ISO Library

[brsockel]

In vCloud Director is it possible to import multiple ISO's at once or do they need to be done one by one?

[JoshBonczkowski]

I'm pretty sure I have performed multiple uploads at once. I'm not sure if I tested it for multiple ISOs as the same user to the same catalog with different names. As part of the upload process, each upload (and download) gets a folder in the transfer/data/. directory. This is randomly generated so as to avoid naming conflicts.

As far as I've seen, this should just work.

Do you see any errors in the debug log file? Errors in the UI? Which vCD version?

When I did some testing a while back, I would watch the transfer/data/ directory for new directories as I'm uploading. Then I was able to watch and make sure all the data was being uploaded by watching the files. ISOs upload to a single file name, as you would expect. It's another way to help debug any issue you might be having.

[brsockel]

Thanks for the info.  Currently we are running Lab manager 4.0.  In Lab Manager I have a dedicated datastore for ISO Files.  I keep these files on cheaper disks and my templates on the faster more expensive disks. My ISO data store a NFS datastore. I also have the file system mounted as a CIFS Share(Setup on my SAN).  This allows me to keep single copies each of my ISO files.  If vcd is going to put it in a random directory, this will cause me to have duplicate ISO's.

I wish i could just point a catalog to my Datastore and use it as an ISO data store only.

[JoshBonczkowski]

You can sort of do this still in vCD, but it requires disciplined users.

Create a provider vDC which only contains your slow SATA/NAS disks. Create an org vDC within this provider. Create a catalog within the org vDC. Upload all of your ISOs to this catalog. You probably want to publish this catalog with all other orgs.

Unfortunately, vCD (at least in 1.0.1) does not allow you to load a ISO from a catalog which does not belong to your current org. To work around this, find the ISO in the published catalog and copy it to the catalog of your local org. Attach the copy of the ISO to your VM. Once done, delete the local copy of the ISO.

It's not pretty and requires your users to do the right thing. I'm just finishing my reconfiguration under vCD 1.5. I have not tested how 1.5 treats ISOs, but I expect no difference in behavior from 1.0.1.

[brsockel]

Thanks Josh,

That seems like a valid work around.  Maybe in a future update we will be able to assign a specific data store to a specific catalog.

[JoshBonczkowski · Accepted solution]

I just ran the test with vCD 1.5 tying to add an ISO directly from the public catalog in org A to a VM in org B. vCD 1.5 does behave like vCD 1.0x. The ISO must be in a catalog within the org that the VM belongs to. In my case, I had to copy the ISO to the org B catalog before I could add it to the VM in org B.