[libvirt] Remote access and libvirtd

[Matthias Bolte]

2009/11/5 Dave Bryson <daveb at miceda.org>:
> Max,
>
> Essentially I want to be able to access ESX remotely using the libvirt
> python binding to mainly control a VM (start,stop,suspend,snapshot).  My
> concern was that I needed to install and run libvirtd on ESX to do that.
>  But it sounds like the libvirt ESX support essentially uses the SOAP API.
> So it should work with libvirt installed on just the client correct?
>
> Thanks again,
> Dave
>
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Maximilian Wilhelm wrote:
>
>> Anno domini 2009 Dave Bryson scripsit:
>>
>> Hi Dave!
>>
>> (Moved the thread back to the list, hope thats OK)
>>
>>> Thank you for the response.  I'm working with ESX and am looking at
>>> libvirt to see if it would be beneficial to use over the ESX SOAP API
>>> (i'm not a SOAP fan). But in the case of remote access it doesn't appear
>>> that libvirt will be able to help me.
>>
>> Well, the ESX driver is working completely remote and should therefore
>> be helpful.
>>
>> The driver only uses the VI API, which practically is SOAP, to
>> communicate with the server.
>>
>> If you could describe the problem you are facing a bit more precisly,
>> one could give you some hints about how to solve this.
>>
>> Ciao
>> Max
>> --
>> Träume nicht von Dein Leben: Lebe Deinen Traum!
>

Correct, the libvirt ESX driver works with normal, unchanged ESX
servers. You don't need to install anything onto the ESX server,
because the ESX driver uses the same API to access it remotely as the
Virtual Infrastructure Client does.

Regarding the current features of the ESX driver. You can define,
undefine, start, stop, reboot, suspend, resume and migrate virtual
machines. You can also reconfigure virtual CPUs and memory, but you
can't snapshot a virtual machine yet, because libvirt doesn't have an
API for snapshots yet. It exposes the Xen save/restore API, but that
doesn't map onto the snapshot mechanics of ESX.

Matthias