openstack team mailing list archive

[Diego Parrilla Santamaría <diego.parrilla.santamaria@xxxxxxxxx>]

An appliance is the combination of metadata describing the virtual machine
plus the virtual disks. The standard format in the virtualization industry
is OVF. Basically, differs from VMX+VMDK(s) because it has a XML format that
describes the virtual machine (and little bit its environment like
firewalling, policies, etc...).

VMX is VMware specific, and OVF is vendor agnostic (or should be...). From
my perspective VMX + VMDK(s) is not an appliance format, but this is the
kind of topic for a long discussion ;-)

If you are looking for a simple way to describe the virtual machine
parameters for an appliance, check OVF specs to get some inspiration. I
think OVF full spec is overkill because the simpler approach of Nova.

Diego

-
Diego Parrilla
nubeblog.com | nubeblog@xxxxxxxxxxxx | twitter.com/nubeblog
+34 649 94 43 29




On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Jay Pipes <jaypipes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Ewan Mellor <Ewan.Mellor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > Is there a name for the .vmx + .vmdk combination (i.e. a normal VMware VM
> format)?  Maybe just "VMX" as an appliance format?
>
> Sorry for the probably ignorant question here (I'm pretty ignorant to
> a lot of the virtualization details :( ). From Googling, it seems that
> the VMX file is merely a configuration file fed to vmware along with a
> VMDK when creating a virtual machine.  Is this considered an appliance
> format? Thanks in advance,
>
> -jay
>
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: John Purrier [mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> >> Sent: 10 January 2011 08:59
> >> To: 'Jay Pipes'
> >> Cc: Ewan Mellor; openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> Subject: RE: [Openstack] Glance x-image-meta-type raw vs machine
> >>
> >> Jay, this makes a lot of sense. For disk formats I would suggest: VHD,
> >> VDI, VMDK, RAW, & QCOW2. For the appliance formats: OVF, OVA, & AMI.
> >>
> >> Conversion within Glance will need to be able to handle both disk image
> >> conversion and appliance format conversion.
> >>
> >> John
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Jay Pipes [mailto:jaypipes@xxxxxxxxx]
> >> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 10:26 AM
> >> To: John Purrier
> >> Cc: Ewan Mellor; openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> Subject: Re: [Openstack] Glance x-image-meta-type raw vs machine
> >>
> >> And I think we need to come to an agreement on the terms used here...
> >>
> >> What is a "type" of virtual image? Do we mean a *disk* image format?
> >> Do we mean a *metadata envelope* type (OVF, AMI, etc)? Do we mean some
> >> "type" of system image or image part (kernel, ramdisk, etc)?
> >>
> >> What Glance is serving/registering is really called a *virtual
> >> appliance*, as described in this article:
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_appliance
> >>
> >> Proposal:
> >>
> >> Change the Image model to have these following fields, instead of the
> >> existing "type" column:
> >>
> >> disk_format -- choice between ('VHD', 'VDI', 'VMDK')
> >> appliance_file_format -- choice between ('AMI','OVF')
> >>
> >> Thoughts?
> >> -jay
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:11 AM, John Purrier <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> wrote:
> >> > My 2 cents... We need to define a transport-neutral specification
> >> that allows us to encapsulate and copy/move a variety of virtual image
> >> formats, this should be based on OVF. The envelope can contain both the
> >> actual image as well as any required meta-data.
> >> >
> >> > The image elements specified are very AMI specific, we should
> >> generalize to be able to indicate the type of virtual image (i.e. AMI,
> >> VHD, etc.). A test for POC can be a service that takes the data in the
> >> OVF or what is stored in Glance to convert between formats. If we do
> >> this correctly all of the required data will be available at the
> >> correct point in the flow.
> >> >
> >> > Don't know if this is directly applicable to the discussion point
> >> below, but it is important that we get the fundamental
> >> design/architecture concepts in place moving forward.
> >> >
> >> > John
> >> >
> >> > -----Original Message-----
> >> > From: openstack-bounces+john=openstack.org@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> [mailto:openstack-bounces+john <openstack-bounces%2Bjohn>=openstack.org
> @lists.launchpad.net] On
> >> Behalf Of Jay Pipes
> >> > Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 9:44 AM
> >> > To: Ewan Mellor
> >> > Cc: openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> > Subject: Re: [Openstack] Glance x-image-meta-type raw vs machine
> >> >
> >> > On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Ewan Mellor
> >> <Ewan.Mellor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> >> What is the intended semantics of the Glance x-image-meta-type
> >> header values
> >> >> “raw” vs “machine”?
> >> >
> >> > When we pulled the Image model from Nova into Glance, there was a
> >> > field "image_type" that was limited to the strings "raw", "machine",
> >> > "kernel", and "ramdisk".
> >> >
> >> > I'm open to changing this or using something like a "format" field
> >> > (AMI vs OVF, etc..)
> >> >
> >> > Thoughts?
> >> >
> >> > -jay
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
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> >> >
> >> >
> >
> >
>
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