GlossaryΒΆ
- 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
orlsilogic
. In an OVF package, a controller is represented by an XMLItem
element in theVirtualHardwareSection
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 theDiskSection
. 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 theVirtualHardwareSection
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 theReferences
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.