305-300 LPIC-3: Virtualization and Containerization - Exam 305, version 3.0 Question and Answers

Xen supports two types of guest systems: paravirtualized guests (PV) and fully virtualized guests (HVM).

• Paravirtualized guests (PV) are guests that have been modified to run on the Xen hypervisor. They use a special kernel that communicates with the hypervisor through hypercalls, and use paravirtualized drivers for I/O devices. PV guests can run faster and more efficiently than HVM guests, but they require the guest operating system to be ported to Xen and to support the Xen ABI12.
• Fully virtualized guests (HVM) are guests that run unmodified operating systems on the Xen hypervisor. They use hardware virtualization extensions, such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V, to create a virtual platform for the guest. HVM guests can run any operating system that supports the hardware architecture, but they incur more overhead and performance penalties than PV guests. HVM guests can also use paravirtualized drivers for I/O devices to improve their performance12.

The other options are not correct. Xen does not support foreign architecture guests (FA), emulated guests, or container virtualized guests.

• Foreign architecture guests (FA) are guests that run on a different hardware architecture than the host. For example, running an ARM guest on an x86 host. Xen does not support this type of virtualization, as it would require emulation or binary translation, which are very complex and slow techniques3.
• Emulated guests are guests that run on a software emulator that mimics the hardware of the host or another platform. For example, running a Windows guest on a QEMU emulator. Xen does not support this type of virtualization, as it relies on the emulator to provide the virtual platform, not the hypervisor. Xen can use QEMU to emulate some devices for HVM guests, but not the entire platform14.
• Container virtualized guests are guests that run on a shared kernel with the host and other guests, using namespaces and cgroups to isolate them. For example, running a Linux guest on a Docker container. Xen does not support this type of virtualization, as it requires the guest operating system to be compatible with the host kernel, and does not provide the same level of isolation and security as hypervisor-based virtualization56.

References:

• Xen Project Software Overview - Xen
• Xen ARM with Virtualization Extensions - Xen
• Xen Project Beginners Guide - Xen
• QEMU - Xen
• Docker overview | Docker Documentation
• What is a Container? | App Containerization | VMware

Docker stack is a command that allows users to deploy and manage a stack of services on a Docker Swarm cluster. A stack is a group of interrelated services that share dependencies and can be orchestrated and scaled together. A stack is typically defined by a Compose file, which is a YAML file that describes the services, networks, volumes, and other resources of the stack. To use docker stack to run a Compose file on a Swarm, the user must first create and initialize a Swarm cluster, which is a group of machines (nodes) that are running the Docker Engine and are joined into a single entity. The Swarm cluster has one or more managers, which are responsible for maintaining the cluster state and orchestrating the services, and one or more workers, which are the nodes that run the services.

When the user runs docker stack deploy with a Compose file, the command parses the file and creates the services as specified. However, docker stack does not build or upload the images referenced in the Compose file to any registry. Instead, it instructs the Swarm nodes to pull the images from a registry, which can be the public Docker Hub or a private registry. The user must ensure that the images are available in the registry before deploying the stack, otherwise the deployment will fail. The user can use docker build and docker push commands to create and upload the images to the registry, or use an automated build service such as Docker Hub or GitHub Actions. The user must also make sure that the image names and tags in the Compose file match the ones in the registry, and that the Swarm nodes have access to the registry if it is private. By pulling the images from a registry, docker stack ensures that the Swarm nodes have the same and latest version of the images, and that the images are distributed across the cluster in an efficient way.

The other options are not correct. Docker stack does not build the images locally or on the Swarm nodes, nor does it copy or transfer the images to the Swarm nodes. Dockerstack also does not pass the images to the Swarm master, as this would create a bottleneck and a single point of failure. Docker stack relies on the registry as the source of truth for the images, and delegates the image pulling to the Swarm nodes. References:

• Deploy a stack to a swarm | Docker Docs1
• docker stack deploy | Docker Docs2
• docker build | Docker Docs3
• docker push | Docker Docs4

 Nested page table extensions, such as Intel Extended Page Table (EPT) or AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI), are hardware features that facilitate the virtualization of memory. They allow the CPU to perform the translation of guest virtual addresses to host physical addresses in a single step, without the need for software-managed shadow page tables. This reduces the overhead and complexity of memory management for virtual machines, and improves their performance and isolation. Nested page table extensions do not directly affect the virtualization of other hardware components, such as network interfaces, host bus adapters, hard disks, or IO cache.

References:

• Second Level Address Translation - Wikipedia
• c - What is use of extended page table? - Stack Overflow
• Hypervisor From Scratch – Part 4: Address Translation Using Extended …

The firmware attribute of the element in a libvirt domain definition specifies the type of firmware used to boot the virtual machine. The valid values for this attribute are efi and bios, which correspond to the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) respectively. EFI is a newer standard that supports more features and security than BIOS, such as Secure Boot and faster boot times. BIOS is an older standard that is widely compatible and supported by most hypervisors and operating systems. The other values, scsi, virtio, and pcie, are not related to firmware, but to different types of devices or drivers that can be used in a virtual machine. References: 1 (search for firmware enum)

 The command vagrant init is used to initialize the current directory to be a Vagrant environment by creating an initial Vagrantfile if one does not already exist1. The Vagrantfile contains the configuration settings for the Vagrant box, such as the box name, box URL, network settings, synced folders, provisioners, etc. The command vagrant init does not execute any provisioning tool, start any box, install Vagrant on a Linux host, or download any box. Those actions are performed by other Vagrant commands, such as vagrant provision, vagrant up, vagrant install, and vagrant box add, respectively. References:

• 1: vagrant init - Command-Line Interface | Vagrant | HashiCorp Developer

The CPU architecture of a QEMU virtual machine is independent of the host system’s architecture. QEMU can emulate many CPU architectures, including x86, ARM, Alpha, and SPARC, regardless of the host system’s architecture1. This allows QEMU to run guest operating systems that are not compatible with the host system’s hardware. Therefore, option A is correct. QEMU virtual machines support multiple virtual CPUs in order to run SMP systems. QEMU uses the concept of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) to map the virtual machines to physical CPUs. Each vCPU is a thread that runs on a physical CPU core. QEMU allows the user to specify the number of vCPUs and the CPU model for each virtual machine. QEMU can run SMP systems with multiple vCPUs, as well as single-processor systems with one vCPU2. Therefore, option E is also correct. The other options are incorrect because they do not describe the CPU of a QEMU virtual machine. Option B is wrong because QEMU virtual machines can have more than one CPU with more than one core. Option C is wrong because QEMU does not require a dedicated physical CPU core for each virtual machine. QEMU can share the physical CPU cores among multiple virtual machines, depending on the load and the scheduling policy. Option D is wrong because QEMU does not use the term CPU, but vCPU, to refer to the virtual machines’ processors. References:

• QEMU vs VirtualBox: What’s the difference? - LinuxConfig.org
• QEMU / KVM CPU model configuration — QEMU documentation
• Introduction — QEMU documentation
• Qemu/KVM Virtual Machines - Proxmox Virtual Environment

The lxc-attach command allows the user to start a new process within a running LXC container12. It takes the name of the container as an argument and optionally a command to execute inside the container. If no command is specified, it creates a new shell inside the container1. For example, to list all the files in the home directory of a container named myContainer, one can use:

lxc-attach -n myContainer – ls -lh /home

References:

• 1: Executing a command inside a running LXC - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

 The correct command to move the libvirt domain web1 from the current host system to the host system host2 is virsh migrate web1 qemu+ssh://host2/system. This command uses the virsh migrate command, which initiates the live migration of a domain to another host1. The first argument is the name of the domain to migrate, which in this case is web1. The second argument is the destination URI, which specifies the connection to the remote host and the hypervisor to use2. In this case, the destination URI is qemu+ssh://host2/system, which means to use the QEMU driver and connect to host2 via SSH, and use the system instance of libvirtd3. The other options are incorrect because they either use invalid commands or arguments, such as node-update, pool-add, patch, or cp, or they do not specify the destination URI correctly. References:

https://balamuruhans.github.io/2019/01/09/kvm-migration-with-libvirt.html

http://libvirt.org/migration.html

IaaS is a type of cloud computing service that offers essential compute, storage, and networking resources on demand, on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS is one of the four types of cloud services, along with software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and serverless12. IaaS eliminates the need for enterprises to procure, configure, or manage infrastructure themselves, and they only pay for what they use23. Some examples of IaaS providers are Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services.

 A Pod in Kubernetes is a collection of one or more containers that share the same network and storage resources, and a specification for how to run the containers. A Pod is the smallest unit of workload Kubernetes can run, meaning that it cannot be divided into smaller units. Therefore, option C is correct. All containers of a Pod run on the same node, which is the smallest unit of computing hardware in Kubernetes. A node is a physical or virtual machine that hosts one or more Pods. Therefore, option A is also correct. Pods are not always created automatically and cannot be explicitly configured. Pods can be created manually using YAML or JSON files, or using commands like kubectl run or kubectl create. Pods can also be created automatically by higher-level controllers, such as Deployment, ReplicaSet, or StatefulSet. Therefore, option B is incorrect. When a Pod fails, Kubernetes does not restart the Pod on another node by default. Pods are ephemeral by nature, meaning that they can be terminated or deleted at any time. If a Pod is managed by a controller, the controller will create a new Pod to replace the failed one, but it may not be on the same node. Therefore, option D is incorrect. systemd is not used to manage individual Pods on the Kubernetes nodes. systemd is a system and service manager for Linux operating systems that can start and stop services, such as docker or kubelet. However, systemd does not interact with Podsdirectly. Pods are managed by the kubelet service, which is an agent that runs on each node and communicates with the Kubernetes control plane. Therefore, option E is incorrect. References:

• Pods | Kubernetes
• What is a Kubernetes pod? - Red Hat
• What’s the difference between a pod, a cluster, and a container?
• What are Kubernetes Pods? | VMware Glossary
• Kubernetes Node Vs. Pod Vs.Cluster: Key Differences - CloudZero

The WORKDIR instruction sets the working directory for any subsequent RUN, CMD, ENTRYPOINT, COPY and ADD instructions that follow it in the Dockerfile1. The RUN instruction executes commands in a new layer on top of the current image and commits the results2. The RUN cd command does not change the working directory for the next RUN instruction, because each RUN command runs in a new shell and a new environment3. Therefore, the file test is created in the root directory (/) of the container image, not in the /tmp directory. References:

• Dockerfile reference: WORKDIR
• Dockerfile reference: RUN
• difference between RUN cd and WORKDIR in Dockerfile

The command docker run -tid -v data:/data debian bash creates and runs a new container from the debian image, with an interactive terminal and a detached mode, and mounts a named volume data at /data in the container12. If the volume data does not exist, it is created automatically3. If the command is executed twice in succession, two containers are created and run, each with its own terminal and process ID, but they share the same volume data. This means that both containers can access, modify, and see the contents of the data volume, and any changes made by one container are reflected in the other container. Therefore, the statement C is true and the correct answer. The statements A, B, D, and E are false and incorrect, as they do not describe the behavior of the command or the volume correctly. References:

• 1: docker run | Docker Docs.
• 2: Docker run reference | Docker Docs - Docker Documentation.
• 3: Use volumes | Docker Documentation.
• [4]: How to Use Docker Run Command with Examples - phoenixNAP.

Cloud-init is a tool that allows users to customize the configuration and behavior of cloud instances during the boot process. Cloud-init can process different kinds of data that are passed to the instance via user-data, which is a mechanism provided by various cloud providers to inject data into the instance. Among the kinds of data that cloud-init can process directly from user-data are:

• Shell scripts to execute: Cloud-init can execute user-data that is formatted as a shell script, starting with the #!/bin/sh or #!/bin/bash shebang. The script can contain any commands that are valid in the shell environment of the instance. The script is executed as the root user during the boot process12.
• Lists of URLs to import: Cloud-init can import user-data that is formatted as a list of URLs, separated by newlines. The URLs can point to any valid data source that cloud-init supports, such as shell scripts, cloud-config files, or include files. The URLs are fetched and processed by cloud-init in the order they appear in the list13.
• cloud-config declarations in YAML: Cloud-init can process user-data that is formatted as a cloud-config file, which is a YAML document that contains declarations for various cloud-init modules. The cloud-config file can specify various aspects of the instance configuration, such as hostname, users, packages, commands, services, and more. The cloud-config file must start with the #cloud-config header14.

The other kinds of data listed in the question are not directly processed by cloud-init from user-data. They are either not supported, not recommended, or require additional steps to be processed. These kinds of data are:

• ISO images to boot from: Cloud-init does not support booting from ISO images that are passed as user-data. ISO images are typically used to install an operating system on a physical or virtual machine, not to customize an existing cloud instance. To boot from an ISO image, the user would need to attach it as a secondary disk to the instance and configure the boot order accordingly5.
• Base64-encoded binary files to execute: Cloud-init does not recommend passing binary files as user-data, as they may not be compatible with the instance’s architecture or operating system. Base64-encoding does not change this fact, as it only converts the binary data into ASCII characters. To execute a binary file, the user would need to decode it and make it executable on the instance6.

References:

• User-Data Formats — cloud-init 22.1 documentation
• User-Data Scripts
• Include File
• Cloud Config
• How to Boot From ISO Image File Directly in Windows
• How to run a binary file as a command in the terminal?.

Sparse images are a type of virtual disk images that grow in size as data is written to them, but do not shrink when data is deleted from them. Sparse images may consume an amount of space different from their nominal size, which is the maximum size that the image can grow to. For example, a sparse image with a nominal size of 100 GB may only take up 20 GB of physical storage if only 20 GB of data is written to it. Sparse images allocate backend storage at the first usage of a block, which means that the physical storage is only used when the virtual machine actually writes data to a block. This can save storage space and improve performance, as the image does not need to be pre-allocated or zeroed out.

Sparse images are not automatically shrunk when files within the image are deleted, because the virtual machine does not inform the host system about the freed blocks. To reclaim the unused space, a special tool such as virt-sparsify1 or qemu-img2 must be used to compact the image. Sparse images can be used with both full virtualization and paravirtualization, as the type of virtualization does not affect the format of the disk image. Sparse images are not automatically resized when their maximum capacity is about to be exceeded, because this would require changing the partition table and the filesystem of the image, which is not a trivial task. To resize a sparse image, a tool such as virt-resize3 or qemu-img2 must be used to increase the nominal size and the filesystem size of the image. References: 1 (search for “virt-sparsify”), 2 (search for “qemu-img”), 3 (search for “virt-resize”).

Sysprep is a tool that removes all your personal account and security information, and then prepares the machine to be used as an image. It is supported by Windows and some Linux distributions. It can also remove drivers and other machine-specific settings. Sysprep is required when creating a managed image outside of a gallery in Azure

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/generalize