[et-mgmt-tools] VM images

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 20:25 -0700, David Lutterkort wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-06-09 at 14:51 +0100, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> >   - Including vcpu, memory, graphics and nic in this metadata is mixing 
> >     up two things - the things the image need in order to boot and the 
> >     defaults recommended when instantiating a guest with the image. 
> >     Perhaps put them in a different toplevel element e.g.
> > 
> >       <image>
> >         <boot_options>
> >            <boot>
> >            ...
> >         </boot_options>
> >         <storage>
> >             <disk>
> >             ...
> >         </storage>
> >         <defaults>
> >           <memory>
> >           <vcpus>
> >           ...
> >         </defaults>
> >       </image>
> 
> After looking at this again, I realized that you think of the metadata
> slightly differently than I do: note that  I don't have a <boot_options>
> tag, I rather have a <machine> tag, that describes the attributes of a
> virtual machine. The reason for structuring it this way is that if we
> ever need multi-VM appliances, it's at least obvious how the metadata
> format should be extended.
> 
> Having a <defaults> section at the level you suggest would make
> describing a multi-VM image kidna hairy.

	I don't imagine this multi-VM appliance thing will ever work out and be
useful, but if we did want to do that surely we'd have multiple <image>
descriptions? The boot descriptions, disks and defaults are all distinct
and unrelated ... the only metadata I can imagine to tie them all
together would be some way for them to find each other on the network.

	(i.e. to allow for this, I'd just add an <images> root element)

Cheers,
Mark.