James Carlson wrote: > Mark Johnson writes: >> James Carlson wrote: >>> Artem Kachitchkine writes: >>>> This fasttrack delivers a new virtual disk backend driver for Solaris >>>> which is capable of reading & writing VMWare native (vmdk), VirtualBox >>>> native (vdi), and raw disk files. See the sister vdiskadm fasttrack for >>>> information on how to create and manage these file based virtual disks. >>> Does this project depend on 'vdiskadm'? Does that other project >>> depend on this one? >> blktap does have a dependency on vdiskadm, but can >> operate without it. blktap is specific to Xen. >> >> vdiskadm does not have any dependencies on blktap or >> xVM. It can be leveraged by other efforts (as blktap >> did). There aren't any other projects leveraging >> vdiskadm today. > > Would vdiskadm be a useful addition to the system if blktap never > integrates? (What would it do?)
By itself, vdiskadm wouldn't be overly useful today. You would be able to create/snapshot vmdk and vdi files. But nothing would write to them. In the near future, you will be able to convert a vmdk or vdi files to a zvol, or zvol to vmdk or vdi file.. That would be useful outside of blktap. But that is *not* covered by this fast track. Having them separate is based on forward look assumptions that it will be used by other code outside of xVM-Xen. I can see how assumptions like that can get out of hand too.. >>> I'd much rather see the whole project described in a single ARC case, >>> if that's at all possible. >> If you feel strongly about it, we can do that... What >> would be the next step for us? > > No, I don't feel strongly about it. I just think it's less confusing > to see one case that sets out the whole project than a series of tiny > interconnected cases that are intended to be worked together. We can certainly see that point.. We don't have any issues with combining the two cases if asked to. We would just need a little guidance on what we would need to do to move forward with that. >>>> 4.3. Interfaces >>> What about the VMWare native and Virtual Box native disk file formats? >> Yes, I will add this in. I'll wait to hear back about the merge >> before sending out an update. > > OK. I'm mostly curious about the stability level of those formats. vmdk and vdi file formats are Uncommitted. Thanks, MRJ
