By default, the Xen and VMware server adapters create a local Repository object for local VM images when PlateSpin Orchestrate accomplishes the Discover VM Hosts action.
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 Deploying a VM to the NAS Repository. For information on SAN storage, see Deploying a VM to 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 Defining Values for Grid Objects
in the PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Developer Guide and Reference.