Open Stack

Hi,

On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 12:21 PM Paul Belanger <pabelanger at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I wanted to ask if anybody in the community is running VMware a top of
> OpenStack in any capacity?  In Ansible we are doing a POC as part of our
> testing platform and running into some common ops issue. For example,
> what do people usually do for things like using config-drive? Is there
> any specific tooling you us to customize esxi images to run atop
> OpenStack.
>
> Bascially, looking for humans to bounce questions off and see who else
> is doing it.
>

We don't plan on running ESXi on top of KVM but alongside KVM on a
baremetal. So I won't be able to address that specific use case.

However I can share with you what we are planning to do with
config-drive support. (we are actively working on it as I'm typing)

At first, we tried to package Glean for VMware and install that
package when we built the image. The issue with that is that the
package isn't signed. This can affect support and prevent the overall
system from being updated due to the presence of an unsigned package.
You would need some kind of partnership with VMware to get it signed.

We therefore switched to a firstboot script which can be configured in
the kickstart when building the image:
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.esxi.upgrade.doc/GUID-61A14EBB-5CF3-43EE-87EF-DB8EC6D83698.html
(see %firstboot section)

You can have multiple %firstboot section both using busybox or python
as an interpreter.

We have multiple sections performing various steps:
1) Find the config-drive partition. Since it's baremetal, config-drive
is a primary partition at the end of the disk.
2) Load the iso9660 module
3) Mount the config-drive
4) A whole Python section which parses config-drive and perform
hostname/network/password/publickeys configuration.
5) General cleanup: unmount config-drive, unload iso9660 module

Now since it's a firstboot script, VMware no longer complains about
unsigned packages.

I hope this help.

--
Mathieu