Introduction

Intro to go here explaining LXD versus LXC and why you want to use it. For now, key bullets,

LXD sits on top of LXC
API to orchestrates containers locally and remotely
Allows moving and copying between hosts
Takes advantage of advanced file systems (in particular ZFS)

You should finish the LXC and LXC with Advanced Networking before starting this article.

Setup

A key feature of virtualization technology is taking snapshots. With traditional file systems, this is expensive in terms of storage and speed. Next generation ZFS solves many of theses problems and it is recommended by Ubuntu to install and use with LXD,

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux # must be using Ubuntu 16.04 or higher.

Next configure LXD,

sudo lxd init

...

Images

...

Cached Images in Image Store

List images currently cached in the image store. There should be none to start,

lxc image list

Image Servers

LXD has 3 image server lists by default,

Image Server LIst	Purpose	Comment
ubuntu:	Ubuntu stable images.	We'll be working with this one.
ubuntu-daily:
images:	All Linux distributions.	For example you can load a RedHat Linux alternative distrobution.

Pulling Image Server Lists

Let's look at the ubuntu: list,

lxc image list ubuntu: | less
+--------------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------+---------+----------+-------------------------------+
|       ALIAS        | FINGERPRINT  | PUBLIC |                   DESCRIPTION                   |  ARCH   |   SIZE   |          UPLOAD DATE          |
+--------------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------+---------+----------+-------------------------------+
| p (5 more)         | 6041c5e200b6 | yes    | ubuntu 12.04 LTS amd64 (release) (20161205)     | x86_64  | 156.47MB | Dec 5, 2016 at 12:00am (UTC)  |
+--------------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------+---------+----------+-------------------------------+
| p/armhf (2 more)   | c19b1fff3336 | yes    | ubuntu 12.04 LTS armhf (release) (20161205)     | armv7l  | 135.19MB | Dec 5, 2016 at 12:00am (UTC)  |
+--------------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------+---------+----------+-------------------------------+
| p/i386 (2 more)    | ce5c6821eebb | yes    | ubuntu 12.04 LTS i386 (release) (20161205)      | i686    | 139.28MB | Dec 5, 2016 at 12:00am (UTC)  |
+--------------------+--------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------+---------+----------+-------------------------------+
...

The output table from list is not very clear. I don't understand what to reference to use the "launch" command. Will put explanation here once figured out. Here is what I can tell,

Example "launch" Command Reference	Column	Note
ubuntu:16.04
ubuntu:6041c5e200b6	FINGERPRINT	Will specifically reference the specific image in the list.g

At this point LXD is all setup and ready to use.

Spinning Up an LXD Container

Creating and starting a container can be done with one command,

lxc launch ubuntu:16.04 container01

This command does the following simultaneously,

References the ubuntu: Image Server List
1. Looks for 16.01 images
2. Matches the current architecture of the machine you are on (in my example
Checks the cache Image Store for the required image
Download (if not in Image Store) the target image
Setup Container called container01 with default settings
Install the target image into container01
Start container01

Replace launch with init if you would like the container to not start by itself.

We can see the downloaded target image,

lxc image list
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+------------------------------+
| ALIAS | FINGERPRINT  | PUBLIC |                 DESCRIPTION                 |  ARCH  |   SIZE   |         UPLOAD DATE          |
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+------------------------------+
|       | f4c9feb3e401 | no     | ubuntu 16.04 LTS amd64 (release) (20161205) | x86_64 | 143.53MB | Dec 22, 2016 at 3:37am (UTC) |
+-------+--------------+--------+---------------------------------------------+--------+----------+------------------------------+

Now instead of empty, we see the downloaded image which matches our architecture.

Also, let's look at the running container. The commands are only slightly different than using straight LXC,

lxc list
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
|    NAME     |  STATE  |         IPV4         | IPV6 |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
| container01 | RUNNING | 10.94.217.171 (eth0) |      | PERSISTENT | 0         |
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+

# Inspect the container,
lxc info container01

Name: container01
Remote: unix:/var/lib/lxd/unix.socket
Architecture: x86_64
Created: 2016/12/22 03:37 UTC
Status: Running
Type: persistent
Profiles: default
Pid: 19681
Ips:
  eth0:	inet	10.94.217.171	vethDXUYOE
  eth0:	inet6	fe80::216:3eff:fe07:69ea	vethDXUYOE
  lo:	inet	127.0.0.1
  lo:	inet6	::1
Resources:
  Processes: 26
  Disk usage:
    root: 144.32MB
  Memory usage:
    Memory (current): 23.24MB
    Memory (peak): 45.28MB
...

For illustration of flexiblity and preparing for the next section, we will update and setup Apache inside of container01.

Remotely execute update of the container from the host which are run as root,

lxc exec container01 apt-get update
lxc exec container01 apt-get dist-upgrade

And now we'll actually create a bash to simulate going in as a console. Notice the prompt change indicating you are root inside of container01,

lxc exec container01
root@container01:~#

Now we install Apache and then exit back to our host,

apt install apache2
exit # Takes you back to your host.

Managing Containers Between Hosts

The most compelling reason to use LXD is ability to transport between containers. Setup a second LXD host on the same network. In this example we end up with two hosts,

Host	Containers	Comment
myhost01	Where we setup container01 with Apache running inside.	This will be the host we can to copy the container from also called remote host.
myhost02	Just empty at the moment.	This will be the client also called the local machine.

Expose Remote Host

In order for the local machine to connect, the remote host needs to be setup to be exposed on the network with a password. Following the instructions here, that work has been done while initializing LXD.

Configure Local Machine

myhost02 (local machine) needs to be made aware of the remote host. I suppose there are multiple ways of doing this and interested in if there is automatic discovery. For now, I'm going to use direct IP address.

lxc remote add myhost02 192.168.0.110
Certificate fingerprint: 119846805c57c71ce8308c6623977202f990eff85d334ddcfef6cacca4cfd883
ok (y/n)? y
Admin password for myhost02: 
Client certificate stored at server:  myhost02

Now the list has been updated to have myhost02 as an entry,

lxc remote list
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
|      NAME       |                   URL                    |   PROTOCOL    | PUBLIC | STATIC |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
| images          | https://images.linuxcontainers.org       | simplestreams | YES    | NO     |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
| local (default) | unix://                                  | lxd           | NO     | YES    |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
| myhost02        | https://192.168.0.110:8443               | lxd           | NO     | NO     |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
| ubuntu          | https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases | simplestreams | YES    | YES    |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+
| ubuntu-daily    | https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/daily    | simplestreams | YES    | YES    |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------+--------+--------+

Interacting with Remote Host

Interaction is exactly the same as a local container except you specify the host name,

lxc list myhost02: # I know the colon is optional but it gets you thinking about the actual container on the host.
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+------+-------+------+------+------+-----------+

# While local machine has some containers.
lxc list 
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
|    NAME     |  STATE  |         IPV4         | IPV6 |    TYPE    | SNAPSHOTS |
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+
| container01 | RUNNING | 10.94.217.171 (eth0) |      | PERSISTENT | 0         |
+-------------+---------+----------------------+------+------------+-----------+

Advanced Tuning of Containers

Depending on your needs there are advanced configurations options with LXD. Below are key considerations I think about,

Security
Advanced Networking
Capping Resource Utilization
...

Reference

Gives more details on initializing lxd - https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/16/lxd-2-0-installing-and-configuring-lxd-212/

Official Ubuntu documentation - https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/getting-started-cli/

Try Online Interactive Tutorial - https://linuxcontainers.org/lxd/try-it/

Page tree

5.2 LXD