OpenNebula 4.4 ESX Sandbox

The sandbox is a CentOS 6.3 virtual machine image with a pre-configured OpenNebula 4.4 (Retina) front-end, a virtualization host using QEMU ready to execute virtual machines, and prepared images to offer a complete and rich cloud experience. Optionally other physical worker nodes using any of the hypervisors supported by OpenNebula can be enrolled to build small-scale cloud infrastructures. Users are able to log into an OpenNebula cloud, peer the managed resources, and launch instances of virtual machines without the hassle of configuring a physical infrastructure.

1. Requirements

  • ESX(i) 5.0+
    • other versions may be used converting the image first with vmkfstools (vmkfstools -i {source vmdk} {destination vmdk})
  • 512 MB of free RAM for the Virtual Machine
  • 10 GB of free disk space
  • Virtual Infrastructure client (VI Client)
    • windows application to interact with the ESX host

2. Download the Virtual Appliance

Download the image for ESX from the marketplace.

The image is compressed with bzip2. Be sure to decompress it before moving on. You should end up with a folder containing two .vmdk files.

Recommended unarchivers:

  • Mac OS X: The Unarchiver
  • Linux: use “tar xvzf opennebula-4.2-sandbox.vmdk.tar.gz”
  • Windows: 7-Zip

3. Boot the Appliance

Step 3.1 - Upload Sandbox image

Start VI Client, connect to the ESX host and follow these steps:

  • Click on the Configuration tab and select Storage from the left Hardware menu
  • Select one of the listed datastores (remember, you need 10GB of free space), right click, Browse datastore
  • Click on the “Upload files to this folder” icon
  • Select the uncompressed two files (one at a time) to upload it to the datastore

Step 3.2 - Create a new virtual machine

On the VI Client, click on the “New Virtual Machine” icon

  • Select Custom virtual machine
  • Name: opennebula-sandbox
  • Select the same datastore as in the point above
  • Select Virtual Machine Version 8
  • Select Linux → CentOS 4/5/6 (64 bit)
  • CPUs: Accept the defaults
  • Memory: 512 MB
  • Network: Accept the default
  • SCSI Controller: VMware Paravirtual
  • Select disk: Use an existing virtual disk. Browse to the uploaded disk (select the one named “opennebula-3.8-sandbox.vmdk”).
  • Advanced options: Select the default
  • Once created, start the Sandbox appliance

Step 3.3 - Enter the Appliance

At this point the Virtual Machine will be running. Wait until you see a login prompt in the VI client console that says ''one-sandbox login:“

You can log in into the Virtual Machine using the following information:

  • Login: root
  • Password: opennebula

4. Take a Test Drive

:!: In the guide referenced by in this section you will need to use your virtual machines's IP as the IP. You can obtain it by doing ifconfig eth0 inside the Virtual Machine

Follow this guide in order to check out what OpenNebula can do.