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Re: OVF vs. bare container formats for qcow2 images

 

On Jun 29, 2012, at 9:53 PM, Adam Young wrote:

> On 04/01/2012 11:15 AM, Lorin Hochstein wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 29, 2012, at 12:40 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 04:41:28PM -0400, Lorin Hochstein wrote:
>>>> All:
>>>> 
>>>> Given that I have a qcow2 image from somewhere (e.g., downloaded
>>>> it from a uec-images.ubuntu.com, created one from a raw image using
>>>> qemu-img) that i want to add to glance:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. How can I tell whether it's an "ovf" or "bare" container format?
>>> 
>>> You are mixing up terminology here. Disk image formats are things like
>>> raw, qcow2, vmdk, etc.
>>> 
>>> OVF refers to the format of a metadata file provided alongside the
>>> disk image, which describes various requirements for running the
>>> image.
>>> 
>>> The two are not tied together at all, merely complementary to
>>> each other.
>>> 
>> 
>> Thanks, that clears things up. I was confused by this language, which sounded to me like the metadata was embedded in the disk image file:
>> 
>> http://glance.openstack.org/formats.html
>> 
>> "The container format refers to whether the virtual machine image is in a file format that also contains metadata about the actual virtual machine."
>> 
>> In addition, the docs have examples like this, which clearly aren't meaningful:
>> http://glance.openstack.org/glance.html#important-information-about-uploading-images
> 
> Just to add to the confusion  the OVF can contain both the metadata file and the disk image file in a single archived file.  
> 
> "An OVF package consists of several files, placed in one directory. A one-file alternative is the OVA package, which is a TAR file with the OVF directory inside."
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Virtualization_Format#Technical_description


Does anybody know if OpenStack (nova+glance) currently supports OVA packages? 

Take care,

Lorin
--
Lorin Hochstein
Lead Architect - Cloud Services
Nimbis Services, Inc.
www.nimbisservices.com





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