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I'm using KVM virtual machines managed through libvirtd server-side for most of my projects. On my desktop however, I'm using VMWare Fusion Professional which, just like its VMWare Workstation cousin, allows connecting to ESXi servers.

I would like to connect my VMWare Fusion desktop software to my libvirtd server and be able to manage / use my server-side KVM virtual machines through Fusion.

Is there any protocol translation layer I can deploy server-side so that my VMWare Fusion can transparently connect to my libvirtd server as if it was an ESXi server, and manage KVM virtual machines that way?

I will consider this question solved if you can point me to the documentation for the protocol used by ESXi and VMWare Fusion / Workstation to communicate, making it possible for me to implement the protocol translation layer myself.

Thanks! :)

Guillaume Ceccarelli
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libvirt connects to ESXi hosts using ssh and esxcli commands. This doesn't work both ways, e.g. a vSphere server cannot control libvirt based hosts.

If you need such a feature, you shouldn't be demanding it from the folks who wrote libvirt, you should be demanding it from VMWare. The same goes for any other functionality in a vmware product you are using.

libvirt exposes plenty of available API variants, but it's up to the front end to be able to use those. virt-manager, oVirt and Openstack Nova for example, do exactly that. VMWare fusion doesn't because vmware engineers did not program such functionality into it.

And if you want to implement such functionality yourself (though I doubt that's possible to hack on the proprietary vmware fusion front end), here's libvirt's API page: http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html

dyasny
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  • My idea for hacking it would have been to emulate the protocol used by ESXi (or find an existing piece of software that does), but as you mentioned, the protocol is closed source and my search for proper documentation has not yielded much so far. I'm certainly not asking the libvirt guys to do it :) – Guillaume Ceccarelli Sep 30 '14 at 03:27
  • so you wanted to mask libvirt as an ESXi host, by implementing a listener and a protocol? – dyasny Sep 30 '14 at 12:48
  • Yup, that's the gist of it :) Unless somebody has already done something similar or started a project I could contribute to. – Guillaume Ceccarelli Sep 30 '14 at 16:47
  • I haven't heard of such a project. Would be fun to make vsphere believe it's managing ESXi hosts, while they are in fact KVM, but I see no actual production merit in that – dyasny Sep 30 '14 at 17:34
  • I have a hybrid setup, I just wanted to make my life easier :) – Guillaume Ceccarelli Oct 01 '14 at 06:14
  • if you have multiple hypervisors, I'd start with having a central management solution for them. oVirt being my personal favourite. – dyasny Oct 01 '14 at 12:54