[libvirt] RFC: configuring host interfaces with libvirt

[John Levon]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:11:02AM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:

> Integrating with host networking meanwhile is a fundamental requirement 
> for virtualization for all apps using libvirt, since guests need network
> connectivity, and thus managing NICs should be within scope.

I don't think that's much of an argument. Plenty of things can be
considered fundamental. My kernel version certainly is, so why isn't
libvirt letting me upgrade that? What about my firewall? Why isn't
libvirt configuring my iSCSI target for me?

We should be considering why libvirt is /well-placed/ to configure the
host. I think it should be pretty clear that it's actually not: the
problems around distro differences alone is a good indication. The
proposed API is anaemic enough to not be of much use.

This is way beyond carving out the physical system into virtual chunks
and it's a big step towards lib*virt* becoming libmanagement.

It seems David's main justification for this was:

- you want to configure host NICs
- libvirt already has scaffolding for remote management

So I'm sympathetic to something like spinning out the RPC into a generic
layer, and modularising what it can talk, with a libvirt module. But
that's a very different beast.

regards
john