5 ms·

In terms of speed, how is virt-builder compare to say Terraform? Terraform is dog slow sometimes due to cloud provisioning. Would be nice to just be able to bu

In terms of speed, how is virt-builder compare to say Terraform? Terraform is dog slow sometimes due to cloud provisioning. Would be nice to just be able to build the VM locally then push the AMI/VHD into AWS or Azure.

kashyapc 5y ago
I don't know how Terraform works, but `virt-builder` will cache the xz-compressed template images locally on your first pull. So for example, if you build a Fedora image: $ virt-builder fedora-32 --size 10G --format qcow2 Then the (xz-compressed) template Fedora 32 image will be cached under ~/.cache/virt-builder. So your subsequent Fedora 32 image provisioning will be much faster. You might want to give it a whirl and see if it satisfies your needs; `virt-builder` should be available on most major Linux distributions.
rwmj 5y ago
virt-builder can usually build out a disk image in 15-60 seconds if the template has already been downloaded and you're running on baremetal. Might be 120 seconds if you have to use nested KVM or TCG. $ virt-builder fedora-33 [ 1.5] Downloading: http://builder.libguestfs.org/fedora-33.xz [ 2.3] Planning how to build this image [ 2.3] Uncompressing [ 8.6] Opening the new disk [ 13.8] Setting a random seed [ 13.8] Setting passwords virt-builder: Setting random password of root to mZbPJw9d1ZHgowBk [ 14.8] Finishing off Output file: fedora-33.img Output size: 6.0G Output format: raw Total usable space: 6.0G Free space: 4.7G (79%) By the way, interesting virt-builder factoid: It uses a STRIPS-based planner to optimize the order of steps when building the image, so it doesn't waste time doing multiple copies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Research_Institute_Problem_Solver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Research_Institute_Pr... https://github.com/rwmjones/guestfs-tools/blob/0cffcbb7848af85e6839c459e4b60adf51afb813/builder/builder.ml#L339-L599 https://github.com/rwmjones/guestfs-tools/blob/0cffcbb7848af... https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5c5cb4f9519f8deca5c33cb7f434bf3620/mltools/planner.mli https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5... https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5c5cb4f9519f8deca5c33cb7f434bf3620/mltools/planner.ml https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5...

kashyapc 5y ago

I don't know how Terraform works, but `virt-builder` will cache the xz-compressed template images locally on your first pull. So for example, if you build a Fedora image: $ virt-builder fedora-32 --size 10G --format qcow2 Then the (xz-compressed) template Fedora 32 image will be cached under ~/.cache/virt-builder. So your subsequent Fedora 32 image provisioning will be much faster. You might want to give it a whirl and see if it satisfies your needs; `virt-builder` should be available on most major Linux distributions.

rwmj 5y ago

virt-builder can usually build out a disk image in 15-60 seconds if the template has already been downloaded and you're running on baremetal. Might be 120 seconds if you have to use nested KVM or TCG. $ virt-builder fedora-33 [ 1.5] Downloading: http://builder.libguestfs.org/fedora-33.xz [ 2.3] Planning how to build this image [ 2.3] Uncompressing [ 8.6] Opening the new disk [ 13.8] Setting a random seed [ 13.8] Setting passwords virt-builder: Setting random password of root to mZbPJw9d1ZHgowBk [ 14.8] Finishing off Output file: fedora-33.img Output size: 6.0G Output format: raw Total usable space: 6.0G Free space: 4.7G (79%) By the way, interesting virt-builder factoid: It uses a STRIPS-based planner to optimize the order of steps when building the image, so it doesn't waste time doing multiple copies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Research_Institute_Problem_Solver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Research_Institute_Pr... https://github.com/rwmjones/guestfs-tools/blob/0cffcbb7848af85e6839c459e4b60adf51afb813/builder/builder.ml#L339-L599 https://github.com/rwmjones/guestfs-tools/blob/0cffcbb7848af... https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5c5cb4f9519f8deca5c33cb7f434bf3620/mltools/planner.mli https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5... https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5c5cb4f9519f8deca5c33cb7f434bf3620/mltools/planner.ml https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs-common/blob/74bc5c5...