[libvirt-users] virsh : Need help to manage a vm on a remote vmWare

[Matthias Bolte]

2011/2/2 Etienne GOSSET <ego at ubiqube.com>:
> Hello,
>
>
>
> I’m trying to use the tool virsh of libvirt.
>
> I want to manage via CLI a vm on a vmware hypervisor which is hosted on a
> remote host (Is that what you call the node??).
>

You say hosted, so what VMware hypervisor are you using? VMware
ESX(i), Server (aka GSX), Player or Workstation?

VMware Server, Player and Workstation are the hosted ones. Hosted
means that they are installed as an application on a common OS like
Linux, Windows or Mac.

>
> I read a lot of thing on your site but I really don’t understand how to do
> something…
>
> I saw that:
>
>>virsh edit $your-vm-name
>
> I think “$your-vm-name” is the xml file you’re talking about?
>

No, $your-vm-name refers to the name of the virtual machine, not a
patch to a file.

>
> Is it mandatory to use those XML file in order to use virsh? (Because it is
> very huge!)
>

The domain XML files are a core aspect of libvirt and virsh. I
wouldn't call this fies huge, they typically have 20-30 lines. See

http://www.libvirt.org/drvesx.html#xmlconfig

for a typical example.

>
> I also saw this way of using virsh :
>
>>virsh --connect esx://user@hypervisorHost://path/to/myVM.vmx
>

This looks like random guessing, as in none of the VMware specific
driver in libvirt you can specify the path to a .vmx file.

Where did you saw this?

>
> Result is:
>
> error: invalid argument in libvirt was built without the 'esx' driver
>
>
>
> What is the problem here?
>

Your libvirt was compiled without the VMware vSphere/ESX driver that
supports VMware vSphere/ESX(i) and VMware Server. For VMware Player
and Workstation you'll need the other VMware driver, that was recently
added. The later one has no additional dependencies and should be
available by default.

If you compiled libvirt from source yourself you need to have the
libcurl development package installed. Otherwise the configure script
will disable ESX support.

If you installed libvirt as package from your distro then your distro
decided to disable ESX support.

>
> For information, I installed libvirt-0.8.7, can you give me the first step
> to manage an existing vm hosted on a distant vmWare (via CLI).
>

Sure, we'll try to help you, but first we need to know to which of
VMware's hypervisors you actually want to talk to: VMware ESX(i),
Server (aka GSX), Player or Workstation.

Matthias