PowerVC 1.4.0 allows users to export and import OVA packages by using the powervc-image CLI. In this post, we will see what goes inside an OVA package. OVA stand for Open Virtual Appliance package, which is a tar archive with OVF (Open Virtualization Format) file inside. OVF is an industry open standard packaging and distributing format for virtual appliances. To learn more about OVF and specifications, refer DMTF document DSP0243.
The OVA package must contain a valid OVF descriptor that has sufficient information to describe the image for PowerVC. An OVF might also contain detailed deployment information. PowerVC does not import the deployment information. It only imports information which are required to locate image volume files and create image such as:

• Image name and description



• Architecture



• Operating system type



• Volumes' names and data



• Whether a volume is in the boot set

powervc-image export CLI generates an OVA with the above information. The exported OVA can be consumed by any cloud providers which supports importing OVA images.


Let’s look at an example OVA file named aix-img1.ova to see the necessary fields needed for an OVF:

The OVA should contain the one or more volume files and an OVF file:

[root@dnd-powervc1-novalocal home] # tar -xvf aix-img1.ova
aix-img1.ovf => OVF file
volume1-2gb => volume file
volume2-10gb => volume file

This shows that aix-img1.ova is a single volume image file.

These are the important fields for the image OVF.
[root@dnd-powervc1-novalocal home] # cat aix-img1.ovf

Let’s see some more details on important tags:

- ovf:href attribute should contain the path name of the volume file. Relative path should not contain the dot segments.
- ovf:id should be unique for each volume file.
- ovf:size should be referenced in bytes, and it should exactly match with the actual size of the referenced volume file.

- Specifies the guest operating system information of the image. The values for ovf:id should be taken from the ValueMap of the CIM_OperatingSystem.OsType.

- This is a special customize tag used to describe image architecture. Heterogeneous cloud solution providers can use this field discriminate between x86 and power images.

- As PowerVC supports multi boot images, this option is used by multi volume images to identify boot and data volumes. If this option is not provided, all volumes will be imported as boot volume by default.

Similar fields are available for an OVF file created by running PowerVC export.

To learn more about exporting via the CLI, refer to this blog: “Move images between cloud providers”.

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Authors: Chhavi Agarwal and Carl Pecinovsky

#PowerVC
#Storage