CloudStack HowTo - Create Ubuntu Cloud images for VMware and XenServer testing
Ubuntu Minimal Cloud Images are official Ubuntu images and are pre-installed disk images that have been customized by Ubuntu engineering to have a small runtime footprint in order to increase workload density in environments where humans are not expected to log in.
This article introduces how to create Ubuntu cloud images for testing on VMware and XenServer, other than KVM.
Ubuntu Minimal Cloud Images
There are two types of cloud images built by Ubuntu
- Releases
For Ubuntu 24.04 (noble), the images are located at https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/noble/release/
You can find images for all releases on https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/
- Daily Builds
For Ubuntu 24.04 (noble), the images are located at https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/daily/noble/current/
You can find all daily builds images on https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/daily/
You can download the qcow2 cloud image for latest release of Ubuntu 24.04 by
# amd64 (x86_64)
wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/noble/release/ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.img
# arm64
wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/noble/release/ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-arm64.img
Create Ubuntu Cloud images for XenServer
This can be done by qemu-img
# Convert to vhd
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O vpc ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.img ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vhd
Create Ubuntu Cloud images for VMware
For Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy), Ubuntu has built cloud images in ova format which can be used on VMware. However, there is no such images for Ubuntu 24.04 (noble).
# Convert to vmdk
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O vmdk ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.img ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vmdk
However, vmdk is not ready for use in Apache CloudStack, so we need to convert to ova format. A configuration file is required for the convension. Create a file ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vmx with content below.
.encoding = "UTF-8"
displayname = "ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64"
guestos = "ubuntu-64"
virtualhw.version = "10"
config.version = "8"
numvcpus = "2"
cpuid.coresPerSocket = "1"
memsize = "1024"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "TRUE"
floppy0.fileType = "device"
floppy0.autodetect = "FALSE"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
floppy0.clientDevice = "TRUE"
floppy0.allowguestconnectioncontrol = "true"
ide1:0.clientDevice = "TRUE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "FALSE"
ide1:0.exclusive = "false"
ide1:0.allowguestconnectioncontrol = "true"
svga.autodetect = "false"
mks.enable3d = "false"
mks.use3dRenderer = "automatic"
svga.vramSize = "4194304"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.deviceType = "disk"
scsi0:0.fileName = "ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vmdk"
scsi0:0.allowguestconnectioncontrol = "false"
scsi0:0.writeThrough = "false"
scsi0:0.mode = "persistent"
scsi0.virtualDev = "pvscsi"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
vmci0.unrestricted = "false"
serial0.startConnected = "FALSE"
serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.autodetect = "FALSE"
serial0.fileName = "Serial Port 3"
serial0.yieldOnMsrRead = "false"
serial0.allowguestconnectioncontrol = "true"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
ethernet0.startConnected = "TRUE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
ethernet0.wakeonpcktrcv = "true"
ethernet0.allowguestconnectioncontrol = "true"
vcpu.hotadd = "false"
vcpu.hotremove = "false"
mem.hotadd = "false"
firmware = "bios"
tools.syncTime = "false"
toolscripts.afterpoweron = "true"
toolscripts.afterresume = "true"
toolscripts.beforepoweroff = "true"
toolscripts.beforesuspend = "true"
tools.upgrade.policy = "manual"
powerType.powerOff = "preset"
powerType.reset = "preset"
powerType.suspend = "preset"
vhv.enable = "false"
chipset.onlineStandby = "FALSE"
(The vmx is extracted from the .ova cloud image for Ubuntu 22.04)
We need a program ovftool for the next convension. We can download it from VMware website for free on https://developer.broadcom.com/tools/open-virtualization-format-ovf-tool/latest .
Now run the command below
ovftool ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.vmx ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.ova
Now we can register a VMware template with the generated ubuntu-24.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.ova file.
Issue with cloud images on VMware
Please note, For the vm instances running on VMware or XenServer/XCP-ng hypervisors, if there are multiple cloud-init data sources, it is a known issue that ds-identify is not able to detect if “CloudStack” DataSource is enabled. To fix the problem, please run the following command to enable cloud-init without any aid from ds-identify.
# Enable cloud-init without any aid from ds-identify
echo "policy: enabled" > /etc/cloud/ds-identify.cfg
Then ask cloud-init to use the data sources defined.
# Add ConfigDrive to datasource_list
cat > /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/cloudstack.cfg <<EOF
datasource_list: ['ConfigDrive', 'CloudStack']
datasource:
CloudStack:
max_wait: 120
timeout: 50
EOF