Web based KVM management for Ubuntu

Question

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

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

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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.

Solution 3

Try these:

• Archipel
• Karesansui
• oVirt

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.

Solution 4

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?

Solution 5

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

Good piece of software for managing KVM clusters

View more solutions

Comments

[jkp]

Good question...I wanted to ask exactly the same thing myself (am in an identical scenario).

[Till]

Pretty weird that there is nothing semi-decent for ubuntu yet.

[lewdsterthumbs]

@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.

[David Corsalini]

Till: no wonder, canonical don't really develop much, only incorporate ready projects.

[sendmoreinfo]

oVirt is pretty much tied to Fedora, thus not useful in Ubuntu.

[Deb]

Product and service recommendations are off topic per the updated FAQ.

[lewdsterthumbs]

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)

[lewdsterthumbs]

At this point in time we're only looking at KVM based solutions, but thanks for the suggestion.

[lewdsterthumbs]

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..

[lewdsterthumbs]

Proxmox superficially seems to fail the "no dedicated OS installs" requirement.. Or am I mistaken?

[lewdsterthumbs]

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..

[lewdsterthumbs]

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?

[antpaw]

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.

[Icebreaker]

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.

[Axel]

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.

[Fabian Zeindl]

Archipel needs an XMPP-server to be installed somewhere.