Virt Driver Image Properties

The virtualization drivers make use of metadata properties set against the glance or cinder image to customize aspects of the guest instance setup.

Current usage as of Feb 6, 2014

Core image properties are described in the image JSON schema which is the response to GET v2/schemas/image (see the API quick ref for an example schema: http://api.openstack.org/api-ref-image.html
The recommended values for some "common image properties" are documented at http://docs.openstack.org/developer/glance/common-image-properties.html
Recommendation that properties related to guest hardware config have a 'hw_' prefix

architecture - name of guest hardware architecture eg i686, x86_64, ppc64
hw_cdrom_bus - name of the CDROM bus to use eg virtio, scsi, ide
hw_disk_bus - name of the hard disk bus to use eg virtio, scsi, ide
hw_floppy_bus - name of the floppy disk bus to use eg fd, scsi, ide
hw_qemu_guest_agent - boolean 'yes' or 'no' to enable QEMU guest agent
hw_rng - name of the RNG device type eg virtio (pending merge)
hw_scsi_model - name of the SCSI bus controller eg 'virtio-scsi', 'lsilogic', etc (pending merge)
hw_video_model - name of the video adapter model to use, eg cirrus, vga, xen, qxl
hw_video_ram - MB of video RAM to provide eg 64 (pending merge)
hw_vif_model - name of a NIC device model eg virtio, e1000, rtl8139
hw_watchdog_action - action to take when watchdog device fires eg reset, poweroff, pause, none (pending merge)
os_command_line - string of boot time command line arguments for the guest kernel

hw_vif_model - name of the NIC model eg 'VirtualE1000'
owner_id - instance project id (set on upload but never read by anything !?!?)
vmware_adaptertype - name of the SCSI adapter model eg 'lsiLogic'
vmware_disktype - allocation mode eg 'preallocated'
vmware_image_version - integer value 1 (set on upload but never read by anything !?!?)
vmware_linked_clone - boolean flag to set space-saving or performance behavior on the Datastore
vmware_ostype - name of the guest OS type eg "otherGuest"

auto_disk_config - set on upload from instance 'auto_disk_config' - stored in instance object - used to decide to expand root disk partition and fs to full size of root disk
ipxe_boot - boolean - used to trigger code to inject networking when booting a CD image with a network boot image
os_type - set on upload from instance 'os_type' - used for many things, such as PV vs HVM defaults, default filesystem types, etc
xenapi_device_id - guest ABI version for guest xentools either 1 or 2 (or 3 - depends on Citrix PV tools version installed in image)
xenapi_image_compression_level - set from xenserver.image_compression_level global config - probably not read by anything
xenapi_use_agent - boolean - if false don't talk to nova agent
xenapi_skip_agent_inject_ssh - boolean - if using agent don't try inject ssh key, assume someone else is doing that (cloud-init)
xenapi_skip_agent_inject_files_at_boot - boolean - if using agent don't inject files, assume someone else is doing that (cloud-init)
cache_in_nova - boolean - if True, and image cache set to "some" decides if image should be cached on host when server is booted on that host
vm_mode - "xen" vs "hvm" - stored in instance object
bittorrent - if true download using bittorrent

Note - many are accessed by looking at system metadata

None used / set

None used / set

None used / set