vpx:// paths looks like this: vpx://vcenter.example.com/MyFolder/MyDatacenter/MyCluster/esxi but to connect to the datastore to read the underlying disk image, libguestfs must form a URL like this: https://vcenter.example.com/folder/data/guest/guest-flat.vmdk?dcPath=MyFo... All parts of this URL can be worked out from the URL or the libvirt XML *except* the ?dcPath=... parameter. The problem is that dcPath isn't a straight mapping from the vpx:// path. The particular problem is that if there is a cluster name in the path (eg 'MyCluster') it appears that we have to remove it. ie: dcPath=MyFolder/MyDatacenter/MyCluster - does not work dcPath=MyFolder/MyDatacenter - works That would be OK if there was always a cluster name at the end of the path, but there isn't. Clusters are completely optional, and AFAIK you can't tell if something is a cluster path element just by examining the name, since clusters can be given arbitrary names by the vCenter admin.

So: (1) Is there something I'm missing here? Maybe the libvirt VMware driver presents this information already and I'm just missing it?

(2) Can we add some way to more easily map from vpx:// paths to datastore URLs? The whole process is very complex even without the ambiguity - it takes a couple of pages of code to do the mapping.

On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 02:29:22PM +0200, Matthias Bolte wrote: > I think the datacenter path could be exposed > as part of the domain XML as > <vmware:datacenterpath>/path/to/dc</vmware:datacenterpath> similar to > the way <qemu:commandline> works. But it would be ignored on parsing. > > Would that work for you? If yes, I can propose a patch that does this. Absolutely this would be brilliant.

2015-09-07 22:04 GMT+02:00 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;: > On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 02:29:22PM +0200, Matthias Bolte wrote: >> I think the datacenter path could be exposed >> as part of the domain XML as >> <vmware:datacenterpath>/path/to/dc</vmware:datacenterpath> similar to >> the way <qemu:commandline> works. But it would be ignored on parsing. >> >> Would that work for you? If yes, I can propose a patch that does this. > > Absolutely this would be brilliant. Okay, here's patch that does this. It's only tested using the test suite, as I don't have an ESX setup at hand at the moment. Do you have the possibility to test this properly?

From 489e2d5dd29dd4b11716897ca52b14f6666ec141 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Matthias Bolte <matthias.bolte(a)googlemail.com&gt; Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:00:47 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] vmx: Expose datacenter path in domain XML

2015-09-16 10:47 GMT+02:00 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;: > On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 03:55:03PM +0200, Matthias Bolte wrote: >> 2015-09-07 22:04 GMT+02:00 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;: >> > On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 02:29:22PM +0200, Matthias Bolte wrote: >> >> I think the datacenter path could be exposed >> >> as part of the domain XML as >> >> <vmware:datacenterpath>/path/to/dc</vmware:datacenterpath> similar to >> >> the way <qemu:commandline> works. But it would be ignored on parsing. >> >> >> >> Would that work for you? If yes, I can propose a patch that does this. >> > >> > Absolutely this would be brilliant. >> >> Okay, here's patch that does this. It's only tested using the test >> suite, as I don't have an ESX setup at hand at the moment. Do you have >> the possibility to test this properly? > >> From 489e2d5dd29dd4b11716897ca52b14f6666ec141 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 >> From: Matthias Bolte <matthias.bolte(a)googlemail.com&gt; >> Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2015 12:00:47 +0200 >> Subject: [PATCH] vmx: Expose datacenter path in domain XML > > If you're happy with this patch, I'd like to push it to the libvirt > repo. I didn't see any later version on the list. Let me know if > this is the final version. > > Also I have opened a BZ for the problem so the fix can be included in > RHEL 7.3: > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1263574 Regarding your question about the changes to the VMware driver: The only required change is the addition for "ctx.datacenterPath = NULL" where virVMXParseConfig is called. The other additions are not really necessary. I made them for the sake of completeness and to match the usage in the ESX driver. Overall I'm happy with this patch. The only concern I have is that the domain XML might not be quite the right place to expose this information. But there are not many other places to expose this without adding new public API. But I assume that the domain XML is the most convenient was for libguestfs to get this information, isn't it?