Opened 12 years ago
#10957 new enhancement
website: add link to "vboxsvc" project (enhanced SMF management of VMs on Solaris-based hosts)
| Reported by: | Jim Klimov | Owned by: | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Component: | other | Version: | VirtualBox 4.2.0 |
| Keywords: | website smf solaris vboxsvc | Cc: | |
| Guest type: | all | Host type: | Solaris |
Description
The http://www.virtualbox.org site lists some useful open-source projects that can be used along with VirtualBox. I suggest adding there a link to the "vboxsvc" project, which is hosted on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/vboxsvc/ and its discussion is in VirtualBox forum, thread "[Free as in beer] SMF service for VirtualBox VM's" http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33249.
This project provides an SMF method script and manifest to wrap execution/hibernation/shutdown of each VM as a separate SMF service instance, and lifetime monitoring (i.e. a frozen VM can be forced to reboot), as well as optional automated ZFS snapshot creation upon VM startup/shutdown, and many other administrative features. An SVR4 package of the project deliverables is also available.
In comparison with VirtualBox 4.2.0 automated VM startup support there are a few differences which may be important in more advanced setups - but available only for solutions built on Solaris 10, OpenSolaris and its relatives (using SMF and ZFS):
- With vboxsvc, each VM is an SMF instance, which allows to enable-disable them independently, and to build SMF dependency graphs between VMs and/or other system services and resources for automatic startup and shutdown/savestate of VMs.
- You can monitor the VM's functionality (i.e. test that it is "pingable" or that a webserver inside it responds), and accordingly restart the SMF service or put it into maintenance; you can also delay the exit is start-method until the VM actually works (needed for dependencies to start at a right moment in time and not after a delay randomly selected by admins).
- You can automate taking snapshots of ZFS-backed VM filesystem resources (including those on remote storage hosts available to VBox host via NFS or perhaps CIFS) before start/after stop to keep track of relatively stable points in time.
- There are some other differences, such as getting X11 control of a VM and then passing its execution back to headless SMF controller and various other "nifty features", all with configurable SMF attributes.
