# 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. 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 the Networking service (neutron). 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.

  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.

vCenter permissions tree
All Privileges |  |  |
--- | --- | --- | ---
| Datastore |  |
|  | Allocate space |
|  | Browse datastore |
|  | Low level file operation |
|  | Remove file |
| Extension |  |
|  | Register extension |
| Folder |  |
|  | Create folder |
| Host |  |
|  | Configuration |
|  |  | Maintenance
|  |  | Network configuration
|  |  | Storage partition configuration
| Network |  |
|  | Assign network |
| Resource |  |
|  | Assign virtual machine to resource pool |
|  | Migrate powered off virtual machine |
|  | Migrate powered on virtual machine |
| Virtual Machine |  |
|  | Configuration |
|  |  | Add existing disk
|  |  | Add new disk
|  |  | Add or remove device
|  |  | Advanced
|  |  | CPU count
|  |  | Change resource
|  |  | Disk change tracking
|  |  | Host USB device
|  |  | Memory
|  |  | Modify device settings
|  |  | Raw device
|  |  | Remove disk
|  |  | Rename
|  |  | Set annotation
|  |  | Swapfile placement
|  | Interaction |
|  |  | Configure CD media
|  |  | Power Off
|  |  | Power On
|  |  | Reset
|  |  | Suspend
|  | Inventory |
|  |  | Create from existing
|  |  | Create new
|  |  | Move
|  |  | Remove
|  |  | Unregister
|  | Provisioning |
|  |  | Clone virtual machine
|  |  | Customize
|  |  | Create template from virtual machine
|  | Snapshot management |
|  |  | Create snapshot
|  |  | Remove snapshot
| Profile-driven storage |  |
|  | Profile-driven storage view |
| Sessions |  |
|  |  | Validate session
|  |  | View and stop sessions
| vApp |  |
|  | Export |
|  | Import |

## 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).

### VMwareVCDriver configuration options

Add the following VMware-specific configuration options to the `nova.conf` file:

    [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>

Note

- Clusters: The vCenter driver can support only a single cluster. Clusters and data stores used by the vCenter driver should not contain any VMs other than those created by the driver.

- Data stores: The `datastore_regex` setting specifies the data stores to use with Compute. For example, `datastore_regex="nas.*"` selects all the data stores that have a name starting with “nas”. If this line is omitted, Compute uses the first data store returned by the vSphere API. It is recommended not to use this field and instead remove data stores that are not intended for OpenStack.

- Reserved host memory: The `reserved_host_memory_mb` option value is 512 MB by default. However, VMware recommends that you set this option to 0 MB because the vCenter driver reports the effective memory available to the virtual machines.

- The vCenter driver generates instance name by instance ID. Instance name template is ignored.

- The minimum supported vCenter version is 5.5.0. Starting in the OpenStack Ocata release any version lower than 5.5.0 will be logged as a warning. In the OpenStack Pike release this will be enforced.

A `nova-compute` service can control one or more clusters containing multiple ESXi hosts, making `nova-compute` a critical service from a high availability perspective. Because the host that runs `nova-compute` can fail while the vCenter and ESX still run, you must protect the `nova-compute` service against host failures.

Note

Many `nova.conf` options are relevant to libvirt but do not apply to this driver.

## 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.

### Supported image types

Upload images to the OpenStack Image service in VMDK format. The following VMDK disk types are supported:

- `VMFS Flat Disks` (includes thin, thick, zeroedthick, and eagerzeroedthick). Note that once a VMFS thin disk is exported from VMFS to a non-VMFS location, like the OpenStack Image service, it becomes a preallocated flat disk. This impacts the transfer time from the Image service to the data store when the full preallocated flat disk, rather than the thin disk, must be transferred.

- `Monolithic Sparse disks`. Sparse disks get imported from the Image service into ESXi as thin provisioned disks. Monolithic Sparse disks can be obtained from VMware Fusion or can be created by converting from other virtual disk formats using the `qemu-img` utility.

- `Stream-optimized disks`. Stream-optimized disks are compressed sparse disks. They can be obtained from VMware vCenter/ESXi when exporting vm to ovf/ova template.

The following table shows the `vmware_disktype` property that applies to each of the supported VMDK disk types:

OpenStack Image service disk type settings
vmware_disktype property | VMDK disk type
--- | ---
sparse | Monolithic Sparse
thin | VMFS flat, thin provisioned
preallocated (default) | VMFS flat, thick/zeroedthick/eagerzeroedthick
streamOptimized | Compressed Sparse

The `vmware_disktype` property is set when an image is loaded into the Image service. For example, the following command creates a Monolithic Sparse image by setting `vmware_disktype` to `sparse`:

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

Note

Specifying `thin` does not provide any advantage over `preallocated` with the current version of the driver. Future versions might restore the thin properties of the disk after it is downloaded to a vSphere data store.

The following table shows the `vmware_ostype` property that applies to each of the supported guest OS:

Note

If a glance image has a `vmware_ostype` property which does not correspond to a valid VMware guestId, VM creation will fail, and a warning will be logged.

OpenStack Image service OS type settings
vmware_ostype property | Retail Name
--- | ---
asianux3_64Guest | Asianux Server 3 (64 bit)
asianux3Guest | Asianux Server 3
asianux4_64Guest | Asianux Server 4 (64 bit)
asianux4Guest | Asianux Server 4
darwin64Guest | Darwin 64 bit
darwinGuest | Darwin
debian4_64Guest | Debian GNU/Linux 4 (64 bit)
debian4Guest | Debian GNU/Linux 4
debian5_64Guest | Debian GNU/Linux 5 (64 bit)
debian5Guest | Debian GNU/Linux 5
dosGuest | MS-DOS
freebsd64Guest | FreeBSD x64
freebsdGuest | FreeBSD
mandrivaGuest | Mandriva Linux
netware4Guest | Novell NetWare 4
netware5Guest | Novell NetWare 5.1
netware6Guest | Novell NetWare 6.x
nld9Guest | Novell Linux Desktop 9
oesGuest | Open Enterprise Server
openServer5Guest | SCO OpenServer 5
openServer6Guest | SCO OpenServer 6
opensuse64Guest | openSUSE (64 bit)
opensuseGuest | openSUSE
os2Guest | OS/2
other24xLinux64Guest | Linux 2.4x Kernel (64 bit) (experimental)
other24xLinuxGuest | Linux 2.4x Kernel
other26xLinux64Guest | Linux 2.6x Kernel (64 bit) (experimental)
other26xLinuxGuest | Linux 2.6x Kernel (experimental)
otherGuest | Other Operating System
otherGuest64 | Other Operating System (64 bit) (experimental)
otherLinux64Guest | Linux (64 bit) (experimental)
otherLinuxGuest | Other Linux
redhatGuest | Red Hat Linux 2.1
rhel2Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2
rhel3_64Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (64 bit)
rhel3Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
rhel4_64Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (64 bit)
rhel4Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
rhel5_64Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (64 bit) (experimental)
rhel5Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
rhel6_64Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (64 bit)
rhel6Guest | Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
sjdsGuest | Sun Java Desktop System
sles10_64Guest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (64 bit) (experimental)
sles10Guest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
sles11_64Guest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (64 bit)
sles11Guest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
sles64Guest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (64 bit)
slesGuest | SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
solaris10_64Guest | Solaris 10 (64 bit) (experimental)
solaris10Guest | Solaris 10 (32 bit) (experimental)
solaris6Guest | Solaris 6
solaris7Guest | Solaris 7
solaris8Guest | Solaris 8
solaris9Guest | Solaris 9
suse64Guest | SUSE Linux (64 bit)
suseGuest | SUSE Linux
turboLinux64Guest | Turbolinux (64 bit)
turboLinuxGuest | Turbolinux
ubuntu64Guest | Ubuntu Linux (64 bit)
ubuntuGuest | Ubuntu Linux
unixWare7Guest | SCO UnixWare 7
win2000AdvServGuest | Windows 2000 Advanced Server
win2000ProGuest | Windows 2000 Professional
win2000ServGuest | Windows 2000 Server
win31Guest | Windows 3.1
win95Guest | Windows 95
win98Guest | Windows 98
windows7_64Guest | Windows 7 (64 bit)
windows7Guest | Windows 7
windows7Server64Guest | Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit)
winLonghorn64Guest | Windows Longhorn (64 bit) (experimental)
winLonghornGuest | Windows Longhorn (experimental)
winMeGuest | Windows Millennium Edition
winNetBusinessGuest | Windows Small Business Server 2003
winNetDatacenter64Guest | Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (64 bit) (experimental)
winNetDatacenterGuest | Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition
winNetEnterprise64Guest | Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (64 bit)
winNetEnterpriseGuest | Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
winNetStandard64Guest | Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (64 bit)
winNetEnterpriseGuest | Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
winNetStandard64Guest | Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (64 bit)
winNetStandardGuest | Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
winNetWebGuest | Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
winNTGuest | Windows NT 4
winVista64Guest | Windows Vista (64 bit)
winVistaGuest | Windows Vista
winXPHomeGuest | Windows XP Home Edition
winXPPro64Guest | Windows XP Professional Edition (64 bit)
winXPProGuest | Windows XP Professional

### Convert and load images

Using the `qemu-img` utility, disk images in several formats (such as, qcow2) can be converted to the VMDK format.

For example, the following command can be used to convert a qcow2 Ubuntu Trusty cloud image:

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

VMDK disks converted through `qemu-img` are `always` monolithic sparse VMDK disks with an IDE adapter type. Using the previous example of the Ubuntu Trusty image after the `qemu-img` conversion, the command to upload the VMDK disk should be something like:

    $ 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

Note that the `vmware_disktype` is set to `sparse` and the `vmware_adaptertype` is set to `ide` in the previous command.

If the image did not come from the `qemu-img` utility, the `vmware_disktype` and `vmware_adaptertype` might be different. To determine the image adapter type from an image file, use the following command and look for the `ddb.adapterType=` line:

    $ head -20 <vmdk file name>

Assuming a preallocated disk type and an iSCSI lsiLogic adapter type, the following command uploads the VMDK disk:

    $ 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

Currently, OS boot VMDK disks with an IDE adapter type cannot be attached to a virtual SCSI controller and likewise disks with one of the SCSI adapter types (such as, busLogic, lsiLogic, lsiLogicsas, paraVirtual) cannot be attached to the IDE controller. Therefore, as the previous examples show, it is important to set the `vmware_adaptertype` property correctly. The default adapter type is lsiLogic, which is SCSI, so you can omit the `vmware_adaptertype` property if you are certain that the image adapter type is lsiLogic.

### Tag VMware images

In a mixed hypervisor environment, OpenStack Compute uses the `hypervisor_type` tag to match images to the correct hypervisor type. For VMware images, set the hypervisor type to `vmware`. Other valid hypervisor types include: `ironic`, `lxc`, and `qemu`. Note that `qemu` is used for both QEMU and KVM hypervisor types.

    $ 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

### Optimize images

Monolithic Sparse disks are considerably faster to download but have the overhead of an additional conversion step. When imported into ESX, sparse disks get converted to VMFS flat thin provisioned disks. The download and conversion steps only affect the first launched instance that uses the sparse disk image. The converted disk image is cached, so subsequent instances that use this disk image can simply use the cached version.

To avoid the conversion step (at the cost of longer download times) consider converting sparse disks to thin provisioned or preallocated disks before loading them into the Image service.

Use one of the following tools to pre-convert sparse disks.

vSphere CLI tools

  Sometimes called the remote CLI or rCLI.

  Assuming that the sparse disk is made available on a data store accessible by an ESX host, the following command converts it to preallocated format:

      vmkfstools --server=ip_of_some_ESX_host -i \
        /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/sparse.vmdk \
        /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/converted.vmdk

  Note that the vifs tool from the same CLI package can be used to upload the disk to be converted. The vifs tool can also be used to download the converted disk if necessary.

`vmkfstools` directly on the ESX host

  If the SSH service is enabled on an ESX host, the sparse disk can be uploaded to the ESX data store through scp and the vmkfstools local to the ESX host can use used to perform the conversion. After you log in to the host through ssh, run this command:

      vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/sparse.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/converted.vmdk

`vmware-vdiskmanager`

  `vmware-vdiskmanager` is a utility that comes bundled with VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation. The following example converts a sparse disk to preallocated format:

      '/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager' -r sparse.vmdk -t 4 converted.vmdk

In the previous cases, the converted vmdk is actually a pair of files:

- The descriptor file `converted.vmdk`.

- The actual virtual disk data file `converted-flat.vmdk`.

The file to be uploaded to the Image service is `converted-flat.vmdk`.

### Image handling

The ESX hypervisor requires a copy of the VMDK file in order to boot up a virtual machine. As a result, the vCenter OpenStack Compute driver must download the VMDK via HTTP from the Image service to a data store that is visible to the hypervisor. To optimize this process, the first time a VMDK file is used, it gets cached in the data store. A cached image is stored in a folder named after the image ID. Subsequent virtual machines that need the VMDK use the cached version and don’t have to copy the file again from the Image service.

Even with a cached VMDK, there is still a copy operation from the cache location to the hypervisor file directory in the shared data store. To avoid this copy, boot the image in linked_clone mode. To learn how to enable this mode, see `vmware.use_linked_clone`.

Note

You can also use the `img_linked_clone` property (or legacy property `vmware_linked_clone`) in the Image service to override the linked_clone mode on a per-image basis.

If spawning a virtual machine image from ISO with a VMDK disk, the image is created and attached to the virtual machine as a blank disk. In that case `img_linked_clone` property for the image is just ignored.

If multiple compute nodes are running on the same host, or have a shared file system, you can enable them to use the same cache folder on the back-end data store. To configure this action, set the `cache_prefix` option in the `nova.conf` file. Its value stands for the name prefix of the folder where cached images are stored.

Note

This can take effect only if compute nodes are running on the same host, or have a shared file system.

You can automatically purge unused images after a specified period of time. To configure this action, set these options in the `image_cache` section in the `nova.conf` file:

- `image_cache.remove_unused_base_images`

- `image_cache.remove_unused_original_minimum_age_seconds`

## Networking with VMware vSphere

The VMware driver supports networking with the Networking Service (neutron). Depending on your installation, complete these configuration steps before you provision VMs:

1. 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.

## Troubleshooting

Operators can troubleshoot VMware specific failures by correlating OpenStack logs to vCenter logs. Every RPC call which is made by an OpenStack driver has an `opID` which can be traced in the vCenter logs. For example consider the following excerpt from a `nova-compute` log:

    Aug 15 07:31:09 localhost nova-compute[16683]: DEBUG oslo_vmware.service [-] Invoking Folder.CreateVM_Task with opID=oslo.vmware-debb6064-690e-45ac-b0ae-1b94a9638d1f {{(pid=16683) request_handler /opt/stack/oslo.vmware/oslo_vmware/service.py:355}}

In this case the `opID` is `oslo.vmware-debb6064-690e-45ac-b0ae-1b94a9638d1f` and we can grep the vCenter log (usually `/var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd.log`) for it to find if anything went wrong with the `CreateVM` operation.

this page last updated: 2026-08-20 01:33:50

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