- Jan 2022
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spin.atomicobject.com spin.atomicobject.com
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Formats for Disk Images Another piece of the packaging puzzle is disk image formats. There are many. Each has its own benefits and detriments, but I’m not going to get into those here. Again, this is nowhere near a comprehensive list — just something to help with getting your bearings. I’d like to comment on a couple of the formats that I’ve recently encountered. VDI – VirtualBox’s internal default disk image format is VDI. Nevertheless, this is not what is used by Vagrant boxes. VMDK – One of the most common formats. VMWare’s products use various versions and variations of VMDK disk images. Several versions and variations exist, so it’s very important to understand which one you’re working with and where it can be used.
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Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) An OVA is an OVF file packaged together with all of its supporting files (disk images, etc.). You can read about the requirements for a valid OVA package in the OVF specification. Oftentimes people will say “an OVF” and really mean “an OVA.”
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File Formats for Virtual Machines Open Virtualization Format (OVF) The OVF Specification provides a means of describing the properties of a virtual system. It is XML based and has generous allowances for extensibility (with corresponding tradeoffs in actual portability). Most commonly, an OVF file is used to describe a single virtual machine or virtual appliance. It can contain information about the format of a virtual disk image file as well as a description of the virtual hardware that should be emulated to run the OS or application contained on such a disk image.
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www.techrepublic.com www.techrepublic.com
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Virtual machines (VMs) revolutionized the data center. With the ability to easily spin up a machine and even roll back to a working state, VMs bring a level of ease IT would never have enjoyed. Rolling back your VM is handled by way of snapshots.
File Formats for Virtual Machines Open Virtualization Format (OVF)
The OVF Specification provides a means of describing the properties of a virtual system. It is XML based and has generous allowances for extensibility (with corresponding tradeoffs in actual portability). Most commonly, an OVF file is used to describe a single virtual machine or virtual appliance. It can contain information about the format of a virtual disk image file as well as a description of the virtual hardware that should be emulated to run the OS or application contained on such a disk image.
Oracle VM VirtualBox can import and export virtual machines in the following formats:
Open Virtualization Format (OVF). This is the industry-standard format. See Section 1.14.1, “About the OVF Format”. Cloud service formats. Export to and import from cloud services such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is supported. See Section 1.15, “Integrating with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure”.1.14.1. About the OVF Format
OVF is a cross-platform standard supported by many virtualization products which enables the creation of ready-made virtual machines that can then be imported into a hypervisor such as Oracle VM VirtualBox. Oracle VM VirtualBox makes OVF import and export easy to do, using the VirtualBox Manager window or the command-line interface.
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html#ovf
Using OVF enables packaging of virtual appliances. These are disk images, together with configuration settings that can be distributed easily. This way one can offer complete ready-to-use software packages, including OSes with applications, that need no configuration or installation except for importing into Oracle VM VirtualBox.
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- Jun 2016
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onsnetwork.org onsnetwork.org
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Docker is a type of virtual machine
How does it compare to the packages installed directly? Could be useful for development, but maybe not practical for HPC applications. Maybe just create a cd iso with all the correct programs and their dependencies.
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