<html> <head> <style></style></head> <body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">Please see inline.<br id="FontBreak"></font><BR><div>> Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2012 17:24:00 -0600<br>> Subject: Re: [libvirt] RFC: Enable Libvirt to handle OVA installation<br>> From: cardoe@gentoo.org<br>> To: ata.husain@hotmail.com<br>> CC: libvir-list@redhat.com<br>> <br>> On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 3:50 PM, Ata Bohra <ata.husain@hotmail.com> wrote:<br>> > This is a proposal to enhance Libvirt library to handle OVA package<br>> > installation.<br>> ><br>> > OVA:<br>> > OVA is one of the widely accepted and consortium defined/maintained format<br>> > for<br>> > Virtual Machine distros. Technically it is a tar file with three main<br>> > components:<br>> > 1. VMX descriptor (XML file defining virtual machine specifics such as:<br>> > virtual hardware etc.<br>> > 2. VMDKs in a compressed format.<br>> > 3. Manifest file.<br>> ><br>> <br>> I thought this was discussed previously on the list before and the<br>> idea was to provide something similar to virt-v2v to convert from OVA<br>> into libvirt. Since effectively OVA machines are not really tied to<br>> any one virtualization solution but could be qemu or VMWare (or maybe<br>> VBox) VMs. It just the disk image and some high level definitions<br>> about the hardware.<br>> <br>> Or are you intending on this just being another storage driver for the<br>> VMWare driver?<br></div><div>[AB] : Yes Doug, I remember you suggesting this idea earlier. I investigated this option trying to figure out how this can be done. It is not difficult to convert OVA description in to libvirt (with adding some exceptions etc) but then I hit the roadblock when it came to transfer of VM disk(s). OVA represents the disk in a compressed form and ESX hypervisor does not provide any API to upload compressed disk. Whereas, one of the steps in OVA installation is ESX providing you a lease object that allows uploading OVA compressed disk to the hypervisor that gets expanded internally. I'm not sure but I believe I reverted back with this observation. </div><div> </div><div>Do you think adding a driver object to handle OVA installation per specific hypervisor enviornment breaks the abstraction? I thought it would allow plugging right solution given the nature of hypervisor. </div><div> </div><div>> -- <br>> Doug Goldstein<br></div><div>Thanks!</div><div>Ata</div><div><a href="http://abohra-libvirt.blogspot.com/">http://abohra-libvirt.blogspot.com/</a></div> </div></body> </html>