There is this class of PCI devices that act like disks: NVMe. Therefore, they are both PCI devices and disks. While we already have <hostdev/> (and can assign a NVMe device to a domain successfully) we don't have disk representation. There are three problems with PCI assignment in case of a NVMe device: 1) domains with <hostdev/> can't be migrated 2) NVMe device is assigned whole, there's no way to assign only a namespace 3) Because hypervisors see <hostdev/> they don't put block layer on top of it - users don't get all the fancy features like snapshots NVMe namespaces are way of splitting one continuous NVDIMM memory into smaller ones, effectively creating smaller NVMe-s (which can then be partitioned, LVMed, etc.) Because of all of this the following XML was chosen to model a NVMe device: <disk type='nvme' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/> <source type='pci' managed='yes' namespace='1'> <address domain='0x0000' bus='0x01' slot='0x00' function='0x0'/> </source> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> </disk> Signed-off-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Cole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com>
Libvirt API for virtualization
Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.
Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.
Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:
License
The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are
not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General
Public License, version 2.0 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER
and COPYING
for full license terms & conditions.
Installation
Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands, however, we mandate to have the build directory different than the source directory. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install
While to build & install as an unprivileged user
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install
The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will
be detected during execution of the configure
script and a summary printed
which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.
Contributing
The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:
https://libvirt.org/contribute.html
Contact
The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:
- libvirt-users@redhat.com (for user discussions)
- libvir-list@redhat.com (for development only)
Further details on contacting the project are available on the website: