Virtualization Guide
- About This Manual
- I Introduction
- II Managing Virtual Machines with
libvirt - III Hypervisor-Independent Features
- IV Managing Virtual Machines with Xen
- 19 Setting Up a Virtual Machine Host
- 20 Virtual Networking
- 21 Managing a Virtualization Environment
- 22 Block Devices in Xen
- 23 Virtualization: Configuration Options and Settings
- 24 Administrative Tasks
- 25 XenStore: Configuration Database Shared between Domains
- 26 Xen as a High-Availability Virtualization Host
- V Managing Virtual Machines with QEMU
- VI Managing Virtual Machines with LXC
- Glossary
- A Appendix
- B XM, XL Toolstacks and Libvirt framework
- C GNU Licenses
16 VM Guest Clock Settings #Edit source
Keeping the correct time in a VM Guest is one of the more difficult aspects of virtualization. Keeping the correct time is especially important for network applications and is also a prerequisite to do a live migration of a VM Guest.
Tip: Timekeeping on the VM Host Server
It is strongly recommended to ensure the VM Host Server keeps the correct time as well, for example, by using NTP (see Book “Reference”, Chapter 18 “Time Synchronization with NTP” for more information).
16.1 KVM: Using kvm_clock #Edit source
KVM provides a paravirtualized clock which is supported via the
kvm_clock driver. It is strongly recommended to use
kvm_clock.
Use the following command inside a VM Guest running Linux to check whether
the driver kvm_clock has been loaded:
tux >sudodmesg | grep kvm-clock [ 0.000000] kvm-clock: cpu 0, msr 0:7d3a81, boot clock [ 0.000000] kvm-clock: cpu 0, msr 0:1206a81, primary cpu clock [ 0.012000] kvm-clock: cpu 1, msr 0:1306a81, secondary cpu clock [ 0.160082] Switching to clocksource kvm-clock
To check which clock source is currently used, run the following command in
the VM Guest. It should output kvm-clock:
tux > cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/current_clocksource
Important: kvm-clock and NTP
When using kvm-clock, it is recommended to use NTP in
the VM Guest, as well. Using NTP on the VM Host Server is also recommended.
16.1.1 Other Timekeeping Methods #Edit source
The paravirtualized kvm-clock is currently not for
Windows* operating systems. For Windows*, use the Windows Time
Service Tools for time synchronization (see
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773263%28WS.10%29.aspx
for more information).
16.2 Xen Virtual Machine Clock Settings #Edit source
With Xen 4, the independent wallclock setting
/proc/sys/xen/independent_wallclock used for time
synchronization between Xen host and guest was removed. A new
configuration option tsc_mode was introduced. It specifies
a method of utilizing the timestamp counter to
synchronize the guest time with the Xen server. Its default value '0'
handles the vast majority of hardware and software environments.
For more details on tsc_mode, see the
xen-tscmode manual page (man 7
xen-tscmode).