ctys-cloneVM

February, 2011

NAME
SYNTAX
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
ARGUMENTS
EXAMPLES
EXIT-VALUES
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

NAME

ctys-cloneVM - Copy and configure VMs

SYNTAX

ctys-cloneVM


   [-d <debug-level>]
   --directory=<directory>
   [--defaults-file=<file-name>]
   [-f]
   [-h]
   [-H <help-options>]
   [--ip=<IP-address>]
   --label=<the-target-vm-label>
   --label-old=<the-source-vm-label>
   [--mac=<MAC-address>]
   [--no-create-image]
   [--no-save-para-kernel]
   -t <session-type>
   [--tcp=<TCP-DNS-name>]
   [-V]
   [--vm-state=<VSTAT>]
   [--uuid=<UUID>]
   [-X]

DESCRIPTION

ctys-cloneVM provides the automated duplication of present virtual machines. Therefore first the VM is copied to a defined target and second the configuration parameters are altered to new values. The duplicated new VM is executable without any further required modification. The conversion between different hypevisors - a.k.a. session types - is provided by the tool ctys-convertVM(1).

The current version of ctys-cloneVM could be applied by batch processing mode to offline-VMs, where basic values could be consistently altered for the new VM. Local targets are supported only, thus a remote VM target requires the remote copy by OS means.

Additional fine grained configuration parameters could be set by ctys-createConfVM(1). The target VM could be stored locally or to a remote location by secure connections via 'scp' from the OpenSSH package. The full scope of authorisation for remote connections by OpenSSH could be applied, this comprises particularly SSH-Keys and Kerberos.

The current version provides the following features:

Copy and configuration of VMs including hypervisor:
This is provided for the following supported systems - QEMU/KVM , and XEN . The actual modification of the included operating system has to be proceeded by the provided native facilities.

Copy and configuration of VMs with required additional hypervisor registration:
This is provided for all supported systems - VBOX , and VMW , either open source, or commercial closed source products. Some additional administration such as registration of the VMs is required for some versions of the hypervisors by their native tools. The actual modification of the included operating system has to be proceeded by the provided native facilities.

The following table shows a sumup of available features for the current version. The sessiontypes requirering specific tools for their repositories has to be executed on a platform with installed tools and probably with running and enabled hypervisor including helper processes. In cases with specific storage addressing the appropriate mapping functions are required.

Hypervisor/Emulator	VM-Copy	VM-Config	VM-Registration	GuestOS-Config
QEMU/KVM	x	x	ctys	ffs. 3.)
VBOX	x	x	ctys + OEM 1.)	ffs. 3.)
VMW	x	x	ctys + OEM 2.)	ffs. 3.)
VMWE - VMware ESX(TM)	ffs.	ffs.	ffs.	ffs. 3.)
VMWEi - VMware ESXi(TM)	ffs.	ffs.	ffs.	ffs. 3.)
XEN	x	x	ctys	ffs. 3.)
XENS - XenServer(TM)	ffs.	ffs.	ffs.	ffs. 3.)

Clone Automation

ctys	Ctys database by ctys-vdbgen and ctys-vhosts.
OEM	Registration within the native inventory of the OEM.

1.)	Requires additional registration in runtime database by VirtualBox-Gui.
2.)	Requires for some versions additional registration in runtime database
	by VMware-Gui. Registration for VMware-Server-2.x could be performed
	implicitly when providing User and non-crypted Password at the commandline,
	which should be avoided.
3.)	Requires the native configuration, which depends on the OS. E.g. a
	MS-Widows(TM) workstation may require the reconfiguration of system parameters
	for networking and in addition the new reqistration in it's ADS domain.

The available call options are partly set by the commandline options, but could the majority of the values are used by pre-assigned environment variables. This is similar to the call of ctys-createConfVM(1), the variables are the same. The modification of the configuratrion parameters is accomplished by ctys-createConfVM. Therefore the values are just passed through to ctys-createConfVM.

OPTIONS

-d <debug-level>

Same as ctys.

--directory=<directory>

Parent directory for storage of cloned VM. The actually created directory path is '<directory>/<label>'. The value of '<directory>' is required to be absolute.

--defaults-file=<file-name>

Filename of pre-stored default values for copied VM, the creation could be performed by usage of ctys-createConfVM.

-f

Force the processing when the target directory is present.

-h|--help|-help*

Print help, refer to "-H" for additional information.

-H <help-option>

The extended help option is based on system interfaces for display of manpages, PDF and HTML documents. This comprises the man pages and installed manuals.

For additional help refer to the documents or type ctys -H help.

--label=<label-for-target-vm>

The label - the name - for the target VM to be created.

--label-old=<label-for-source-vm>

The label - the name - for the source VM to be cloned.

--list-env-var-options

List of current options to be set by environment variables. For additional information refer to ctys-createConfVM(1).

--no-create-image

Suppresses the copy of the virtual file image.

--vm-state=<VSTAT>

The state to be set for the target machine. For additional information on values refer to ctys-states(1).

--no-save-para-kernel

Suppresses the copy of the external runtime kernels. External runtime kernels are frequently requiered for paraviretualized DomU of Xen and in some cases of QEMU.

-t <session-type>

The session type the VM has to be created for. Currently QEMU (for QEMU and KVM on x86), VMW , VBOX , and XEN are supported. Each defines a common set of parameters with additional specific variations.

-V

Version.

-X

Terse.

ARGUMENTS

None.

EXAMPLES

For examples refer to ctys-cloning-vms(7).

EXIT-VALUES

0: OK:: Result is valid.
1: NOK:: Erroneous parameters.
2: NOK:: Missing an environment element like files or databases.

AUTHOR

Written and maintained by Arno-Can Uestuensoez:

Maintenance:	<<acue_sf1 (a) users sourceforge net>>
Homepage:	<https://arnocan.wordpress.com>
Sourceforge.net:	<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ctys>
Project moved from Berlios.de to OSDN.net:	<https://osdn.net/projects/ctys>
Commercial:	<https://arnocan.wordpress.com>

COPYRIGHT

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'Creative-Common-Licence-3.0 - Attrib: Non-Commercial, Non-Deriv'

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