vmx tutorial

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. It has been gaining industry traction and market share in a wide variety of software deployments in just a few short years. KVM turns to be a very interesting virtualization topic and is well positioned for the future.

Juniper MX86(VMX: Virtual MX) is a virtual version of the MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router that is installed on an industry-standard x86 server running a Linux operating system, applicable third-party software, and the KVM hypervisor. It is one of industry-level implementations of router based on KVM technology.

about This document :

This document records some of my learning and testing notes about KVM/MX86 and related technologies. Current it contains:

• illustration of various installation procedures

• illustration of verification procedure

• illustration of features involved in VMX installation process, mostly from KVM/virtualization technology’s perspecive

• some case studies

This doc can be used as a reference when you:

• read the official VMX documents, use this as an "accompanying" doc for better understanding to the materials

• need a quick list or "cheatsheet" kind of commands to when verifing a feature or troubleshooting an issue

• when running into issues, need a "working example" as a reference

format of this doc

following format is available to read/download:

• HTML: vmx-tutorial.html

• PDF: vmx-tutorial.pdf

future update

As things changes along and as I accumulated more practical usages cases/issues from the fields/discussions/lab tests, I may update this doc periodically whenever I feel there is a need.

The html file will always be the most up-to-date version. PDF version will be generated whenever big changes were made.

a "TODO" list:

There are a lot of relevant contents that I haven’t put into this doc. I’ll add more topics whenever I find more time and accumulated enough resources and test cases.

• breakdown of qemu command parameters

• libvirt API scripting

• Intel DPDK

• NUMA

• KSM

• Intel EPT/AMD

• HyperThreading(HT)

• internal stuff (flow cache, junos troubleshooting, internal packet flow, etc)

• troubleshooting KVM/VMX

feedback

send your feedback/comment by email ([email protected]) or open tickets in here if you find any issues.