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Chapter 11. Enhancing Virtualization with the QEMU Guest Agent and SPICE Agent

Agents in Red Hat Enterprise Linux such as the QEMU guest agent and the SPICE agent can be deployed to help the virtualization tools run more optimally on your system. These agents are described in this chapter.

Note

To further optimize and tune host and guest performance, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Virtualization Tuning and Optimization Guide.

11.1. QEMU Guest Agent
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The QEMU guest agent runs inside the guest and allows the host machine to issue commands to the guest operating system using libvirt, helping with functions such as freezing and thawing filesystems. The guest operating system then responds to those commands asynchronously. The QEMU guest agent package, qemu-guest-agent, is installed by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
This section covers the libvirt commands and options available to the guest agent.

Important

Note that it is only safe to rely on the QEMU guest agent when run by trusted guests. An untrusted guest may maliciously ignore or abuse the guest agent protocol, and although built-in safeguards exist to prevent a denial of service attack on the host, the host requires guest co-operation for operations to run as expected.
Note that QEMU guest agent can be used to enable and disable virtual CPUs (vCPUs) while the guest is running, thus adjusting the number of vCPUs without using the hot plug and hot unplug features. For more information, see Section 20.36.6, “Configuring Virtual CPU Count”.

11.1.1. Setting up Communication between the QEMU Guest Agent and Host
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The host machine communicates with the QEMU guest agent through a VirtIO serial connection between the host and guest machines. A VirtIO serial channel is connected to the host via a character device driver (typically a Unix socket), and the guest listens on this serial channel.

Note

The qemu-guest-agent does not detect if the host is listening to the VirtIO serial channel. However, as the current use for this channel is to listen for host-to-guest events, the probability of a guest virtual machine running into problems by writing to the channel with no listener is very low. Additionally, the qemu-guest-agent protocol includes synchronization markers that allow the host physical machine to force a guest virtual machine back into sync when issuing a command, and libvirt already uses these markers, so that guest virtual machines are able to safely discard any earlier pending undelivered responses.

11.1.1.1. Configuring the QEMU Guest Agent on a Linux Guest
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The QEMU guest agent can be configured on a running or shut down virtual machine. If configured on a running guest, the guest will start using the guest agent immediately. If the guest is shut down, the QEMU guest agent will be enabled at next boot.
Either virsh or virt-manager can be used to configure communication between the guest and the QEMU guest agent. The following instructions describe how to configure the QEMU guest agent on a Linux guest.

Procedure 11.1. Setting up communication between guest agent and host with virsh on a shut down Linux guest

  1. Shut down the virtual machine

    Ensure the virtual machine (named rhel7 in this example) is shut down before configuring the QEMU guest agent: 
    # virsh shutdown rhel7
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  2. Add the QEMU guest agent channel to the guest XML configuration

    Edit the guest's XML file to add the QEMU guest agent details: 
    # virsh edit rhel7virsh edit rhel7
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
    Add the following to the guest's XML file and save the changes: 
    <channel type='unix'>
   <target type='virtio' name='org.qemu.guest_agent.0'/>
</channel>
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  3. Start the virtual machine

    # virsh start rhel7
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  4. Install the QEMU guest agent on the guest

    Install the QEMU guest agent if not yet installed in the guest virtual machine: 
    # yum install qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  5. Start the QEMU guest agent in the guest

    Start the QEMU guest agent service in the guest: 
    # systemctl start qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
Alternatively, the QEMU guest agent can be configured on a running guest with the following steps:

Procedure 11.2. Setting up communication between guest agent and host on a running Linux guest

  1. Create an XML file for the QEMU guest agent

    # cat agent.xml
<channel type='unix'>
   <target type='virtio' name='org.qemu.guest_agent.0'/>
</channel>
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  2. Attach the QEMU guest agent to the virtual machine

    Attach the QEMU guest agent to the running virtual machine (named rhel7 in this example) with this command: 
    # virsh attach-device rhel7 agent.xml
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  3. Install the QEMU guest agent on the guest

    Install the QEMU guest agent if not yet installed in the guest virtual machine: 
    # yum install qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  4. Start the QEMU guest agent in the guest

    Start the QEMU guest agent service in the guest: 
    # systemctl start qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

Procedure 11.3. Setting up communication between the QEMU guest agent and host with virt-manager

  1. Shut down the virtual machine

    Ensure the virtual machine is shut down before configuring the QEMU guest agent.
    To shut down the virtual machine, select it from the list of virtual machines in Virtual Machine Manager, then click the light switch icon from the menu bar.

  2. Add the QEMU guest agent channel to the guest

    Open the virtual machine's hardware details by clicking the lightbulb icon at the top of the guest window.
    Click the Add Hardware button to open the Add New Virtual Hardware window, and select Channel.
    Select the QEMU guest agent from the Name drop-down list and click Finish:
    Selecting the QEMU guest agent channel device
    View larger image
    Selecting the QEMU guest agent channel device

    Figure 11.1. Selecting the QEMU guest agent channel device

  3. Start the virtual machine

    To start the virtual machine, select it from the list of virtual machines in Virtual Machine Manager, then click on the menu bar.

  4. Install the QEMU guest agent on the guest

    Open the guest with virt-manager and install the QEMU guest agent if not yet installed in the guest virtual machine: 
    # yum install qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  5. Start the QEMU guest agent in the guest

    Start the QEMU guest agent service in the guest: 
    # systemctl start qemu-guest-agent
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
The QEMU guest agent is now configured on the rhel7 virtual machine.
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