[openstack-dev] ova support in glance

Flavio Percoco flavio at redhat.com
Wed Jul 30 06:50:16 UTC 2014


On 07/30/2014 12:57 AM, Bhandaru, Malini K wrote:
> Hello Everyone!
> 
> We were discussing the following blueprint in Glance:
> Enhanced-Platform-Awareness-OVF-Meta-Data-Import :https://review.openstack.org/#/c/104904/
> 
> The OVA format is very rich and the proposal here in its first incarnation is to essentially Untar the ova package, andimport the first disk image therein and parse the ovf file and attach meta data to the disk image.
> There is a nova effort  in a similar vein that supports OVA, limiting its availability to the VMWare hypervisor. Our efforts will combine.
> 
> The issue that is raised is how many openstack users and OpenStack cloud providers tackle OVA data with multiple disk images, using them as an application.
> Do your users using OVA with content other than 1 disk image + OVF? 
> That is does it have other files that are used? Do any of you use OVAs with snapshot chains?
> Would this solution path break your system, result in unhappy users?  
> 
> 
> If the solution will at least address 50% of the use cases, a low bar, and ease deploying NFV applications, this would be worthy.
> If so, how would we message around this so as not to imply that OpenStack supports OVA in its full glory?
> 
> Down the road the Artefacts blueprint will provide a place holder for OVA. Perhaps even the OVA format may be transformed into a Heat template to work in OpenStack.
> 
> Please do prov ide us your feedback.


Hey,

Thanks for your efforts and interest in this area.

We've discussed this in the past - sorry, I don't have linking to the
previous discussions - and the results of these discussions led to just
wait until we have a better "template" management in Glance. Artifacts
were also indirectly supported by this idea of having a better way to
store these multi-image templates in Glance.

After taking a look at the proposed spec, I'm even more hesitant to
letting it land. The reason being that changes proposed there would fit
in the work going on in the Artifacts blueprint. Moreover, the proposed
spec suggests extending the ImageProperty model, which I'd really prefer
not to extend.

In the future - probably L - we'd like to convert images to artifacts,
which means the work related to this blueprint will be gone and we'll
have to translate it to artifacts anyway.

With all that said, there's the other issue you mentioned in your email.
People will expect it to be fully implemented and environments depending
on multi-disk OVAs will find it useless.

Don't get me wrong, I do want to see OVF support in Glance, I just don't
think a custom support for it is the right way to do it.

Thoughts?
Flavio

-- 
@flaper87
Flavio Percoco



More information about the OpenStack-dev mailing list