15
votes

We've got a single Ubuntu 9.10 root server on which we want to run multiple KVM virtual machines. To administer these virtual machines I'd like a web based KVM management tool, but I don't know which one to choose from the list of tools mentioned on linux-kvm.org.

I've used virsh & virt-manager on my desktop, but would like a web interface for the server. I tested ConVirt on my desktop, but it failed to pickup KVM machines from virsh / virt-manager, and I could not get KVM virtual machine import to work (only Xen).

oVirt looks good, but I can't find out if and how I can install it on Ubuntu 9.10.. (And I'd really rather not waste another few days on testing stuff that might not work in the end.)

Can anyone recommend any good web based KVM management tools that are easy to install on Ubuntu 9.10?

I'm looking for something that will also allow me to run other services like apache and postgresql besides hosting virtual machines, so preferably fairly lightweight & no dedicated OS installs. We don't need any professional clustering / migration or anything, just something that will let us create, start, inspect, administer & stop virtual machines from a web page.

Best regards, Tim

Update:
Anyone have any suggestions? It's awfully quiet here..

6
  • Good question...I wanted to ask exactly the same thing myself (am in an identical scenario).
    – jkp
    Nov 11, 2010 at 15:47
  • Pretty weird that there is nothing semi-decent for ubuntu yet.
    – Till
    Nov 15, 2010 at 13:40
  • @Til: Yup, even adding a bounty didn't help much to find a clear winner.. Left the question open until a good solution is found.
    – Tim
    Nov 15, 2010 at 14:52
  • Till: no wonder, canonical don't really develop much, only incorporate ready projects.
    – dyasny
    Jan 15, 2011 at 12:49
  • 1
    oVirt is pretty much tied to Fedora, thus not useful in Ubuntu.
    – sendmoreinfo
    Jan 28, 2011 at 19:24

15 Answers 15

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4
votes

Cloud.com Cloudstack runs on Ubuntu 10.04. Obviously Eucalyptus too. I know you don't want cloud features, but you can just ignore them if you want. Perfectly viable as plain hypervisor management, so long as you have an external management box.

As you've noticed, other tools like Karesansui and oVirt are packaged only for RHEL/Centos

Convirture is alright, I'm actually surprised you had trouble importing. I think their update / patching process could be improved.

1
  • The install manual for Cloudstack mentions the following note: "Note: In a single server installation, the Management Server and the Agent may be installed on the same server. The Agent should be installed first, then the Management Server." It seems it would be possible on a single server..
    – Tim
    Oct 22, 2010 at 12:33
4
votes

As reported in libvirtd official site there is basically two open source web interface for administering and manage libvirtd+KVM :

  • AbiCloud
  • oVirt

There is also other alternatives for administering and managing KVM through web interface, you can find a list at this address .

Maybe the best choice is RED HAT Enterprise Virtualization.

3
votes

Try these:

Archipel's look-and-feel looks the best among the others (imho). As Archipel and oVirt both use libvirt as a backend their features are supposed to be pretty much equal; it's the UI layout that differs mostly. Though I haven't checked them both so it is merely a guess.

1
  • Archipel needs an XMPP-server to be installed somewhere.
    – Fabian Zeindl
    Jun 8, 2012 at 21:59
2
votes

Try Proxmox VE, it has a nice web interface to manage KVM and OpenVZ guests. However, it runs on Debian rather than Ubuntu — is that close enough for you?

2
  • Proxmox superficially seems to fail the "no dedicated OS installs" requirement.. Or am I mistaken?
    – Tim
    Oct 22, 2010 at 12:29
  • You can install Proxmox on top of Debian, or use their OS installer. If you consider that Debian ≈ Ubuntu, then it fits the requirements. If you must have Ubuntu, then no.
    – 200_success
    Oct 29, 2010 at 21:45
1
vote

Never tried it, but some friends have recommended me Eucalyptus before.

1
  • Eucalyptus is quite heavy weight & was already on the list of tools linked above.. I'm looking for recommendations based on actual experience, fitting the above listed requirements. As it stands this answer would have fit in better as a comment. (Not worth the bounty)
    – Tim
    Oct 21, 2010 at 14:11
1
vote

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a mature product out there that does what you're looking for well for KVM. We've looked around periodically for something like this in the past, but the list on linux-kvm.org doesn't seem to have added anything useful since then.

We're pretty well resigned to the virt-manager client from Linux desktops and virsh over ssh via putty from Windows to manage. For the relatively simple requirements we have, though -- which match pretty well with the ones you've outlined -- I don't feel like we've been missing too much for a (relatively) small number of hosts and guests to administer. If you're just looking to administer 1 server and its guests, this may be more trouble than it's worth with the current array of options.

2
  • 3
    That's how we've gotten by as well the past few months.. But still it's hard to believe there isnt even anything half-decent out there for the limited set of requirements I've posted.. You;d think there'd be at least a few attempts to wrap virsh in a web-app & show some stats..
    – Tim
    Oct 21, 2010 at 21:10
  • Noticed this PHP/AJAX VirtualBox implementation on HackerNews this morning and thought of your question. To your point, I'd think it would be easier to wrap virsh or virt-manager with a decent web front-end.
    – nedm
    Oct 26, 2010 at 18:15
1
vote

ganeti from google http://code.google.com/p/ganeti/

Good piece of software for managing KVM clusters

1
vote

Try WebVirtMgr, it very nice service for managing virtual machines. It allows create and configure new virtual machines and adjust resource allocation.

0
votes

A somewhat tangential answer:

VMware Server is available at no cost (for internal use) and has a web-based admin tool.

2
  • At this point in time we're only looking at KVM based solutions, but thanks for the suggestion.
    – Tim
    Oct 21, 2010 at 17:10
  • 1
    VMWare Server has problems though: its web interface won't work with recent Firefox builds out of the box (this can be fixed by making FF's SSL options a little more lax) and I find it unreliable (regular "oops there was an error, I'm going to log you out" situations) in IE, and you have to use unofficial hacks of the virtual hardware drives to get it to work as either a host or a guest with the kernel found in the latest Ubuntu LTS release. I'm looking into vbox ad KVM as alternatives because of these issues.
    – David Spillett
    Jan 15, 2011 at 13:13
0
votes

convirt, now has the web gui

1
  • As I mentioned in my question I'd already tried Convirt, but it did not work for me. At that time it already had the web gui. Has anything significantly changed recently that I'm not aware of?
    – Tim
    Oct 22, 2010 at 16:14
0
votes

Apparently, there's an project to add a web based management console to OpenNebula: http://dev.opennebula.org/projects/15/wiki/Wiki

I've (coincidentally) worked with this through SARA and it seemed all right (but still a work in progress). Thought I'd mention it here as a possible new development.

0
votes

In 2008, a Drupal project was started for implementing a virtual machine manager as a web UI for libvirt within Drupal.

Sounds a like a good idea to me.... but it looks like they didn't get very far.

http://drupal.org/project/vps_api

0
votes

SolusVM recently announced KVM support in V 1.3.00:

http://wiki.solusvm.com/index.php/Versions#1.3.00

I've used Solus fairly extensively for managing OpenVZ containers and found it to be a reasonable product so far.

0
votes

Check Cloudmin, it's basically webmin + virtualisation modules. It's quite usable, easy to install and does what it says on the can.

0
votes

OpenQRM is pretty kewl.

I've worked with SolusVM and it's nice, but was still searching for something that would handle VMware, Xen, and KVM - http://OpenQRM.com fits that bill, and offers so many different ways to handle your virtualization, HA, cloning, snapshots, immediate deployment, etc.

And it comes with Debian and CentOS image support for quick sandboxing too.

You can move VMs to Physical machines, Physical machines to VMs, one type of VM (say, Xen) to another (say, VMware), etc.

It's really very robust and highly extensible.

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