VMware vSphere¶

Introduction¶

OpenStack Compute supports the VMware vSphere product family and enables access to advanced features such as vMotion, High Availability, and Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS).

This section describes how to configure VMware-based virtual machine images for launch. The VMware driver supports vCenter version 5.5.0 and later.

The VMware vCenter driver enables the nova-compute service to communicate with a VMware vCenter server that manages one or more ESX host clusters. The driver aggregates the ESX hosts in each cluster to present one large hypervisor entity for each cluster to the Compute scheduler. Because individual ESX hosts are not exposed to the scheduler, Compute schedules to the granularity of clusters and vCenter uses DRS to select the actual ESX host within the cluster. When a virtual machine makes its way into a vCenter cluster, it can use all vSphere features.

The following sections describe how to configure the VMware vCenter driver.

High-level architecture¶

The following diagram shows a high-level view of the VMware driver architecture:

VMware driver architecture

As the figure shows, the OpenStack Compute Scheduler sees three hypervisors that each correspond to a cluster in vCenter. nova-compute contains the VMware driver. You can run with multiple nova-compute services. It is recommended to run with one nova-compute service per ESX cluster thus ensuring that while Compute schedules at the granularity of the nova-compute service it is also in effect able to schedule at the cluster level. In turn the VMware driver inside nova-compute interacts with the vCenter APIs to select an appropriate ESX host within the cluster. Internally, vCenter uses DRS for placement.

The VMware vCenter driver also interacts with the Image service to copy VMDK images from the Image service back-end store. The dotted line in the figure represents VMDK images being copied from the OpenStack Image service to the vSphere data store. VMDK images are cached in the data store so the copy operation is only required the first time that the VMDK image is used.

After OpenStack boots a VM into a vSphere cluster, the VM becomes visible in vCenter and can access vSphere advanced features. At the same time, the VM is visible in the OpenStack dashboard and you can manage it as you would any other OpenStack VM. You can perform advanced vSphere operations in vCenter while you configure OpenStack resources such as VMs through the OpenStack dashboard.

The figure does not show how networking fits into the architecture. Both nova-network and the OpenStack Networking Service are supported. For details, see Networking with VMware vSphere.

Configuration overview¶

To get started with the VMware vCenter driver, complete the following high-level steps:

1. Configure vCenter. See Prerequisites and limitations.
2. Configure the VMware vCenter driver in the nova.conf file. See VMware vCenter driver.
3. Load desired VMDK images into the Image service. See Images with VMware vSphere.
4. Configure networking with either nova-network or the Networking service. See Networking with VMware vSphere.

Prerequisites and limitations¶

Use the following list to prepare a vSphere environment that runs with the VMware vCenter driver:

Copying VMDK files

In vSphere 5.1, copying large image files (for example, 12 GB and greater) from the Image service can take a long time. To improve performance, VMware recommends that you upgrade to VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 1 or later. For more information, see the Release Notes.

DRS

For any cluster that contains multiple ESX hosts, enable DRS and enable fully automated placement.

Shared storage

Only shared storage is supported and data stores must be shared among all hosts in a cluster. It is recommended to remove data stores not intended for OpenStack from clusters being configured for OpenStack.

Clusters and data stores

Do not use OpenStack clusters and data stores for other purposes. If you do, OpenStack displays incorrect usage information.

Networking

The networking configuration depends on the desired networking model. See Networking with VMware vSphere.

Security groups

If you use the VMware driver with OpenStack Networking and the NSX plug-in, security groups are supported. If you use nova-network, security groups are not supported.

Note

The NSX plug-in is the only plug-in that is validated for vSphere.

VNC

The port range 5900 - 6105 (inclusive) is automatically enabled for VNC connections on every ESX host in all clusters under OpenStack control.

Note

In addition to the default VNC port numbers (5900 to 6000) specified in the above document, the following ports are also used: 6101, 6102, and 6105.

You must modify the ESXi firewall configuration to allow the VNC ports. Additionally, for the firewall modifications to persist after a reboot, you must create a custom vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) which is then installed onto the running ESXi host or added to a custom image profile used to install ESXi hosts. For details about how to create a VIB for persisting the firewall configuration modifications, see Knowledge Base.

Note

The VIB can be downloaded from openstack-vmwareapi-team/Tools.

To use multiple vCenter installations with OpenStack, each vCenter must be assigned to a separate availability zone. This is required as the OpenStack Block Storage VMDK driver does not currently work across multiple vCenter installations.

VMware vCenter service account¶

OpenStack integration requires a vCenter service account with the following minimum permissions. Apply the permissions to the Datacenter root object, and select the Propagate to Child Objects option.

VMware vCenter driver¶

Use the VMware vCenter driver (VMwareVCDriver) to connect OpenStack Compute with vCenter. This recommended configuration enables access through vCenter to advanced vSphere features like vMotion, High Availability, and Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS).

[DEFAULT]
compute_driver = vmwareapi.VMwareVCDriver

[vmware]
host_ip = <vCenter hostname or IP address>
host_username = <vCenter username>
host_password = <vCenter password>
cluster_name = <vCenter cluster name>
datastore_regex = <optional datastore regex>

Images with VMware vSphere¶

The vCenter driver supports images in the VMDK format. Disks in this format can be obtained from VMware Fusion or from an ESX environment. It is also possible to convert other formats, such as qcow2, to the VMDK format using the qemu-img utility. After a VMDK disk is available, load it into the Image service. Then, you can use it with the VMware vCenter driver. The following sections provide additional details on the supported disks and the commands used for conversion and upload.

$ openstack image create \
  --disk-format vmdk \
  --container-format bare \
  --property vmware_disktype="sparse" \
  --property vmware_ostype="ubuntu64Guest" \
  ubuntu-sparse < ubuntuLTS-sparse.vmdk

$ qemu-img convert -f qcow2 ~/Downloads/trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img \
  -O vmdk trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.vmdk

$ openstack image create \
  --container-format bare --disk-format vmdk \
  --property vmware_disktype="sparse" \
  --property vmware_adaptertype="ide" \
  trusty-cloud < trusty-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.vmdk

$ head -20 <vmdk file name>

$ openstack image create \
  --disk-format vmdk \
  --container-format bare \
  --property vmware_adaptertype="lsiLogic" \
  --property vmware_disktype="preallocated" \
  --property vmware_ostype="ubuntu64Guest" \
  ubuntu-thick-scsi < ubuntuLTS-flat.vmdk

$ openstack image create \
  --disk-format vmdk \
  --container-format bare \
  --property vmware_adaptertype="lsiLogic" \
  --property vmware_disktype="preallocated" \
  --property hypervisor_type="vmware" \
  --property vmware_ostype="ubuntu64Guest" \
  ubuntu-thick-scsi < ubuntuLTS-flat.vmdk

Networking with VMware vSphere¶

The VMware driver supports networking with the nova-network service or the Networking Service. Depending on your installation, complete these configuration steps before you provision VMs:

1. The nova-network service with the FlatManager or FlatDHCPManager. Create a port group with the same name as the flat_network_bridge value in the nova.conf file. The default value is br100. If you specify another value, the new value must be a valid Linux bridge identifier that adheres to Linux bridge naming conventions.

   All VM NICs are attached to this port group.

   Ensure that the flat interface of the node that runs the nova-network service has a path to this network.

   Note

   When configuring the port binding for this port group in vCenter, specify ephemeral for the port binding type. For more information, see Choosing a port binding type in ESX/ESXi in the VMware Knowledge Base.

2. The nova-network service with the VlanManager. Set the vlan_interface configuration option to match the ESX host interface that handles VLAN-tagged VM traffic.

   OpenStack Compute automatically creates the corresponding port groups.

3. If you are using the OpenStack Networking Service: Before provisioning VMs, create a port group with the same name as the vmware.integration_bridge value in nova.conf (default is br-int). All VM NICs are attached to this port group for management by the OpenStack Networking plug-in.

Volumes with VMware vSphere¶

The VMware driver supports attaching volumes from the Block Storage service. The VMware VMDK driver for OpenStack Block Storage is recommended and should be used for managing volumes based on vSphere data stores. For more information about the VMware VMDK driver, see Cinder's manual on the VMDK Driver (TODO: this has not yet been imported and published). Also an iSCSI volume driver provides limited support and can be used only for attachments.

Configuration reference¶

To customize the VMware driver, use the configuration option settings below.