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Terminology

VM Host

• A VM host is a physical computer running a VMware hypervisor
• A VCL computer entry must be added for each VM host (Manage Computers > Edit Computer Information)
• After the computer has been added to VCL, it is designated as a VM host by changing the computer state to vmhostinuse (Manage Computers > Computer Utilities)

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• Path where master copies of images are stored which are used to transfer images to VM host datastores or to other repositories:
  • If a reservation is assigned to a host but the image does not exist in that host's datastore, it is copied from the repository to the datastore path when the VM is loaded
  • If the VCL environment contains multiple management nodes and the image does not exist in the repository or the host's datastore, the image will be retrieved from another management node's repository by copying it via SCP
• The Repository Path parameter does not need to be configured if the VCL environment contains a single management node and all VM hosts share the same Datastore Path
• Example: /vmfs/volumes/nfs-repository1
• VMs do not run directly off of the images stored in the repository
• Setting the Repository Path parameter determines whether or not an additional copy of an image is created when an image is captured
  • If repository path is not configured then only a single copy of the image will exist in the datastore after an image is captured
  • If repository path is configured then two copies of the image will exist after an image is captured - one in the datastore and one in the repository
• Repository Path location can refer to and be mounted on either the management node or VM host
  • It is highly recommended that the repository be mounted on the VM host
    • When mounted on the VM host, vmdk operations can be done directly on the VM host in a single step
• Images in the repository are stored in the 2 GB sparse vmdk format
  • The size of the vmdk files
  Images in the repository are stored in the 2 GB sparse vmdk format
  • The size of the vmdk files will approximately be equal to the amount of actual data saved in the image regardless of the size of the VM's hard drive
  • Storing images in the 2 GB sparse format is necessary to allow images to be transferred via SCP without having to transfer data equal to the entire size of the VM's hard drive
  • Example: A Linux image contains is allocated a 30 GB hard drive but only 800 MB is actually used. A copy of the image is stored in both the datastore (thin vmdk) and repository (2 GB sparse vmdk).  Each of these locations is mounted via NFS on the VM host and management node.
    • The size of the 2 GB sparse vmdk files will be approximately equal to the actual amount of data used according to both the ls and du commands from the management node:

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      Wiki Markup \[root@vcl-mn vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0\]# ls \-lh \-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 880M Apr 22  2011 vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-s001.vmdk ... \-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1.5K Apr 22  2011 vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0.vmdk total 798M \[root@vcl-mn vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0\]# du \-ch \*.vmdk 406M    vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-s001.vmdk ... 16K     vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-s016.vmdk 8.0K    vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0.vmdk 798M    total

    • The size of the thin vmdk file will be equal to the size of the VM's hard drive according to the ls command from the management node:

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      Wiki Markup \[root@vcl-mn vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0\]# ls \-lh total 953M -rw-\-----\- 1 root root *30G* Aug  1  2011 vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-flat.vmdk -rw-\-----\- 1 root root 540 Aug  2  2011 vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0.vmdk

    • The size of the thin vmdk file will be approximately equal to the actual amount of data used according to the du command from the management node:

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      Wiki Markup \[root@vcl-mn vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0\]# du \-ch \*.vmdk 953M    vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-flat.vmdk 8.0K    vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0.vmdk 953M    total

    • Copy the thin vmdk via SCP - the amount of data copied is equal to the size of the VM's hard drive (30 GB):

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      Wiki Markup \[root@vcl-mn nfs-datastore1\]# scp \-r vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0 matilda:/install/thin vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-flat.vmdk                                                      7% 2261MB  25.3MB/s   18:45 ETA

    • Copy the 2 GB sparse vmdk via SCP - the amount of data copied is approximately equal to the actual amount of data used:

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      Wiki Markup \[root@vcl-mn vmware_images\]# scp \-r vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0 matilda:/install/2gbsparse vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-s001.vmdk                                                    100%  880MB  25.9MB/s   00:34 ... vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0-s016.vmdk                                                    100%   64KB  64.0KB/s   00:00 vmwarelinux-RHEL54Small2251-v0.vmdk                                                         100% 1444     1.4KB/s   00:00

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Networking Parameters

Virtual Switch

• Virtual Switch

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• 0 - private VCL management network
• Virtual Switch 1 - public network used by user making reservation to access the VMs

• The Virtual Switch parameters should Should match the network names configured on the VM host
  • For ESXi, the Virtual Switch parameters must match the Virtual Machine Port Group Network Labels configured in the vSphere Client, example:
    • Virtual Switch 0: Public
    • Virtual Switch 1: Private Image Added

• For VMware Server 2.x, the Virtual Switch parameters must match the Network Names configured by running vmware-config.pl
• Virtual Switch 0 - private VCL management network
• Virtual Switch 1 - public network used by user making reservation to access the VMs

Generate eth0/eth1 MAC

• Not used at the current time
• Will eventually determine whether VMs are assigned MAC addresses defined in the VCL database or if random MAC addresses should be assigned