RE: [libvirt] VMware ESX: Allow ethernet address type 'vpx'
From: Matthias Bolte [mailto:matthias.bolte@googlemail.com]
...
The ESX driver parses the VMX file of a virtual machine to gather the
information needed for the dump XML function. The VMX entry
ethernet0.addressType maybe set to vpx if the generated MAC address
was generated by a vCenter and not by the ESX host itself. No direct
interaction between the ESX driver and a vCenter happens in this case.
But there is direct interaction between the ESX driver and a vCenter
if you order the ESX driver to migrate a virtual machine from ESX host
A to ESX host B.
An ESX host itself is not capable of initiating a migration to another
ESX host. Both hosts must be attached to the same vCenter and the
vCenter initiates and controls the migration. So the ESX driver needs
to know the vCenter for a ESX host in order to do a migration.
Therefore the ESX driver URI format contains an vcenter query
parameter.
More detailed documentation in HTML form will be added soon.
Matthias
[IH] thanks for the elaboration. So the driver can talk to both an ESX
server directly, or to vCenter. vCenter is used only for specific
operations (like live migrations), and you opted to connect directly to
ESX (rather than use vCenter API to start a VM as well) for the rest to
allow using in a vCenter-free environment as well?
Are there any other considerations to using ESX directly, or prefer to use
vCenter (say, if you ask vCenter to start the VM, you could benefit from
its load balancing capabilities, etc.).
Btw, does asking ESX to start a VM from shared storage checks for locks,
and prevents running same VM on two ESX in parallel, or must vCenter be
used for "cluster-aware" use cases?
Thanks,
Itamar