 21 Oct 2010, Stephen Liu wrote:
>
> > Hi folks,
> > Can I install "Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud" on Oracle Virtual Box as VMs
> (front end
> > and node) and test them there ?
>
> Its different but similar, again only really useful for testing.
>
> In the Lucid time frame, I put together
>
> http://ubuntu-smoser.blogspot.com/2010/05/easily-test-or-demo-ubuntu-enterprise.html
>
> that demonstrates how to set up a single EC2 instance to be CC, CLC, NC.
>
> Ahmed pinged me and asked for an update to 10.10.
>
> I put together
>
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~smoser/%2Bjunk/uec-on-ec2/annotate/head%3A/maverick-commands.txt<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Esmoser/%2Bjunk/uec-on-ec2/annotate/head%3A/maverick-commands.txt>
>
> which can be run as user data.  You launch an instance with that user
> data, sit back, wait a bit, and then use 'euca-run-instances'...
>
> Extremely nice for quick test of something, not so extremely nice for
> performance :)
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 19:35:21 +0200
> From: Ahmed Kamal <ahmed.kamal at canonical.com>
> Subject: Re: [ubuntu-cloud] Can "Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud" be installed
>        and tested in Oracle Virtual Box?
> To: ubuntu-cloud at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <4CC1CB59.3090102 at canonical.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 10/22/2010 05:42 PM, Scott Moser wrote:
> > On Thu, 21 Oct 2010, Stephen Liu wrote:
> >
> >> Hi folks,
> >> Can I install "Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud" on Oracle Virtual Box as VMs
> (front end
> >> and node) and test them there ?
> > Its different but similar, again only really useful for testing.
> >
> > In the Lucid time frame, I put together
> >
> http://ubuntu-smoser.blogspot.com/2010/05/easily-test-or-demo-ubuntu-enterprise.html
> >
> > that demonstrates how to set up a single EC2 instance to be CC, CLC, NC.
> >
> > Ahmed pinged me and asked for an update to 10.10.
> >
> > I put together
> >
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~smoser/%2Bjunk/uec-on-ec2/annotate/head%3A/maverick-commands.txt<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%7Esmoser/%2Bjunk/uec-on-ec2/annotate/head%3A/maverick-commands.txt>
> >
>
> And if you'd like a step by step tutorial
> http://foss-boss.blogspot.com/2010/10/cloud-on-cloud-uec-on-ec2.html
>
>
>
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