Xen-Blanket-NG

Xen-Blanket is a nested-virtualization solution that works without hardware or software support from underlying cloud providers. With Xen-Blanket, you can get hypervisor-level control by running a second-layer Xen hypervisor within virtual machines (VMs) running in clouds. For more information, check out the paper: The Xen-Blanket: Virtualize Once, Run Everywhere, in EuroSys 2012.

This is a new version of XenBlanket based on Xen 4.13.0 and Linux kernel 4.15.5. It is mainly developed to run within HVMs created by Xen, but can also run on top of KVM and VMware ESXi hypervisors.

Installation

Download the original versions of Linux kernel and Xen, and then apply the patches:

wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.15.5.tar.xz
tar xf linux-4.15.5.tar.xz
cd linux-4.15.5
patch -p1 < ../linux-4.15.5.patch

wget https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.13.0/xen-4.13.0.tar.gz
tar xf xen-4.13.0.tar.gz
cd xen-4.13.0
patch -p1 <../xen-4.13.0.patch

You can now build and install Linux and Xen as normal. Refer to the README files included in the source files.

Kernel configuration requirements

For Linux kernel, you need to enable Xen Dom0 support in the configuration. This can be done by typing make xenconfig before compilation. If you are running on KVM, make kvmconfig is useful. A sample kernel_config has been provided.

Grub configuration requirements

For this version of Xen-Blanket, dom0_vcpus_pin=true is required in the command line options for Xen. You can add the following lines to /etc/default/grub (adjust the CPU and memory allocation according to your setup):

GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT="dom0_max_vcpus=4 dom0_mem=4096M,max:4096M dom0_vcpus_pin=true"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_XEN_REPLACE_DEFAULT="console=hvc0 earlyprintk=xen nomodeset"

Make sure that your /boot folder contains necessary kernel config file (i.e., /boot/config-4.15.5-xennested) before generating the grub file with grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

Acknowledgements

Xen-Blanket-NG was developed based on the following GPL-licensed code bases:

[1] A version of Xen-Blanket provided by starlab.io: https://github.com/starlab-io/xenblanket-linux

[2] The original Xen-Blanket released by Dan Williams: https://github.com/danlythemanly/xen-blanket

[3] The Supercloud project: https://github.com/zhiming-shen/Xen-Blanket-AGN