RE: [nova][dev] Revisiting qemu emulation where guest arch != host arch
That makes sense which is the best method I saw as well. For your example "use HW_ARCH_X86 to idenfiy the host as being x86 and COMPUTE_ARCH_X86 for emulated", I actually implemented a new field called hw_emulation_architecture as to not conflict with any existing nova operations and to eliminate confusion. This allows for setting this specific value as an image meta property in glance, and if it is set then it will execute emulation via qemu for the designated architecture. If it is not set then operations will occur as normal. https://review.opendev.org/c/openstack/nova/+/822053 is really just an initial response for the bug, that was submitted. And our long-term goal is to collab on this existing blueprint https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/pick-guest-arch-based-on-host-ar... for a more full set of capabilities. Jonathan Race Cyber Range Engineer | Georgia Cyber Range GEORGIA CYBER CENTER On Wed, 2020-07-15 at 14:17 +0000, Apsey, Christopher wrote:
All,
A few years ago I asked a question[1] about why nova, when given a hw_architecture property from glance for an image, would not end up using the correct qemu-system-xx binary when starting the guest process on a compute node if that compute nodes architecture did not match the proposed guest architecture. As an example, if we had all x86 hosts, but wanted to run an emulated ppc guest, we should be able to do that given that at least one compute node had qemu-system-ppc already installed and libvirt was successfully reporting that as a supported architecture to nova. It seemed like a heavy lift at the time, so it was put on the back burner.
I am now in a position to fund a contract developer to make this happen, so the question is: would this be a useful blueprint that would potentially be accepted?
yes, i cant really speak to how much use it would get or how useful it woudl be to the majoriy fo user but i would be supportive of adding this capablity. We have to be a little carful to get the design wright for example we might want to differnciate between the native architecture and emulated architectures e.g. use HW_ARCH_X86 to idenfiy the host as being x86 and COMPUTE_ARCH_X86 for emulated with the new "in" suppot being added to placment we can use required=in:HW_ARCH_X86,COMPUTE_ARCH_X86 in cases where you dont care and by default if you wanted native only you could use the HW_ARCH_* traits in the image and we can have a prefileter add the both triats by default if the architrue is set in the iamge and there is not arch trait in the flavor or image. i will certenly review a spec if you proporse one but you might now have time to get it approved this cycle the spec deadlien woudl have been thursday btu it has been moved to next week.
Most of the time when people want to run an emulated guest they would just nest it inside of an already running guest of the native architecture, but that severely limits observability and the task of managing any more than a handful of instances in this manner quickly becomes a tangled nightmare of networking, etc. I see real benefit in allowing this scenario to run natively so all of the tooling that exists for fleet management 'just works'. This would also be a significant differentiator for OpenStack as a whole.
Thoughts?
Chris Apsey Director | Georgia Cyber Range GEORGIA CYBER CENTER
100 Grace Hopper Lane | Augusta, Georgia | 30901 https://www.gacybercenter.org<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gacybercenter.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjrace%40augusta.edu%7Cf0f81f14b8db467e810308d9d0943365%7C8783ac6bd05b4292b483e65f1fdfee91%7C0%7C0%7C637770157206051316%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=YPBxPDPIfQcaWFPC7bXiravcTiASBsGxQcfg8ZxFisA%3D&reserved=0>
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Race, Jonathan