As a follow-on note; you can track the progress of this project here:
https://wiki.oscar.ncsu.edu/wiki/index.php/VCL_Thin_Provisioning
Best,
Brian
Brian Bouterse
NEXT Services
919.698.8796
On Aug 21, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Brian Bouterse wrote:
I wanted to inform the community and give a forum for feedback (this
thread) on an effort to extend the existing esx.pm provisioning
module to boot netbooted ESX virtual machines in a 'thin
provisioning' way from NetApp storage hardware. Essentially,
through the use of file and volume level cloning the NEXT Services
lab is going to replace any SSH based manipulation of images in the
image library maintained by the esx.pm with ZAPI calls to the netapp
API. These ZAPI calls will provide vmdk cloning capabilities to
replace the simple cp via ssh which is being done now. Here is a
high level briefing of the NetApp storage efficiency this
integration will leverage: http://media.netapp.com/documents/storage-efficiency-brief.pdf
The existing esx.pm module is located here:
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/vcl/trunk/managementnode/lib/VCL/Module/Provisioning/esx.pm
The readme about the existing esx.pm is located here:
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/vcl/trunk/managementnode/lib/VCL/Module/Provisioning/esx.README
The existing esx.pm module will stay as-is, and the new code will be
created in a file named esx-thin.pm which will ultimately be
committed back to the apache.org SVN once the code has been tested
and is felt to create some value.
Best,
Brian
Brian Bouterse
NEXT Services
919.698.8796
