[libvirt] Intend to add OVA installation API

[Raghunatha Reddy]

Ata Bohra <ata.husain <at> hotmail.com> writes:

> 
> 
> Thanks again Doug. With this direction, I have  started looking into
details of both formats and also to convert OVF -> libvirt domain XML format.
Will post the review once I get a satisfactory code to share with the community.
 Appreciate your support/suggestion. Thanks!Ata > Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2012
17:27:03 -0500> Subject: Re: [libvirt] Intend to add OVA installation API> From:
cardoe <at> cardoe.com> To: ata.husain <at> hotmail.com> CC: libvir-list <at>
redhat.com> > On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Ata Bohra <ata.husain <at>
hotmail.com> wrote:> > Thanks Doug for your suggestions.> >> > I believe you are
correct about the relation between OVA and OVF. But I am> > not 100 % possitive
about your suggestion: "defining an appropriate domain> > in libvirt". To
understand better I am sharing more details about my plans:> >> > 1. Enhance
libvirt interface code (libvirt.c) to provide a> > domain-independent routine:
virDomainCreateOVA, an alternate API to create> > domain.> >     To make client
code real simple, this routine can take ova path as input> > and internally
strip the OVA to extract required details. (planning to> > define a struct to
hold all essential> >     information).> > 2. Second, to enhance ESX driver to
perform ESX specfic calls.> >> > Given OVA is a tar file, the parsing is just
another file open/read> > operation; it would be simple to perform it inside
domain_conf.c (infact I> > have written a parser to strip information off OVA
already).> >> > Hope to get some comments/suggestions on above steps.> >> >
Thanks!> > Ata> > Right. I'm suggesting you don't go that route and approach the
problem> from another angle. I did a little Googling since my last e-mail to at>
least make sure I understood the basics. So an OVF looks like the> following:> >
virtualappliance/package.ovf> virtualappliance/disk1.vmdk>
virtualappliance/disk2.vmdk> virtualappliance/cdrom.iso>
virtualappliance/en-US-resources.xml> > An OVA would simply be a tar of the
above and named> virtualappliance.ova package.ovf is an XML file containing the>
description of the hardware of the virtual machine, much like the XML> that
libvirt stores about domains. While en-US-resources.xml would be> the US English
descriptions of the machine and its hardware.> > I'm suggesting you write an
application that transforms package.ovf> into libvirt's own domain XML format
and simply call> virDomainDefineXML() rather than adding API to libvirt itself.
You> could then further extend the application to allow you to take a> libvirt
domain and export it as a OVA.> > Looking at VMWare and Xen, they both treat
OVA/OVF as a foreign format> and require a converter application to import them
to their native> internals so it wouldn't be much different than their
approach.> > Just my 2 cents.> -- > Doug Goldstein
>  		 	   		  

Hi Ata Bohra, 
   I am very happy to see this mail chain on OVF to libvirt xml conversion.  I
appreciate your efforts on this. Even we are looking to have this kind of
conversion utility. Could you please share if you have more details on this?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards
Raghu