glossary.rst

Glossary

COT

Common OVF Tool

controller hardware controller A virtual hardware controller for hardware such as a disk device. In addition to its primary type (IDE, SCSI, etc.), a controller may also have a subtype, such as virtio or lsilogic. In an OVF package, a controller is represented by an XML Item element in the VirtualHardwareSection of the OVF descriptor. Typically each disk device must be associated with a controller.

disk description disk element disk reference A description of a virtual disk included in a virtual machine. In an OVF descriptor, this is an XML Disk element in the DiskSection. This disk description may be associated with a file reference and/or disk file, or it may be a placeholder for a blank disk not yet created. Typically a disk description must be associated with a disk drive in order to actually be accessible by the guest OS.

disk device disk drive disk item A hardware item describing a virtual CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or hard disk drive. In an OVF package, this is an XML Item element in the VirtualHardwareSection of the OVF descriptor. This item may reference a disk reference or a file reference to map a filesystem to this drive. Typically a disk drive must be associated to a hardware controller.

disk file disk image A file such as a .vmdk, .iso, or .qcow2. May or may not be associated with a disk drive.

file element file reference A reference to a file, such as a disk file or any other file type, to be included in a virtual machine. In an OVF descriptor, this is an XML File element in the References section.

hardware element hardware item Generic term for any discrete piece of virtual machine hardware, including but not limited to the CPU(s), memory, disk drive, hardware controller, network port, etc.

OVF

Open Virtualization Format, an open standard.

OVF descriptor

An XML file, based on the OVF specification, which describes a virtual machine.