The libvirt & virtualization tools software development platform

In the five years since the libvirt project started, alot has changed. The size of the libvirt API has increased dramatically; the number of languages you can access the API from has likewise grown to cover most important targets; libvirt has been translated to fit into several other object models; plugins have been developed to bind libvirt to other tools. At the same time many other libraries have grown up alongside libvirt, not least libguestfs, gtk-vnc and more recently spice-gtk. Together all these pieces provide a rich software development platform for people building virtualization management applications. A picture is worth 1000 words, so to keep this blog post short, here is the way I visualize the pieces in the virtualization tools platform, and a selection of the applications built on it (click to enlarge the image)

The base layer

• libvirt: the core hypervisor agnostic management API, coring virtual machines, host devices, networking, storage, security and more
• libvirt-qemu: a small set of QEMU specific APIs, such as the ability to talk to the QEMU monitor, or attach to externally launched QEMU guests. This library builds on top libvirt.
• libguestfs: the library for manipulating and accessing the contents of guest filesystem images. This uses libvirt for some actions internally. libguestfs has its own huge set of language bindings which are not shown in the diagram, for the sake of clarity. It will also soon be gaining a mapping into the GObject type system, which will help it play nicely with other GObject based APIs here.

Language bindings

The language bindings for libvirt aim to be a 1-for-1 export of the libvirt C API into the corresponding language. They generally don’t attempt to change the way the libvirt API looks or is structured. There is generally completely interoperability between all language bindings, so you can trivially have part of your application written in Perl and another part written in Java and play nicely together.

• libvirt-ocaml: a binding into the OCaml functional language
• libvirt-php: a binding into the PHP scripting language
• libvirt-perl: a binding into the Perl scripting language
• libvirt-python: a binding into the Python scripting language, which comes as a standard part of the libvirt package
• libvirt-java: a binding into the Java object language
• libvirt-ruby: a binding into the Ruby scripting language
• libvirt-csharp: a binding into the C# object language

Object mappings

The object mappings are distinct from language bindings, because they will often significantly change the structure of the libvirt API to fit in the requirement of the object system being targeted. Depending on the object systems involved, this translation might be lossless, thus an application generally has to pick one object system & stick with it. It is not a good idea to do a mixture of SNMP and QMF calls from the same application.

• libvirt-snmp: an agent for SNMP that translates from an SNMP MIB to libvirt API calls.
• libvirt-cim: an agent for CIM the translates from the DMTF virtualization schema to the libvirt API
• libvirt-qmf: an agent for Matahari that translates from a QMF schema to the libvirt API

Infrastructure plugins

Many common infrastructure applications can be extended by adding plugins for new functionality.  This particularly common with network monitoring or performance collection applications. libvirt can of course be used to create plugins for such applications

• libvirt-collectd: a plugin for collectd that reports statistics on virtual machines
• libvirt-munin: a plugin for collectd that reports statistics on virtual machines
• libvirt-nagios: a plugin for nagious that reports where virtual machines are running
• fence-virt: a plugin for clustering software to allow virtual machines to be “fenced”

GObject layer

The development of a set of GObject based libraries came about after noticing that many users of the basic libvirt API were having to solve similar problems over & over. For example, every application wanted some programmatic way to extract info from XML documents. Many applications wanted libvirt translated into GObjects. Many applications needed a way to determine optimal hardware configuration for operating systems. The primary reasons for choosing to use GObject as the basis for these APIs was first to facilitate development of graphical desktop applications. With the advent of GObject Introspection, the even more compelling reason is that you get language bindings to all GObject libraries for free. Contrary to popular understanding, GObject is not solely for GTK based desktop applications. It is entirely independent of GTK and can be easily used from any conceivable application. If libvirt were to be started from scratch again today, it would probably go straight for GObject as  the basis for the primary C library. It is that compelling.

• libosinfo: an API for managing metadata related to operating systems. It includes a database of operating systems with details such as common download URLs, magic byte sequences to identify ISO images, lists of supported hardware. In addition there is a database of hypervisors and their supported hardware. The API allows applications to determine the optimal virtual hardware configuration for deployment of an operating system on a particular hypervisor.
• gvnc: an API providing a client for the RFB protocol, used for VNC servers. The API facilitates the creation of new VNC client applications.
• spice–glib: an API providing a client for the SPICE protocol, used for SPICE servers. The API facilitates the creation of new SPICE client applications.
• libvirt-glib: an API binding the libvirt event loop into the GLib main loop, and translating libvirt errors into GLib errors.
• libvirt-gconfig: an API for generating and manipulating libvirt XML documents. It removes the need for application programmers to directly deal with raw XML themselves.
• libvirt-gobject: an API which translates the libvirt object model, also integrating them with the lbivirt-gconfig APIs.
• libvirt-sandbox: an API for building application sandboxes using virtualization technology.

GTK layer

• gtk-vnc: an API building on gvnc providing a GTK widget which acts as a VNC client. This is used in both virt-manager & virt-viewer
• spice-gtk: an API building on spice-glib providing a GTK widget which acts as a SPICE client. This is used in both virt-manager & virt-viewer

Applications

• python-virtinst: provides the original python virt-install command line tool, as well as a python API which is leveraged by virt-manager. The python-virtinst internal API was the motivation behind the libosinfo library and libvirt-gconfig library
• virt-manager: provides a general purpose desktop application for interacting with libvirt managed virtualization hosts. The virt-manager internal API was the motivation behind the libvirt-gobject library
• oVirt: the umbrella project for building an open source virtualized data center management application. Its VDSM component uses the libvirt python language bindings for managing KVM hosts
• OpenStack: the umbrella project for building an open source cloud management application. Its Nova component uses the libvirt python language bindings for managing KVM, Xen and LXC hosts.
• GNOME Boxes: the new GNOME desktop application for running virtual machines and accessing remote desktops. It uses libirt-gobject, libosinfo, gtk-vnc & spice-gtk via automatically generated vala bindings.

The Future

• Get oVirt, OpenStack, python-virtinst and virt-manager using the libosinfo library to centralize definitions of what hardware config to use for deploying operating systems
• Get oVirt & OpenStack using the libvirt-gconfig library to generate configuration, instead of building XML documents up through string concatenation
• Convert python-virtinst & virt-manager to use the libvirt-gconfig, libvirt-gobject libraries instead of their private internal equivalents
• Create a remote-viewer library which pulls in both gtk-vnc and spice-gtk in a higher level framework. This is essentially pulling the commonality out of virt-viewer, virt-manager and GNOME boxes use of gtk-vnc and spice-gtk.
• Create a libvirt-install library which provides APIs for provisioning operating systems. This would be pulling out commonality between the way python-virtinst, GNOME boxes and other applications deploy new operating systems. This would be a bridge layer between libosinfo and libvirt-gobject

There is undoubtably plenty of stuff I left out of this diagram & description. For example there are many other data center & cloud management projects that are based on libvirt, which I left out for clarity.  There are plenty more libvirt plugins for other applications too, many I will never have heard about. No doubt our future plans will change too, as we adapt to new information.  This should have given a good overview of how broad the open source virtualization tools software development ecosystem has become.