[virt-tools-list] virt-manager, vmware

[Matthias Bolte]

2011/8/17 Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com>:
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 09:50:35AM -0700, Jason Helfman wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Are there any plans in supporting connecting to a vmware (ex. esx)
>> hypervisor, as XEN and KVM are supported now in the virt-manager
>> software?
>
> The issue that stops this happening is getting access to VMware.
> Although VMware have a 60 day trial, it also requires:
>
>  - a free physical server

That's true.

>  - a spare hard drive

You don't need an extra hard drive, only extra storage. I have an ESXi
server that boots from a 1GB USB stick and stores it's virtual
machines on an NFS share on another server.

>  - > 2 GB of RAM

2 GB RAM works, but more is always better :)

>  - a Windows / MSDN license to run vSphere
>
>  - a Windows VM on another machine for running vSphere

ESX(i) can run without a vCenter server, and libvirt can perfectly
handle single ESX(i) servers.

> That's quite a lot to ask if you don't have VMware already.  I myself
> had VMware ESX 4 running for a while (licensed version, not the 60 day
> trial) but I eventually recycled that server to run KVM.
>
> Patches are definitely accepted if you have the required bits and
> skills.
>
> Rich.

Anyway, virt-manager can already handle other hypervisors aside from
QEMU and Xen, you just need to pass the connection URI on the command
line. Even though there might be some ESX specific things that
virt-manager doesn't deal with yet, but all the general stuff should
just work.

-- 
Matthias Bolte
http://photron.blogspot.com