Linux on Hyper-V

Linux on Hyper-V

Tudor Damian, Microsoft Virtual Machine MVP
@tudydamian – www.tudy.tel

Agenda
• Short overview
• Enlightened vs. emulated
• A bit of history

• What’s officially supported?
• What actually works?
• How does it work?
• More about Linux Integration Services

• Linux P2V conversions for Hyper-V
• Backing-up Linux VMs
• MAP Toolkit 6.5
• The future of Linux on Hyper-V

How does it work?
• VSP (virtualization service provider)
• Hyper-V component in the”parent partition”
• Communicates with the hardware drivers
• Gives access to the host resources

• VSC (virtualization service client)
• Drivers for”synthetic devices” installed in the enlightened guest OS
• Exposes every virtual device and translates I/O requests
• There’s always a VSP/VSC pair

• VMBus (virtual machine bus)
• A high-speed point-to-point in-memory bus
• Allows the communication between VSPs and VSCs through Hyper-V

• For Linux, every VSC has a DIM (Driver Interface Mapper)
• DIMs interact with the Linux Kernel like any other driver
• There’s also a “VSC core” based on each existing VSP

Emulated vs. enlightened
• Emulated drivers
• Drivers are “emulated”
• All requests targeting the hardware (HDD, network, etc) are not direct
• “Translated” in both directions (VM-hw, hw-VM) by the hypervisor
• They bring in a performance overhead
• The emulated drivers are pretty similar to what we had in Virtual Server:
• Video = S3 Trio64+ SVGA (VESA)
• Network = Intel/DEC ”Tulip” 21x4x
• IDE = Intel 440BX chipset MB

• ”Enlightened” drivers
• Also known as “synthetic drivers”
• These make the VM ”hypervisor aware”
• Written especially for virtualized environments => paravirtualization
• They’re basically just pointers to the drivers in the ”parent partition”
• Huge performance boost!

The road so far
• What’s been done so far?
• July 2009 – Microsoft contributes with over 20.000 lines of code in the Linux kernel
• December 2009 – The drivers (in staging) are included in the 2.6.32 Kernel
• July 1st 2010 – Microsoft presents at the Red Hat Summit
• Official support list: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(WS.10).aspx

• Linux Integration Services 2.1 RTM (July 29th 2010)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (10 SP1/SP2/SP3, 11)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5)

• Linux Integration Services 3.2 RTM (January 12th 2012)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and 6.1 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)
• CentOS 6.0/6.1 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)

• Requirements
• A Linux ISO or DVD, using distributions based on the 2.6.16-27 or 2.6.32+ Linux kernel
• Linux Development Tools (gcc, kernel-devel / linux source) for older versions of the IS
• Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V
• (optional) Enlightened mouse driver
• Total install duration: ~40-45 minutes

Linux ”unofficial” support
• There’s no need for the Integration Services to install Linux on Hyper-V
• Most distributions work just fine in an emulated environment (lower performance)

• So why don’t we have more supported Linux distros?
• …such as Hannah Montana Linux - http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/
• The answer is simple: there are no companies to offer dedicated support
• Support is usually offered by the community
• Microsoft doesn’t have anyone to create a support agreement with
• They don’t officially cover these under standard support incidents
• They do recommend the communities for help (MVPs, Linux distro-related communities)

• Users have reported successful installs of:
• Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, other distros (e.g. Hannah Montana Linux)
• Even FreeBSD and Open Solaris

The road to “enlightment”
• Driver support for synthetic devices (v1 – original distro code, created by Citrix)
• Synthetic network controller & Synthetic storage controller (IDE/SCSI)

• Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V (v2.0 – December 2009)
• Block VSC – increased boot performance

• Timesync (v2.1 – July 2010)
• The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host

• Integrated Shutdown (v2.1 – July 2010)
• VMs can be cleanly shut down from Hyper-V

• Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support (v2.1 – July 2010)
• Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine

• Heartbeat (v2.1 – July 2010)
• Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive

• Pluggable Time Source (v2.1 – July 2010)
• A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.

• KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange (v3.1 – July 2011)
• Information about the running Linux VM can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the host
(FQDN, Linux IS version, IP addresses, OS version/distro/kernel, CPU architecture x86/x64)

• Integrated Mouse Support (v3.2 – January 2012)
• The cursor is no longer bound to the VMConnect window when used with the Linux Graphical User Interface

Project Satori

• http://www.xen.org/products/satori.html
• A collaboration project between Citrix and Microsoft
• The main components of project Satori became Linux IS for Hyper-V

• The old Linux IS did not have ”input devices” support
• No mouse support in “non-enlightened” guests accessed through cascaded TS/RDP
• Workaround: local Hyper-V Console (RSAT) or direct connection into the VM
• The “captured mouse” experience on Linux guests is not fun
• Most Linux installs don’t need a GUI

• Project Satori brings in InputVSC
• Enlightened mouse drivers
• They require Linux IS 2.x to be installed
• Root access required

• Available under a GPL 2.0 license

TechEd 2010 - WSV305
Comparing to IS on Windows

• Synthetic Drivers
• IDE driver
• SCSI driver
• Network Drive
• Mouse Integration
• Video
• Integration Services
• Operating System Shutdown
• Time Synchronization
• Heartbeat
• Data Exchange
• Backup (VSS)

IS on Windows

Linux IS v2.1 prerequisites

• Red Hat updates
– yum install kernel-devel
– yum groupinstall "development tools"
– yum update

• SLES updates
– yast –i kernel-devel
– yast –i kernel-source
– yast –i gcc

Installing Linux IS – RHEL 5 x64

Installing Linux IS – SLES 10 SP2

Linux IS v2.1 installation

• Copy the .iso content locally
mkdir -p /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
cp -rp /mnt/cdrom /opt/linux_is
umount /mnt/cdrom

• Install the drivers
cd /opt/linux_is
make
make install

• Before IS 2.1, the install was done using a Perl script
./setup.pl drivers

• Reboot

Linux IS v3.2 installation

• Linux IS 3.x brings RPM support 
• Install the drivers
mount /dev/cdrom /media
cd /media
./install.sh

• Reboot the VM

Verifying the install - lsmod

Verifying the install - GUI

modinfo support (Linux IS 2.1+)

Wrap-up: Linux IS components
• hv_vmbus - VMBus
• hv_storvsc – storage VSC
• hv_netvsc – network VSC
• hv_timesource – pluggable time source
• hv_mouse – enlightened mouse
• hv_utils – graceful shutdown, timesync, heartbeat

Linux IS on 2.6.32+ Kernel
Example: Ubuntu 10.4 LTS


• Edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
– sudo gedit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

• Add the following lines:
– hv_vmbus
– hv_storvsc
– hv_blkvsc
– hv_netvsc

• Update
– sudo update-initramfs –u

• Reboot


• You can verify the install just like before
– /sbin/lsmod | grep vsc

Ubuntu Server 10.10 x64

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2010/10/21/installing-ubuntu-server-10-10-on-hyper-v.aspx

Native PowerShell support and in-box metering

SCRIPTING EVERYTHING

Hyper-V Resource Meters
• Historic Resource utilization information
• Persistent through live migrations

Network
• Incoming & Outgoing
Traffic per IP Address
Range
Storage
• High Water-Mark Disk
Allocation
Memory
• Low & High Water-Mark
Memory Utilization
• Average Memory
Utilization
CPU
• Average CPU Utilization

Converting Linux physical machines to Hyper-V VMs

LINUX P2V

Linux P2V conversion

http://blogs.technet.com/b/enterprise_admin/archive/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap.aspx

• You can use DD and VHDtool
– DD works both on Windows and Linux
– One case: you attach the Linux HDD on a Windows machine

Linux P2V (DD)

• From a command line, you convert the HDD into a RAW image format (.img)
• dd if=?DeviceHarddisk1DR2 of=D:rhel54.img bs=1M --progress

Linux P2V (VHDTool)

http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/vhdtool
• A command-line tool, open-source
– Includes functions to manipulate VHD files (create, convert, extend, repair)
– An excelent P2V conversion tool for Linux machines
– It convers RAW images into VHDs

System Center Data Protection Manager

BACKING UP LINUX VMS

DPM for Hyper-V

ONLINE OFFLINE

OS supports VSS OS without VSS
Recursive VSS call Save VM state

Linux

DPM
AGENT

DPM, non-VSS aware guests

1. DPM marks the start of
the backup

2. Save OS state (<1 min)

OFFLINE
(hibernate, save RAM)

3. VSS snapshot (~10 sec)
4. Resume OS

5. Actual DPM backup is
taken

Heterogeneous network-wide inventory tool

MAP TOOLKIT 6.5

MAP Toolkit 6.5
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977556.aspx
• Secure, agentless, network-wide inventory
• Windows XP Professional, Vista, 7
• Office 2010 and previous versions
• Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
• Windows Internet Explorer 9 and previous versions
• VMware vSphere, vCenter, ESX, ESXi, Server
• Selected Linux distributions
• LAMP application stack discovery
• SQL Server
• MySQL
• Oracle
• Sybase
• Hyper-V

MAP Toolkit

Upcoming Functionality
• Dynamic Memory for Linux guests
• Ballooning only for first implementation

• Bi-Directional KVP
• Jumbo Frames
• VLAN Tag support (requires Win8)
• 802.1q support (requires Win8)
• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS support

Driver Status
Drivers getting out of staging:
• Kernel v3.2: hv_vmbus, hv_utils
• Kernel v3.3: hv_netvsc; hv_mouse
• Kernel v3.4: hv_storvsc

Net Result:
• All Hyper-V drivers out of staging and part of the
mainline Linux kernel by v3.4
• Linux = first-class citizen on Hyper-V

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Linux on Hyper-V

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