[Openstack] OVF vs. bare container formats for qcow2 images

Lorin Hochstein lorin at nimbisservices.com
Mon Jul 9 01:01:06 UTC 2012


Paul:

I assume you're using XenServer? When I grepped through the code, there appears to be a XenServer plugin for glance for supporting tar balls that could be OVAs, but don't necessarily contain the OVF file (?). 

Here's the code: 
https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/stable/essex/plugins/xenserver/xenapi/etc/xapi.d/plugins/glance#L365



Take care,

Lorin
--
Lorin Hochstein
Lead Architect - Cloud Services
Nimbis Services, Inc.
www.nimbisservices.com





On Jul 5, 2012, at 11:22 AM, Paul Voccio wrote:

> Lorin,
> 
> We've been using OVA packages since the beginning. I believe there is a flag in glance for this. 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> ~pvo
> 
> Paul Voccio
> paul.voccio at rackspace.com
> 770-335-2143 (c)
> pvo on #openstack
> ಠ_ಠ
> 
> On Jul 3, 2012, at 9:07 PM, Lorin Hochstein wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jun 29, 2012, at 9:53 PM, Adam Young wrote:
>> 
>>> On 04/01/2012 11:15 AM, Lorin Hochstein wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Mar 29, 2012, at 12:40 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 04:41:28PM -0400, Lorin Hochstein wrote:
>>>>>> All:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Given that I have a qcow2 image from somewhere (e.g., downloaded
>>>>>> it from a uec-images.ubuntu.com, created one from a raw image using
>>>>>> qemu-img) that i want to add to glance:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 1. How can I tell whether it's an "ovf" or "bare" container format?
>>>>> 
>>>>> You are mixing up terminology here. Disk image formats are things like
>>>>> raw, qcow2, vmdk, etc.
>>>>> 
>>>>> OVF refers to the format of a metadata file provided alongside the
>>>>> disk image, which describes various requirements for running the
>>>>> image.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The two are not tied together at all, merely complementary to
>>>>> each other.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks, that clears things up. I was confused by this language, which sounded to me like the metadata was embedded in the disk image file:
>>>> 
>>>> http://glance.openstack.org/formats.html
>>>> 
>>>> "The container format refers to whether the virtual machine image is in a file format that also contains metadata about the actual virtual machine."
>>>> 
>>>> In addition, the docs have examples like this, which clearly aren't meaningful:
>>>> http://glance.openstack.org/glance.html#important-information-about-uploading-images
>>> 
>>> Just to add to the confusion  the OVF can contain both the metadata file and the disk image file in a single archived file.  
>>> 
>>> "An OVF package consists of several files, placed in one directory. A one-file alternative is the OVA package, which is a TAR file with the OVF directory inside."
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Virtualization_Format#Technical_description
>> 
>> 
>> Does anybody know if OpenStack (nova+glance) currently supports OVA packages? 
>> 
>> Take care,
>> 
>> Lorin
>> --
>> Lorin Hochstein
>> Lead Architect - Cloud Services
>> Nimbis Services, Inc.
>> www.nimbisservices.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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