vmwareapi does not support distributed vswitch

[Arvind Somya]

Nova version: 2011.3-dev (2011.3-workspace:tarmac-20110430024629-rc93dzxqvwptexqs)

The vmwareapi in Nova currently assumes a standard switch network in all cases of networking with vmware ESX(i).
In my case I was specifying a portgroup on a vswitch to be used as the flatr_network_bridge but on monitoring the ESX(i) host I found a new standard switch being created each time a VM from nova was spawned on it.

I traced the issue to virt/vmwareapi/vm_util.py::create_network_spec. The procedure creates a network backing that is only applicable to standard switch networks:
        backing = \

          client_factory.create('ns0:VirtualEthernetCardNetworkBackingInfo')

        backing.deviceName = network_name

The type of network needs to be detected before creating the vnic and it should be added appropriately.

[Arvind Somya (asomya)]

I have a fix for this issue but it only works when the portgroup binding on ESXi is set to Ephemeral(no-binding) . It fails with static binding and ESXi refuses to connect the vNic on power up on dynamic binding (user has to manually connect the vNic)

Diff for the fix attached.

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

@Arvind: any chance you could implement your fix in a branch and propose that for merging into trunk ?