Chapter 4. Accessing Red Hat Virtualization
Red Hat Virtualization exposes a number of interfaces for interacting with the components of the virtualization environment. Many of these interfaces are fully supported. Some, however, are supported only for read access or only when your use of them has been explicitly requested by Red Hat Support.
4.1. Supported Interfaces for Read and Write Access
Direct interaction with these interfaces is supported and encouraged for both read and write access:
- Administration Portal
The Administration Portal is a graphical user interface provided by the Red Hat Virtualization Manager. It can be used to manage all the administrative resources in the environment and can be accessed by any supported web browsers.
- VM Portal
The VM Portal is a graphical user interface provided by the Red Hat Virtualization Manager. It has limited permissions for managing virtual machine resources and is targeted at end users.
- Cockpit
In Red Hat Virtualization, the Cockpit user interface can be used to deploy a self-hosted engine environment, as well as perform other administrative tasks on a host. It is available by default on Red Hat Virtualization Host, and can be installed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts.
See:
- Installing Cockpit on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hosts in the Installation Guide.
- Deploying the Self-Hosted Engine Using Cockpit in the Self-Hosted Engine Guide.
- REST API
The Red Hat Virtualization REST API provides a software interface for querying and modifying the Red Hat Virtualization environment. The REST API can be used by any programming language that supports HTTP actions.
See: REST API Guide
- Software Development Kit (SDK)
The Python, Java, and Ruby SDKs are fully supported interfaces for interacting with the Red Hat Virtualization Manager.
See:
- Ansible
Ansible provides modules to automate post-installation tasks on Red Hat Virtualization.
See: Automating Configuration Tasks using Ansible in the Administration Guide.
- Self-Hosted Engine Command Line Utility
The
hosted-enginecommand is used to perform administrative tasks on the Manager virtual machine in self-hosted engine environments.See: Administering the Manager Virtual Machine in the Self-Hosted Engine Guide.
- VDSM Hooks
VDSM hooks trigger modifications to virtual machines, based on custom properties specified in the Administration Portal.
See: VDSM and Hooks in the Administration Guide.
4.2. Supported Interfaces for Read Access
Direct interaction with these interfaces is supported and encouraged only for read access. Use of these interfaces for write access is not supported unless explicitly requested by Red Hat Support:
- Red Hat Virtualization Manager History Database
-
Read access to the Red Hat Virtualization Manager history (
ovirt_engine_history) database using the database views specified in the Data Warehouse Guide is supported. Write access is not supported. - Libvirt on Hosts
-
Read access to libvirt using the
virsh -rcommand is a supported method of interacting with virtualization hosts. Write access is not supported.
4.3. Unsupported Interfaces
Direct interaction with these interfaces is not supported unless your use of them is explicitly requested by Red Hat Support:
- The
vdsm-clientCommand -
Use of the
vdsm-clientcommand to interact with virtualization hosts is not supported unless explicitly requested by Red Hat Support. - Red Hat Virtualization Manager Database
-
Direct access to, and manipulation of, the Red Hat Virtualization Manager (
engine) database is not supported unless explicitly requested by Red Hat Support.
Red Hat Support will not debug user-created scripts or hooks except where it can be demonstrated that there is an issue with the interface being used rather than the user-created script itself. For more general information about Red Hat’s support policies see https://access.redhat.com/support/offerings/production/soc.html.
