Currently the VM constructor part of DC uses
VirtualBox cli to construct VM images. This
is all well and good except for the fact that
the the vbox cli keeps changing rather frequently
which results in breakages such as the following -
13237 Virtual Machine Constructor doesn't support
building VM's with VirtualBox 3.1
https://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13237
Thus, it seems prudent to investigate an alternate
way of generating VM images, one that doesn't rely
on the vbox cli's as much.
Just recently, I did some experiments where I
was able to -
a) Create a plain file and export it as an iSCSI
target
b) Install OpenSolaris into that iSCSI target
c) After the install was done, take that installed
instance encapsulated in a file and convert it
into a VDI/VMDK with vdiskadm(1M)
d) Boot a vbox instance off of a text installer
media and import the root pool contained in that
VDI/VMDK *
e) Boot another vbox instance with the resultant
VDI/VMDK
This effectively limits the use of vbox cli's
significantly, it's only needed in (d).
What do people think about re-tooling VMC to use
this approach instead?
Thanks,
Alok
(*) The installed root pool has the iSCSI device id
embedded within it. So, when it is booted under
virtual box (and it attaches to a different driver --
IDE/SCSI/SATA), the device id changes. This prevents
the machine from being booted off of that root pool.
The 'zpool import' in (d) is thus necessary to update
device id appropriately before the VM can be booted
under vbox.
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