[one-users] Doing things a bit different, bypassing templates?

[Tim Stoop]

Hi all,

I've succesfully deployed OpenNebula and got two hosts up and running 
just fine. What I'm now running into is that the framework in OpenNebula 
doesn't really fit how we plan on using it. We host a lot of different, 
small to largish VMs that currently just have a local storage. We boot 
them with PXE or cdrom and then install their attached, local disk. 
After that we remove the cd and boot the machine again.

I'm looking for way to duplicate this, but I'm having a hard time 
fitting the templates to this mindset. The whole idea of using a master 
image is pretty clumsy for the way we're used to working. I can see how 
we can create a template for each VM type we have, but how would we add 
a local disk that doesn't wipe on a shutdown without actually having to 
create a separate image for each and every VM we host?

So in short, I'd like to see something like:

- Create a VM of this type, using these values (CPU, RAM, disk size).
- Simply create a local disk instead of doing the whole dance with 
images ssh'ed from the central server.
- Either PXE boot or mount this CD to install from, then reboot and boot 
from the local disk.
- The disk image should be locally, but persistent.

I might simply be overlooking some parts of the documentation here, but 
a pointer in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

-- 
Kind regards,
Tim