Linux Plumbers Conf 2009

Excerpt

Description

Hypervisors each have their own set of command line tools, APIs, and interfaces – all of which are typically inoperable with other virtualization offerings. This can provide a difficult challenge for users with multiple hypervisor types within a given managed environment.

One solution to this issue is to provide an abstraction layer that conforms to the Common Information Model (CIM). CIM is an open standard defined and published by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) that describes how to control (and exchange information about) managed elements. Through the use of specification conformance, an administration client can interface with any CIM implementation using one set of APIs.

The libvirt-cim project aims to provide such an abstraction layer for KVM, Xen, and Linux Containers. This talk will cover how libvirt-cim uses CIM, the DMTF specifications, and libvirt to manage guests and maintain hypervisor neutrality. The discussion will also include information on libcmpiutil – a library of utility functions, the goal of which is to reduce the amount of repetitive work typically done in most CMPI-style CIM providers.

As KVM comes to the forefront, it has become increasingly important to provide ways to easily incorporate KVM into existing virtualization environments. The goal of this talk is to discuss ways in which CIM can be leveraged for that purpose.

Tags

virtualizatoin, management, userspace

Speaker

• Kaitlin Rupert

  IBM
  Biography

  Kaitlin Rupert works in IBM’s Linux Technology Center and is currently the maintainer for libvirt-cim and libcmpiutil. Kaitlin also maintains libvirt-cim’s corresponding test suite project: cimtest.