By default, the Xen and vSphere provisioning adapters create a local Repository object for local VM images (or datastores) on a VM host when PlateSpin Orchestrate performs the Discover VM Hosts action.
NOTE:For vSphere, PlateSpin Orchestrate models all repositories the Virtual Center server is aware of. There is not necessarily a local repository for each ESX host, although that is the default.
A local repository represents VMs residing in a VM Host’s local storage where the VMs are only visible to the VM Host. VMs are searched for in the default paths for each adapter.
IMPORTANT:Do not use local repositories for shared directories visible to more than one VM Host. Instead, create a new NAS or SAN repository.
For information on NAS storage, see Provisioning a VM from a NAS Repository. For information on SAN storage, see The SAN Repository.
When discovering VM Images, the adapters use the location, searchpath and preferredpath facts for searching. The repository.location is usually the root path, such as /. For Xen, the adapter creates a local repository with search paths of /etc/xen/vm and a preferred search path of /var/lib/xen/images.
When the Discover VM Images action is run, the provisioning adapter follows these steps:
Concatenates the repository.location and every element of repository.searchpath and searches for VMs in those directories.
Concatenates the repository.location and repository.preferredpath and searches for VMs in that directory.
These steps are also followed when searching in NAS and SAN repositories when representing auto-mounted file systems, and when the location, search path, and preferred path are set.
For more information on facts, see Understanding Grid Object Facts and Computed Facts
in the PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.5 Developer Guide and Reference.