Extreme SLX-OS Management Configuration Guide, 20.3.4a

After the installation, you can start and stop the image by means of the tpvm start and tpvm stop commands, respectively. To start the TPVM image automatically in subsequent reboots, use the tvpm auto-boot enable command. (TVPM may not come up if there are any issues with booting SLX-OS.)

Once the TPVM image is running, you can download user-specific applications by copying them to the TPVM partition and starting them manually.

To uninstall the TPVM image and release its resources, use the tpvm uninstall command.

Important

When TPVM is re-installed, any user applications are deleted.

Resources and default XML configuration

TPVM runs the Linux 5.3 64-bit kernel, and has 4 GB of RAM. On the SLX 9540 and 9640, the second SSD provides an additional dedicated 120 GB of memory, and shares one of the 8 CPU cores with the SLX-OS. The 9150 SSD allocates an additional 64 GB of RAM to the TPVM, and shares one of 8 CPU cores with SLX-OS. XML is used as the file format for storing the total configuration, including domain, network, storage, and other elements. The storage file is used by QEMU/Libvirt to instantiate TPVM, and cannot be edited by the user.

Resource usage

From the Linux host's perspective, TPVM appears as a process. All commands to check TPVM resources and control TPVM are executed from the host and have administrative (root) restrictions.

To check TPVM resource utilization, use the following commands:

ps aux | grep TPVM
top –p pid
cat /proc/pid /*

Console access

A console daemon runs on the host and opens a console connection to TPVM on the 9540. You can switch the console connection between host, SLX-OS, and TPVM using the following key sequences, respectively.

Host: Ctrl + y + 1
SLX-OS: Ctrl + y + 2
TPVM: Ctrl + y + 3

For information on accessing the console on the 9150 and other baremetal platforms, see TPVM on the SLX 9150 series.

Note

By default, the console is connected to SLX-OS.

TPVM can be accessed through the eth0 (management ) interface. The eth0 interface connects to the outside network through the host physical interface, which makes it appear as a normal host to the rest of the network. SSH or Telnet access to TPVM is provided through the IP address of the eth0 interface configured on TPVM.

IP address management

The assignment of a TPVM IP address to a management interface uses DHCP by default. However, the user can also assign a static address and a default gateway to the TPVM eth0 interface by using the ifconfig command. See Assigning a static IP address on the TPVM Linux OS.

TPVM and NTP

On each tpvm start event, TPVM will synchronize the clock with SLX. By default, TPVM will sync with the Ubuntu time server. You can use show tpvm config ntp to verify the NTP server, status, time, timezone, and clock settings. If necessary, tpvm config ntp can be used to configure a different NTP server.

Communication between TPVM and SLX-OS

An HTTP RESTful interface is provided for accessing the running configuration, interface statistics, interface states, and all system-related information. TPVM is prepackaged with a RESTful client to support, for example, cURL (command line RESTful access utility), to extract information from SLX-OS. cURL uses HTTP methods (such as GET, PUT) to extract and modify configuration information so long as the requesting user is authenticated correctly.

The following example shows a simple request format from TPVM:

curl -s -u admin:passwordhttp://ip-addr/rest/config/running/ . . .

In addition to cURL, Advanced Rest Client, a Chrome-based RESTful client application, is prepackaged inside TPVM and is accessed through a browser interface.

Both HTTP and HTTPS secure access are enabled.

NFS mount support

TVPM supports the NFS mount of an external drive to support the storage of captured data.

Packages support and applications

No configuration is needed on TPVM to support RESTful access with cURL and Google-chrome.

In addition, TPVM comes with Tcpdump, Tshark, and Wireshark prepackaged to support packet capture.

Users or administrators can use the apt-get command with options to upgrade, update, purge, or remove (to downgrade to an older version). In addition, applications can be downloaded to provide a development environment that allows users or administrators to build their own applications, development tools (gdb, glibc (e.g. ANSI-C and POSIX), and gcc for C/C++ . Similarly, python development tools can also be downloaded.

Containers

The following container binaries have been tested with TPVM:

Docker container: docker-1.13.0
Linux container: LXC 1.0

The above binaries do not come prepacked with TPVM. Use the wget or apt-get commands to install, upgrade, or downgrade Docker and Linux container binaries or packages in TPVM.

Frequently used commands


Command	Description
auto-boot	Enables or disables start of TPVM at next boot.
disk	Supports TPVM disk operations.
install	Installs TPVM.
password	Updates the root password.
start	Starts TPVM.
stop	Stops TPVM.
uninstall	Uninstalls TPVM.

TPVM Management