[Kata-hypervisor] kata requirements for image formats and devices

Allison Randal allison at lohutok.net
Wed Jun 6 18:59:57 UTC 2018


Hi Xu and Eric,

Yes, by image formats I mean raw/qcow2/etc. Basically, I'm just looking 
to see which libraries Kata would need.

That's a healthy list of features. I don't have libraries for all of 
those yet, but let's see how far I can get and how fast.

The repos are on gitlab, but still private (so far I've been working 
alone). Now that others are potentially interested, I'll work on 
flipping the repos to public, since it's always nice to get more 
perspectives.

Allison

On 06/06/2018 11:37 AM, Ernst, Eric wrote:
> Hey Allison,
>   
> Our goal in Kata is to be configurable with respect to hypervisors, so
> your project sounds quite interesting.  In our experience, Kata ends up
> exercising many more features than are typical, and thus may be a good
> test vehicle.
>    
> Features include:
>   -hotplug for CPU, memory, vfio-pci, virtio-blk/scsi
>   -virtio: 9pFS, -net (with vhost backend), blk/scsi, serial, vsock
>   -DAX, nvdimm (used for our rootfs today)
>   -vhostuser (blk,net,scsi)
>     
> Is your work on github, or available in the open today?
>      
> Thanks,
> Eric
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 03:24:48PM +0000, Xu Wang wrote:
>> Hi Allison,
>> The library hypervisor sounds very interesting, do you have any publication or
>> code released?
>> For kata, when you talk about image format, do you mean those like "qcow2" or
>> "raw"? We currently mainly use raw format devices for qemu.
>> And if we insert devices into VM, we may insert loop devices, other block
>> devices, or ceph rbds, etc.
>> Xu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 11:17 PM, Allison Randal allison at lohutok.net  wrote:
>> I wasn't at the session where this started (because I was speaking on a
>>
>> panel at the same time about edge computing, containers/VMs, and hybrid
>>
>> approaches), but several people pointed me at this list, because I'm
>>
>> currently working on a lightweight hypervisor written in Rust (on top of
>>
>> KVM), as PhD research at the University of Cambridge.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm interested in getting more details on what features of QEMU are used
>>
>> by Kata Containers. Specifically, what image formats and devices do you
>>
>> need? This information would be equally valuable to a stripped-down
>>
>> QEMU, so it wouldn't be a distraction from that work, just a side
>>
>> benefit of informing other approaches to lightweight hypervisors.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The fundamental concept of my work is building a "library hypervisor",
>>
>> somewhat analogous to the way unikernels are a "library operating
>>
>> system". So, instead of a monolithic body of code, it is a collection of
>>
>> Rust libraries that provide devices, support for various image formats,
>>
>> an interface to KVM, etc. A final compiled hypervisor imports a minimal
>>
>> set of libraries to get the minimal set of features that it needs.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I had considered Kata Containers as a possible example target, though I
>>
>> was prioritizing it behind libvirt, minikube, LinuxKit, and a few other
>>
>> potential targets. I wouldn't mind bumping Kata Containers up to a
>>
>> higher priority, if people here would be interested in a prototype to try.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Allison
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>> Kata-hypervisor mailing list
>>
>> Kata-hypervisor at lists.katacontainers.io
>>
>> http://lists.katacontainers.io/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kata-hypervisor
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Xu WangCTO & Cofounder, Hypergithub/twitter/wechat: @gnawuxhttp://hyper.sh
>> Hyper_: Make VM run like container
> 
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> 



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