Re: [Xen-API] VDI import/export with deltas

[Dave Scott <Dave.Scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 Aug 2014, at 15:50, Bob Ball <bob.ball@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> http://wiki.xensource.com/wiki/Disk_import/export_APIs
> 
> This is great, but I think we're missing the ability to pull a VHD in or push 
> a VHD out.
> 
> The OpenStack case needs to call a vm-import giving a URL to pull a VHD from, 
> and a vm-export to push a VHD out to.
> In particular I think we need to set specific headers as well, as 
> authentication, so I'd like to propose the following as a hopefully simple 
> extension:
> 
> xe vdi-export uuid=$VDI format=vhd dest=http://192.168.0.1:5000/... 
> headers:arbitrary_string=$AUTH_TOKEN
> 
> xe vdi-import uuid=$RESTORE format=vhd source=http://192.168.0.1:5000/... 
> headers:arbitrary_string=$AUTH_TOKEN

This looks sensible to me; plus I’d like to use URLs more in the storage 
interface in future.

> 
> OpenStack also has a case for using bittorrent to download the VDI from peers 
> rather than the central server, but I don't see how to accomplish that with 
> the current proposal without requiring double the disk space as we'd need to 
> download it then push it into XS.

So at the moment, do you receive the .vhd data by bittorrent in-place?

When I last spoke to John about this we discussed some kind of import/export 
plugin extension. I guess to do the most efficient thing possible it would have 
to have access to (at least a subset of) the physical storage, so it can ‘drop 
in’ a vhd (or qcow or vmdk). Ideally the plugin wouldn’t see anything else (so 
it couldn’t get confused or make a mistake) and the modified files would be 
health-checked when the operation is finished.

> Thoughts?

Maybe we could make a safe import/export virtual filesystem with FUSE? Perhaps 
you could even SMB export a virtual folder for XenCenter users on windows to 
drag ’n drop files into.

Cheers,
Dave

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Bob 
> 
>> There's still time before 2.0 to change how these work, so your comments
>> and criticism would be appreciated.
>> 
>> Thanks!
>> Dave
>> 
>> [1] https://github.com/xapi-project/xapi-project/issues/1
>> [2] https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api/issues/1778
>> [3] https://github.com/xapi-project/vhd-tool/pull/14
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