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Category Archives for "Virtualization"

A simple metadata server to run cloud images on standalone libvirt :: KVM Hypervisor

With all the interest in Cloud Computing and virtualization, the OS vendors are providing ever more easier ways to deploy VMs. Most of them now come with cloud images. This makes it really easy for users to deploy VMs with the distro of their choice on a cloud platform like OpenStack or AWS. Here are … Continue reading A simple metadata server to run cloud images on standalone libvirt :: KVM Hypervisor

CyberChaff: HaLVM unikernels protecting corporate networks

Unikernel technologies, specifically the libraries, are applicable in many ways (e.g. the recent Docker for Mac and Windows products). However, unikernels themselves can enable new categories of products. One of the most prominent products is a network security tool called CyberChaff, based on open source HaLVM unikernels. Today Formaltech, a Galois subsidiary, revealed that Reed College is one of their happy CyberChaff users!

Defending a Network With CyberChaff

CyberChaff is designed to detect one of the early and critical steps in a security breach: the point when an attacker pivots from their initial entry point to the more juicy parts of the network. This step, the pivot, typically involves scanning the network for hosts that may be better positioned, appear to have more privileges, or are running critical services.

To impair this step of the attack, CyberChaff introduces hundreds (or thousands) of false, lightweight nodes on the network. These hosts are indistinguishable from real hosts when scanned by the attacker, and are each implemented as their own HaLVM unikernel. See the diagram below where green nodes are the real hosts and the orange nodes are HaLVM CyberChaff nodes. This means that an attacker is faced with a huge Continue reading

Enable nested virtualization on supported hardware. (Fixing WARNING KVM acceleration not available, using ‘qemu’ issue)

Source: http://samadhisoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/nested-boxes.jpg     
Whats fun without pushing things to the limit, making them do things that they weren't designed for and creating something cool. If the end result isn't cool that's ok too. My take here is that giving something a try not only keeps you occupied  but also contributes to gaining knowledge. Insights acquired in this process of pushing boundaries is definitely worth all the effort. Nested Virtualization once was a cool thing and is still is for a lot of people out there. If you are on a modern x86 (Intel) architecture processor backed computer, it most probably will support nested virtualization.

© Warner Bros
For beginners out there, nested virtualization is nothing but the process of allowing a virtual medium such as a virtual machine or a container to be able to not only act as physical hardware but also further create another abstraction within itself. Think about it as a smaller container/box within a larger box. Although you can perceive the smaller box as the only box when seen from within, it isn't so. Now put a smaller box within it - that's nested virtualization. Each level of nesting does make it tighter Continue reading

Gotchas to configuring Calico with Docker

© Calico project - Metaswitch
Setting up Calico with Docker has been documented with step-by-step commands on the Calico github page and I will not be repeating them here again. I am going to use this as a scratch pad for the gotchas that I learnt from following that article on github. I hope it helps some of you.

Docker networking has seen a lot of improvements both in the native libnetwork library as well as other projects & solutions. Docker container networking especially across two physical hosts is an interesting problem with various solutions out there with their own pros and cons. You could go with flannel, a L2 overlay, VXLAN overlay to facilitate multi-host container networking or choose a pure L3-only solution like Calico. Speaking of the various choices for container networking I came across this article that compares the network glue : underlay/ overlay solutions using different parameters. Feel free to check that out if you want to get an idea into what each of these (VXLAN, flannel & Calico) offer but then of course making your own comparisons and benchmarks will not only provide with the differences/features you are looking for but also Continue reading

Running docker containers with native L2 networking & DHCP

A container normally comes up on the docker0 bridge with an IP from the static docker pool. This can be configured by editing docker options and restarting docker engine.
License: CC from Docker Blog / Dave Tucker

There are cases where a container needs to come up on a pre-existing bridge or a user defined bridge. This can be achieved by giving the --net option during docker run or configuring docker daemon options pre to docker engine boot. Creating an image with dhclient installed in it & programmed to start automatically is one way of doing l2-dhcp from the physical network infrastructure. There are other ways of doing this - macvlan, ipvlan or manually plugging in a veth pair between the docker container namespace and the host network stack. I will describe the former method here. macvlan and veth pair addition methods are described here [Cr1].

Step 1: Build a docker image with the required set of tools. An example is given below. This installs dhclient, netutils and iputils along with running sshd. User root’s password is set to centos using the start.sh script. Dockerfile & script source attributed to maxamillion (github link)
Dockerfile
 FROM centos:latest  
 MAINTAINER  Continue reading

Test-Driving OSPF on RouterOS – Interoperability

So I wrote about OSPF on RouterOS in my previous post. It was a nice experiment to learn about routing protocols. I wanted to take it a little further and test Interoperability of RouterOS with other open source solutions. This post is an update from the previous one and I will add OSPF neighbor nodes … Continue reading Test-Driving OSPF on RouterOS – Interoperability

Test-driving OSPF on RouterOS

I came across RouterOS by MikroTik© which provides advances routing protocol support. What is more amazing is they provide a RouterOS in a virtual form-factor called Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) that can be installed on hypervisors like KVM/VirtualBox/VMware. Please look at licensing model at http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CHR#CHR_Licensing This is perfect for learning purposes and experimenting at home. … Continue reading Test-driving OSPF on RouterOS

Kernel Programming 101 – Creating your own Linux Kernel Module


Have you ever wanted to write your own kernel module? This multi-part blog post will talk about creating your first kernel module, using the proc file system, gathering and updating statistics and will cover topics such as your kernel as a menu items to menuconfig, setting defaults in the kernel config, registering network callbacks for specific types of packets taking Cisco CDP as an example and some tips-tricks in writing and debugging kernel code.  A lot of my own learning has been through blogs and experiments. One source that is really great and does summarize a lot of what my blog will talk about and more is TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project).

Today programming involving systems  is about providing the flexibility and pace for software development by providing user space APIs that interact with the linux kernel through system calls. This approach also provides the abstraction needed to carve out the complexity in direct kernel programming. So before we dive into kernel programming-101, lets answer this question - Why Kernel Programming? 

When there's need to perform operations without  cpu cycles wastage and/or reduce user space copy overheads, kernel programming suits the bill. Taking networking and linux networking stack as Continue reading

ContainerWorld2016 conference in review – Part II (Container Orchestration)




© Arun Sriraman
Picking up from Part I of ContainerWorld2016 conference in review, this post describes the various orchestration mechanisms available to manage containers. There are more than just the tree mechanisms out there to setup & manage containers but these; Kubernetes, Mesos and Docker Swarm are gaining traction and popularity. The Open Container Night Meetup (SVDevOps meetup group) although wasn't part of the conference tracks and hosted after day 1 sessions at the same venue was very informative. As part of this meetup's lightening talks, Adrian Otto provided a good in-depth comparison of the various container orchestration tools along with the roadmap for Openstack Magnum project and Carina by Rackspace.

When talking about containers and orchestration, as Adrian put it, one can think of two methods or paradigms of interacting with any system - imperative where you have complete control on how you want the system to work  along with configuration knobs accessible to you at every step and declarative where you describe the outcome and the system automates everything for you making it simple and easy but giving you less flexibility and configurability. The degree of configuration control and ease of use are two important factors that Continue reading

Setting up bonding on Ubuntu 14.04


This one was a twister to me. Linux bonding is fairly simple and there are numerous blogs out there explaining the steps to get two interfaces on a linux machine bonded. There's tons of information and step-by-step guides describing what needs to be done on an Ubuntu based system for bond configuration. I was surprised when I failed to get it working after multiple attempts. I finally ended up mixing steps from more than two different blog sources to get the setup configured correctly and more importantly persist it over reboots.

Before diving deep with specifics and yet another step-by-step guide to setting up bonds on an Ubuntu 12.02 or 14.04 machine, lets see what linux bonds are and why bonding in the first place. If you were a kid in the 90's or before you'd know what a NIC is. These days with PC's going almost extinct in the home and personal computing space, it is quite hard for users to be acquainted with network cards housing one or more NICs (Network Interface Controller). This era is all about wireless - you still do have a wireless card in your laptop or notebooks or tablets but that's Continue reading

ContainerWorld2016 conference in review – Part I

© ContainerWorld (Informa) - Taken from container world photo gallery
One would think that attending a multi-day conference is sedentary, just meeting new people and lending your ear to speakers and watching presentations. On the contrary it isn't so. Its extremely tiring and by the end of the day you are completely drained out. In this sense,  ContainerWorld2016  that took place last week (17th, 18th Feb) proved no different than other conferences and I ended quite exhausted at the end of the conference. Although exhausting, it was informative and it turned out to be more of a vendor neutral & community oriented conference compared to many others. Talk subjects varied from customer production deployment of containers to pain points of adopting the cloud native model. This multi-part post tries to summarize take-aways and interesting discussions that took place over the two days.

The conference was well received with participation from multiple vendors and customers such as RedHat, Canonical, Docker, Google, Yelp, CapitalOne, Paypal, eBay, Netflix, Veritas and Nordstrom to name a few. Right from day one keynote all the way to closing remarks on day two, customers and vendors alike reasoned the various advantages Continue reading

Want to sell your brand to a developer? Laptop stickers could be yet another way!

© Arun Sriraman
A sign of pride and fun for some but chaos for others; laptop stickers as I recently figured out is yet another way of marketing and branding. I'm sure a lot of people have wondered why a company gives away goodies in conferences and exhibitions. It's for direct+indirect marketing. When you see people walking around wearing a company printed T-Shirt or a cap, that company reaches people it never spoke to directly. It can be thought about as "flooding" in networking terms.

If its known that stickers are a marketing technique, why would someone want to mutilate their laptop with them?

Good question indeed.  I have seen people fret at the sight of my laptop and come at me with the expression of - "Oh my god! What has he done to the poor laptop".. The picture you see above is my work laptop. I like stickers and I put them on my laptop because I agree with a product or the company that makes a product and would want to share this with others (i.m.o. it also makes it look cool).

Laptop stickers though a smaller marketing channel, are nevertheless effective. Continue reading

New to Openstack and worried about networking pre-setup? Try VXLAN or GRE first!


As an avid developer/coder I tend to try out various languages. I do have my favorites but when I embark on a new tool or language the first experience definitely leaves behind a mark. Failing at  getting something to work in the very first try is fine as long as you don't end up hating the technology. I guess I've iterated this over and over again on other posts but networking is complex and hard. Getting it right does require some (not really, it's actually a lot :-) ) amount of experimentation. With technologies changing every so often it's imperative to at least give them a try if not jump the train and adopt them.

Openstack being an opensource project as massive as the linux kernel it does have a ton of features. The neutron component that facilitates networking is quite a handful for beginners and it gets even messier when you will need to configure neutron to work with the network architecture that is already present in your datacenter. Getting a production ready neutron setup with say VLAN backed networks is a handful. After working with Neutron for some time now, i've realized that it isn't as bad Continue reading

Picasa is finally going lights off! What’s next..


Google Inc. yesterday, finally announced axing of the Picasa Desktop app (no more updates to it) and "read only" access to Picasa Web Albums starting 1st May 2016. Although quite brutal, this hasn't been unexpected. I am however one of the many people who loves Picasa Web Albums and even Google+ photos.

A Lifescape Inc. technology after being acquired by Google was released as Picasa in 2002. As many other Google services Picasa has finally become yet another service to be axed out to promote its newer counterpart in photo sharing & organizing - Google Photos. Picasa brought in online photo backup and sharing space a new perspective. Many others have followed suite (Flickr, 500px..). The picasa desktop application was very handy in quickly exporting and importing pictures to and from the web. Organizing pictures was a breeze. Picasa came as both a paid and a free service.

Photo sharing functionality has been moved to different apps/services within Google Inc. ever since. I remember a similar move couple of years ago when I received a mail stating that picasa web albums were being migrated to Google+, Google's social networking platform. Google+ has its own story and Continue reading

Looking forward to ContainerWorld2016 next week!


Container technology has been there for years but is now picking steam thanks to Docker. Container packaging, image registry hosting for containers has directly affected both use and adoption of this technology. "Cloud Native" applications are being designed and written with the direct intent of running them on containers. Today I see containers in the same "boat" as virtualization years ago. Virtualization started slowly in the late 90's and has sprawled massively moving into every datacenter out there. It brought about a massive change in the way hardware resources were consumed making it highly cost effective. Virtualization was technology only used by linux pro's till it was made easy by companies to consume. The story with containers seem to be the same.

A linux container is a virtualization environment (VE) created using kernel support. It provides process isolation and resource isolation/allocation through cgroups (control groups). Docker is a tool that wraps programs to run as isolated processes in its own filesystems. There are various posts out there explaining the differences between docker and a linux container. One big advantage that containers give is the flexibility to move between various hosts quickly and easily.We've now moved Continue reading

A glance into host routes: Tenant networking & routing using Neutron (Openstack)


Software Defined Networks (SDN) and solutions have been making a lot of noise for a few years now. Rather slowly the networking industry has begun to notice this and affect change. Not only this but SDN has also become a pioneer - a big brother - a guide persona to other complementary technologies. We now have Software Defined - Storage, Data Center, Infrastructure and so on. It's Software Defined "everything" and Software Defined "anything". Software is slowly invading the big hardware only players and the sole reason being ease of customization and lower both; capex and opex. Networking in particular is very volatile and extremely configurable.

The neutron project of openstack is also fairly customizable bringing complexity with it. I recently ran into a requirement of having isolated networks talk to each other as well as some specific networks though isolated having access to the outside world (be it outside the cloud or the company WAN). This is what's giving rise to this particular blog post. I will lay out the premise of the discussion and then explain the solution. For networking experts out there, this might seem fairly obvious. I would suggest you stop right here and jump over Continue reading

Moving from ifconfig to ip


Have you started using CentOS7.2? If you are a networking ninja and were all mojo about "ifconfig and route" commands, you are going to be in for a not-so-pleasant surprise in the later versions of Linux. Release after release the community talked about moving to "ip" commands and removing  net-tools package that houses commands "ifconfig and route" from minimalistic installs and going with the iproute package. And now finally with CentOS7.2 these packages aren't there anymore. It is however still possible to get these programs by installing the "net-tools" package, which I do quite often but I also suggest trying to use the "ip" suite that comes with iproute package instead. Not only does it give extended functionality but it comes-with and so you would not have to install new packages.

I will try to describe the 1:1 mapping of the most common commands I use to just figure out what a linux box is configured with. There are tons of articles & cheat sheets out there which can be used too.

ifconfig commands - See & set interface properties

Data Center Networking – Openstack Neutron networking terms demystified!

Coming from a networking background I am used to the various TLAs (ironically: Three Letter Acronyms) and terms that sometime mean the same but completely different otherwise. Networking in the data-center is no different. People have now slowly moved away from a leaf-spine topology where an advanced pricey piece of equipment sits in the spine and relatively cheaper leaf devices connect the hosts and servers. We now have an old architecture that was used during telephony in a new form with new terms. Terms such as "Clos topology" where the the leaf-spine architecture is replaced by layers or levels of similar cheaper hardware allowing flexibility in its configuration forming a sort of mesh making it both scalable and reliable; and special protocols such as DCTCP (Data Center TCP) being interspersed in technical papers and company technology presentations. An outlook of these technologies is big enough to be a completely separate read and so I will not venture into it here.

Google's datacenter - Clos Topology research & implementation
Facebooks' datacenter  architecture - 5 stage clos topology

With all these changes in the data center we now also see administrators isolating a complete data center/s or carving them Continue reading
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