Feature #1014

VMWare driver using VMWare file system tools

Added by Emmanuel Mathot over 9 years ago. Updated over 9 years ago.

Status:ClosedStart date:11/29/2011
Priority:NormalDue date:
Assignee:Tino Vázquez% Done:

70%

Category:Drivers - AuthEstimated time:20.00 hours
Target version:Release 3.4 - Beta
Resolution:fixed Pull request:

Description

Using intensively Opennebula with VMWare driver in order to control an operational private cloud composed of servers running exclusively ESXi machine, I have found some limitations with the current implementation. Especially in file system management that requires to share all the storage between Opennebula host and the hypervisor. Since ESXi (using 4.1) supports only NFS, the solution is not very efficient and in my case almost impossible (need to exploit native 2TB partitions).

The idea is to keep a shared storage but only for registered image that would be visible as a datastore on ESXi. The transfer for copying, linking, creating and deleting virtual disks would use vmkfstools remotely by SSH on the ESXi host.

Associated revisions

Revision e3c8a1aa
Added by Tino Vázquez over 9 years ago

feature-#1014: Add VMware specific TM, using vmkfstools

History

#1 Updated by Ruben S. Montero over 9 years ago

  • Target version deleted (Release 3.4)

#2 Updated by Ruben S. Montero over 9 years ago

  • translation missing: en.field_story_points set to 0

#3 Updated by Ruben S. Montero over 9 years ago

  • Target version set to Release 3.4

#4 Updated by Emmanuel Mathot over 9 years ago

We created a development branch at https://github.com/Terradue/one and implemented this feature in a duplicate driver of vmware --> vmware2

#5 Updated by Tino Vázquez over 9 years ago

Hi Emmanuel,

This is an excellent work, many thanks for sharing! We will be evaluating and most likely including this enhancement for v3.4

#6 Updated by Ruben S. Montero over 9 years ago

  • Target version changed from Release 3.4 to Release 3.4 - Beta

#7 Updated by Tino Vázquez over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Assigned
  • Assignee changed from Emmanuel Mathot to Tino Vázquez
  • % Done changed from 0 to 70

Hi Emmanuel,

There is a new VMware TM driver uploaded to the "feature-1014" branch. It is using vmkfstools, but using a ssh approach, to avoid dependencies in the front-end. We would appreciate any feedback you may have.

#8 Updated by Emmanuel Mathot over 9 years ago

I reviewed your solution and it seems to be the good compromise for VMWare host with no shared storage for the VM disks.
On which VMWare system did you test it?
I will try to test it soon and give you more feedback.

In fact, reading again the ticket I wrote 4 months ago, using VMWare host remote ssh command was the first option especially because of the dependencies.
We use ONE in a production environment with security constraints like the 'lockdown mode' of the ESXi host which cuts the SSH access. Therefore on our branch with the driver vmware2, we exploit the VMWare tools at maximum, also for performance reason, but this complexify the deployment.

#9 Updated by Tino Vázquez over 9 years ago

We tested this on ESX 4.1 and ESX 5.0. The case you propose is interesting, in order to support the lockdown scenario on ESX we will create another set of TMs that will assume vmkfstools on the front-end so no ssh is required.

Thanks a lot for the great feedback!

#10 Updated by Ruben S. Montero over 9 years ago

  • Status changed from Assigned to Closed
  • Resolution set to fixed

Closing this one. Further bugs/changes will be tracked in separated issues

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