[one-users] Easy provisioning missing from newer versions of Opennebula?

[Carlos Martín Sánchez]

Hi,

On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Pentium100 <pentium100 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you for the information. It sucks a bit about the need to create
> templates for every single VM, but if that's how it should be then OK. Our
> customers currently use VMs as VDS so while "MySQL server" template might
> be useful, it will need to be cloned before the customer can use a
> persistent image (as it should be as hard as possible to accidentally lose
> data).
>
> I guess we will have to write our own GUI to Opennebula as it is missing
> some features that are present in the current (quite manual) system. For
> example:
> 1) the ability to extend a virtual disk (virtual server may run out of
> space eventually so the disk will need to be extended without losing data
> or long downtime)
> 2) the ability to create crash-consistent snapshots* or backups and create
> snapshots if the VM is off (as a backup) of all disks at once.
> 3) the ability to migrate with snapshots or keep snapshots after powering
> off the VM (though AFAIK migrating with snapsohts is enabled in the new
> version).
>
> Our snapshots do not include the VM state, they are just ZFS snapshots of
> the VM's dataset.
>

Thank you for sharing your use case, and your feedback. We'll take it into
account for future versions.

Regards

--
Carlos Martín, MSc
Project Engineer
OpenNebula - Flexible Enterprise Cloud Made Simple
www.OpenNebula.org <http://www.opennebula.org/> | cmartin at opennebula.org |
@OpenNebula <http://twitter.com/opennebula>


> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Carlos Martín Sánchez <
> cmartin at opennebula.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Pentium100 <pentium100 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have tried Opennebula 4.2.0 and liked the easy provisioning wizard - a
>>> user could select a template and combine it with his persistent image to
>>> create a VM without the need to create a separate template.
>>>
>>> It seems that this function is missing from Opennebula 4.8.0, requiring
>>> eveyone to create a template for each VM and making the VM creation process
>>> complicated:
>>>
>>> 1) Clone, upload or create a blank image (persistent)
>>> 2) Create a template that uses that image
>>> 3) Create a VM that uses that template.
>>>
>>> If the user need 5 identical VMs they have to create 5 separate
>>> templates that differ only in the images.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to simplify this process? One way is to create a template
>>> without an image, create a VM from it, then start the VM and attach the
>>> image. This seems easier than creating templates for each VM, however this
>>> also has problems. Since attaching the disk requires the VM to be running,
>>> the VM is deployed with zero storage requirements, so it may be deployed to
>>> a host that has insufficient storage for when the user tries to add a 1TB
>>> image leading to problems.
>>>
>>> Our users use the virtual machines as VDS, so persistent images are
>>> important (deleting a VM may not mean I want to delete the data).
>>>
>>
>> The easy provisioning wizard was deprecated in favor of the new cloud
>> view model, see [1] for a complete explanation of it.
>>
>> So yes, you need to define a Template for each Image. It was decided that
>> the advantages justify that extra step.
>>
>> Your example of the previous way of registering images makes a few
>> assumptions that will not apply to everyone. For instance, what happens if
>> you register 2 images with different OS architectures? You would need two
>> Templates with different OS/ARCH, and the users wouldn't know which one
>> applies to each Image.
>> The same goes for a heterogeneous infrastructure. If there are Images for
>> KVM and VMware, you need to create Templates with
>> SCHED_REQUIREMENTS="HYPERVISOR=xx" for each one. But the users can freely
>> mix a kvm template with a vmware image.
>> Another Template attributes coupled to a specific image:
>> NIC_DEFAULT/MODEL.
>>
>> The new model also includes new features. For example, if you as an admin
>> prepare an Image with a mysql server, now you can define a matching VM
>> Template that asks the user the mysql password they want to set when the
>> template is instantiated [2].
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> [1]
>> http://docs.opennebula.org/4.10/design_and_installation/building_your_cloud/understand.html
>> [2]
>> http://docs.opennebula.org/4.10/user/virtual_resource_management/vm_guide.html#ask-for-user-inputs
>> --
>> Carlos Martín, MSc
>> Project Engineer
>> OpenNebula - Flexible Enterprise Cloud Made Simple
>> www.OpenNebula.org <http://www.opennebula.org/> | cmartin at opennebula.org
>>  | @OpenNebula <http://twitter.com/opennebula> <cmartin at opennebula.org>
>>
>>
>>
>
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