Bug 1041445

Summary: [RFE][nova]: VMware driver should be able to spawn instances from OVA images
Product: Red Hat OpenStack Reporter: RHOS Integration <rhos-integ>
Component: openstack-novaAssignee: RHOS Maint <rhos-maint>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Jaroslav Henner <jhenner>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: dasmith, jhenner, kchamart, markmc, ndipanov, pbrady, sbauza, sferdjao, sgordon, vromanso, yeylon
Target Milestone: Upstream M3Keywords: FutureFeature, OtherQA, Triaged
Target Release: 7.0 (Kilo)   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
URL: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/vmware-driver-ova-support
Whiteboard: upstream_milestone_kilo-3 upstream_status_implemented upstream_definition_approved
Fixed In Version: openstack-nova-2015.1.0-10.el7ost Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-08-05 13:10:43 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description RHOS Integration 2013-12-12 16:08:55 UTC 
Cloned from launchpad blueprint https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/vmware-driver-ova-support.

Description:

Currently, the VMware driver is using flat images (*-flat.vmdk) and metadata (disk type, adapter type,...) to spawn instances.
This approach requires the user to provide metadata and deal with flat images which are not designed to be portable.

To address to issue, the driver should be able to spawn an instance from an OVA located in the datastore. 
An OVA package is a tar archive file with the OVF directory inside: OVF is an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual appliances or more generally software to be run in virtual machines.

The VMware driver would have to untar the OVA and use the OVF embedded to spawn the VM (an ESX API is already available to boot from OVF).

This change would have the following benefits:
- OVF contains the configuration of the VM (hardware versions, networking configuration, etc.)
- The VMDK that comes with an OVF is stream-optimized (i.e. compressed)
- OVA can be handled by Glance respecting the one-to-one relationship between image and file (OVF comes with the 2 or more files constraint).






Specification URL (additional information):

None
Comment 8 errata-xmlrpc 2015-08-05 13:10:43 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2015:1548