I don't claim to be an expert on OpenStack on OpenStack but I don't believe you 
need VTx at all.  IPMI, yes you need that, but not VTx.

The idea behind OS on OS is that you are installing an image onto the bare 
metal host, you are not utilizing the VTx features nor are you using KVM.  You 
need something like IPMI so that you can kick start the bare metal host but the 
whole idea is that there is nothing on the host to begin with so KVM support is 
not an issue.  Once you've kick started the host to run the OpenStack code 
then, since the normal OpenStack code is running, you can use KVM (if the host 
supports VTx or SVM) or `qemu' (on any x86 machine) to run instances..

As a side note, nested virtualization (the ability to run a hypervisor inside a 
virtualized guest) is something that we at Intel are interested in and working 
on but there are no distributions that officially support this feature in a 
production environment - yet.

--
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Ph: 303/443-3786

From: Openstack 
[mailto:openstack-bounces+donald.d.dugger=intel....@lists.launchpad.net] On 
Behalf Of Chris Bartels
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 2:12 PM
To: openstack@lists.launchpad.net
Subject: [Openstack] OpenStack in OpenStack Without a 'VT-x' CPU

Hi,

I've currently got my laptop & all its accessories for sale on eBay in hopes of 
selling it so that I can raise money with which to purchase a cheap, used 
server for the purpose of installing OpenStack on OpenStack. This so that I can 
tinker with it & get my head wrapped around utilizing OpenStack in a HA 
clustered configuration with Landscape & Juju in the new Ubuntu.

It appears that the server I had hoped to be able to buy, which had the kind of 
Xeon processor which featured VT-x extensions, will likely be sold out by the 
time my laptop sells, and this leaves me with some other, less desirable 
servers available to me in my price range, some of which feature the older kind 
of Xeon processor which do not feature the VT-x virtualization technology.

I don't know if I should consider these as servers I might want to purchase for 
my purposes- they could be a great value if they'll work with a nested 
OpenStack setup.

It has been my experience, at least with ProxmoxVE, which is a KVM-based 
bare-metal hypervisor distro, that when I would run ProxmoxVE nested inside a 
ProxmoxVE, I wouldn't have KVM available to use in the nested OS, since the 
required VT-x virtualization extensions were only available to the OS that was 
installed to the bare metal, & not to the nested OS. They didn't forward to the 
nested OS.

My question to you, is whether I'll be able to run KVM in a nested OpenStack 
inside OpenStack when the VT-x is only available to the OpenStack that's 
installed to the bare metal.

So, if the nested OpenStack doesn't need the VT-x to be forwarded to it by the 
OpenStack that's installed to the bare metal, then does the OpenStack that's 
installed to the bare metal require the VT-x extensions at all either? Could I 
run KVM in both bare metal & nested tiers without VT-x being present at all?

These wouldn't be production servers, so I don't care much about speed, 
although I wouldn't be buying any whose CPU was less than 3.3GHz, so should 
they be running fully emulated, I wouldn't mind the performance hit, because 
their purpose is simply to allow me to familiarize myself with using OpenStack 
in various configurations before I go & install it in a production environment 
on high quality servers- in a year or 2 from now.



tl;dr-

1.       Does the nested KVM running inside the OpenStack that runs inside 
another OpenStack get to take advantage of the VT-x of the host CPU?

2.       Does OpenStack on OpenStack running KVM in each need VT-x on the host 
CPU at all to run properly?

Please advise.


Thanks in advance.


Kindest Regards,
Chris Bartels
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack
Post to     : openstack@lists.launchpad.net
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack
More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

Reply via email to