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Running Linux on Microsoft Private
and Public Cloud infrastructures
Tudor Damian
IT Solutions Specialist
Virtual Machine MVP
tudy.tel

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CloudHuge thanks to our sponsors!

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CloudAgenda
• The Linux “support” story
• What’s officially supported?
• What actually works?
• Linux in your Private Cloud
– Enlightened vs. emulated
– More about Linux Integration Services
– Linux P2V conversions for Hyper-V
– The future of Linux on Hyper-V
• Linux on Windows Azure

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• There’s no need for the Integration Services to install Linux on Hyper-V
• Most distributions work just fine in an emulated environment (lower performance)
• So why don’t we have more supported Linux distros?
• …such as Hannah Montana Linux - http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/
• The answer is simple: there are no companies to offer dedicated support
• Support is usually offered by the community
• Microsoft doesn’t have anyone to create a support
agreement with
• They don’t officially cover these under standard support
incidents
• They do recommend the communities for help (MVPs,
Linux distro-related communities)
• Users have reported successful installs of:
• Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, other distros (e.g. Hannah Montana Linux)
• Even FreeBSD and Open Solaris
Linux ”unofficial” support

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LINUX IN YOUR PRIVATE CLOUD
Running Linux on Hyper-V 3.0

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CloudHyper-V architecture

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• VSP (virtualization service provider)
• Hyper-V component in the”parent partition”
• Communicates with the hardware drivers
• Gives access to the host resources
• VSC (virtualization service client)
• Drivers for”synthetic devices” installed in the enlightened guest OS
• Exposes every virtual device and translates I/O requests
• There’s always a VSP/VSC pair
• VMBus (virtual machine bus)
• A high-speed point-to-point in-memory bus
• Allows the communication between VSPs and VSCs through Hyper-V
• For Linux, every VSC has a DIM (Driver Interface Mapper)
• DIMs interact with the Linux Kernel like any other driver
• There’s also a “VSC core” based on each existing VSP
How does it work?

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CloudEmulated vs. enlightened
• Emulated drivers
• Drivers are “emulated”
• All requests targeting the hardware (HDD, network, etc) are not direct
• “Translated” in both directions (VM-hw, hw-VM) by the hypervisor
• They bring in a performance overhead
• The emulated drivers are pretty similar to what we had in Virtual Server:
• Video = S3 Trio64+ SVGA (VESA)
• Network = Intel/DEC ”Tulip” 21x4x
• IDE = Intel 440BX chipset MB
• ”Enlightened” drivers
• Also known as “synthetic drivers”
• These make the VM ”hypervisor aware”
• Written especially for virtualized environments => paravirtualization
• They’re basically just pointers to the drivers in the ”parent partition”
• Huge performance boost!

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• What’s been done so far?
• July 2009 – Microsoft contributes with over 20.000 lines of code in the Linux kernel
• December 2009 – The drivers (in staging) are included in the 2.6.32 Kernel
• July 1st 2010 – Microsoft presents at the Red Hat Summit
• Official support list:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794868(WS.10).aspx
• Linux Integration Services 2.1 RTM (July 2010)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (10 SP1/SP2/SP3, 11)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5)
• Linux Integration Services 3.4 RTM (September 2012)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5-5.9 & 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)
• CentOS 5.5-5.8 & 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP4 & 11 SP1/SP2
The story so far

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• Driver support for synthetic devices (v1 – original distro code, created by Citrix)
– Synthetic network controller & Synthetic storage controller (IDE/SCSI)
• Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V (v2.0 – December 2009)
– Block VSC – increased boot performance
• Timesync (v2.1 – July 2010)
– The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host
• Integrated Shutdown (v2.1 – July 2010)
– VMs can be cleanly shut down from Hyper-V
• Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support (v2.1 – July 2010)
– Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine
• Heartbeat (v2.1 – July 2010)
– Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive
• Pluggable Time Source (v2.1 – July 2010)
– A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest.
• KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange (v3.1 – July 2011)
– Information about the running Linux VM can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the host (FQDN, Linux IS
version, IP addresses, OS version/distro/kernel, CPU architecture x86/x64)
• Integrated Mouse Support (v3.2 – January 2012)
– The cursor is no longer bound to the VMConnect window when used with the Linux Graphical User Interface
• SMP 32 vCPU support (v3.3 – June 2012)
– Support for up to 32 vCPUs on certain distros
• Live Migration (v3.4 – September 2012)
– Linux virtual machines can undergo live migration for load balancing purposes
• Jumbo Frames (v3.4 – September 2012)
– Linux virtual machines can be configured to use Ethernet frames with more than 1500 bytes of payload
The road to “enlightment”

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CloudComparing to IS on Windows
• Synthetic Drivers
• IDE driver
• SCSI driver
• Network Drive
• Mouse Integration
• Video
• Integration Services
• Operating System Shutdown
• Time Synchronization
• Heartbeat
• Data Exchange
• Backup (VSS)
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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CloudIS on Windows
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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CloudIS on Windows
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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CloudWrap-up: Linux IS components
• hv_vmbus – communication with the host
• hv_storvsc – storage VSC
• hv_netvsc – network VSC
• hv_timesource – pluggable time source
• hv_mouse – enlightened mouse
• hv_utils – graceful shutdown, timesync,
heartbeat

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DEMO – LINUX ON HYPER-V
Running Linux on Hyper-V 2012

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LINUX P2V
Converting Linux physical machines to Hyper-V VMs

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http://blogs.technet.com/b/enterprise_admin/archive/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap.aspx
• You can use DD and VHDtool
– DD works both on Windows and Linux
– One case: you attach the Linux HDD on a Windows machine
Linux P2V conversion
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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• From a command line, you convert the HDD into a RAW image format (.img)
dd if=?DeviceHarddisk1DR2 of=D:rhel54.img bs=1M --progress
Linux P2V (DD)
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/vhdtool
• A command-line tool, open-source
– Includes functions to manipulate VHD files (create, convert, extend, repair)
– An excelent P2V conversion tool for Linux machines
– It convers RAW images into VHDs
Linux P2V (VHDTool)
TechEd 2010 - WSV305

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• http://blogs.technet.com/b/enterprise_admin/archive/2010/04/26/hyper-v-linux-p2v-with-platespin.aspx
Linux P2V (PlateSpin)

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CloudDD on Linux to NTFS/USB drive

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CloudDD on Linux over the network

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THE FUTURE OF LINUX
ON HYPER-V

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CloudUpcoming Functionality
• Dynamic Memory for Linux guests
• Ballooning only for first implementation
• Bi-Directional KVP
• VLAN Tag support (requires Win8)
• 802.1q support (requires Win8)
• More stuff! 

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CloudDriver Status
• Drivers getting out of staging:
• Kernel v3.2: hv_vmbus, hv_utils
• Kernel v3.3: hv_netvsc; hv_mouse
• Kernel v3.4: hv_storvsc
• Net Result:
• All Hyper-V drivers out of staging and part of the
mainline Linux kernel by v3.4
• Linux = first-class citizen on Hyper-V

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LINUX IN WINDOWS AZURE
Get your Linux VMs up and running in Azure within minutes

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Cloud
• Linux support on Azure is growing
• As of right now, the Azure VM Gallery has:
– OpenSuse 12.3
– SUSE Enterprise 11 SP2
– Ubuntu Server (12.04, 12.10, 13.04)
– OpenLogic CentOS 6.3
What happens in the cloud?

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• A Linux admin’s best friend 
http://vmdepot.msopentech.com/
VM Depot

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DEMO - AZURE AND VM DEPOT
Running Linux on Windows Azure

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Q & A