KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) under Linux is an excellent virtualization environment yet it is still lacking in some areas.  To manage your virtual machines, there isn’t a single management interface, so you are left with using Virt-manager which can be a bit of a pain.

RHEV (ovirt) has some promise as it is a solid web interface and does pretty much everything.  An agent (vdsm) is required on each hosts and ovirt needs to be installed/running on a separate physical machine (it can be on one of your hypervisors, but not recommended as a virtual machine.  However, it has a fundamental flaw in its design: everything must be imported in to its file system design.  It creates a new directory hierarchy which doesn’t allow for existing virtual machines to be added with ease (you have to first create the virtual machine, then move /copy your existing hard drive image over).  Using ISO’s is as easy as dropping your ISO files in to a particular directory.

Archipel comes at it from a slightly different design, and, frankly, it sounds weird!  Using a specialized jabber server (XMPP) to communicate between libvirt and the archipel agent, you get a rather intuitive result for managing virtual machines on one or many hypervisors.

Installing Archipel on a Fedora 16 system is relatively easy.  The instructions on their site cover just about all of the steps, but some small pieces are missing.  The boiled down steps are:

Install and Configure ejabberd (on any host)

1. Install ejabberd and the erlang environment
   yum -y install ejabberd erlang-dev erlang-xmerl erlang-xmlrpc erlang-tools
2. Create a NEW /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cnf file as documented here.
3. Replace MGMT_FQDN with the full host name of your management server (myhostname.mydomain.com)
4. Patch ejabberd systemd definition, append the following to /lib/systemd/system/ejabberd.service:
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
5. Set ejabberd to start automatically
   systemctl enable ejabberd.service
6. Start ejabberd
   systemctl start ejabberd.service
7. Set your ejabberd admin password (replace MGMT_FQDN and yourpassword)
   ejabberdctl register admin MGMT_FQDN yourpassword

Install and Configure Archipel agent (on hypervisors)

1. Install required packages
   yum -y install python-nose numpy python-imaging python-sqlalchemy
2. Install the client
   easy_install archipel-agent
3. Initialize the installation (replace MGMT_FQDN and YOURPASSWORD accordingly)
   archipel-initinstall
   archipel-tagnode –jid=admin@MGMT_FQDN –password=YOURPASSWORD –create
   archipel-rolesnode –jid=admin@MGMT_FQDN –password=YOURPASSWORD –create
   archipel-adminaccounts –jid=admin@MGMT_FQDN –password=YOURPASSWORD –create
   archipel-vmparkingnode –jid=admin@MGMT_FQDN –password=YOURPASSWORD –create
   archipel-vmparkingnode –jid=admin@MGMT_FQDN –password=YOURPASSWORD -a hypervisor_jid@MGMT_FQDN
4. Set the agent to start automatically
   systemctl enable archipel.service
5. Update /etc/archipel/archipel.conf
   xmpp_server = MGMT_FQDN
6. Start the agent
   systemctl start archipel.service

Install the Archipel web interface (any web server host)

1. Pick a place in your web server tree.  For example: /var/www/html/Archipel
2. Download the interface from the Archipel Web Site
3. Uncompress the download in the directory within your web server tree

Using Archipel (any desktop)

1. Navigate to the URL of your Archipel Web Interface
2. Log in using the admin credentials you created as part of your ejabberd install
3. Under Contacts->Add contact, enter in your hypervisor(s) in the format of HOSTNAME@MGMT_FQDN
4. You will see the hypervisor in the left, but no VM’s.
5. To import a VM that is already running, click on the Hypervisor, then click on “Virtual Machines”.  For each machine listed (it will list it as an unmanaged vm), import them.

Archipel Quirks

1. The pages take several seconds to refresh when you click on an item.  Be patient.
2. The VNC console works about 50% of the time.  When it stops working, it will not correct itself.
3. Initial imports of VM’s will list them as “off” in the summary on the left, but clicking on them will reveal that they are running.
4. All problems are usually solved by restarting the archipel agent on the hypervisor in question.