Automated Administration of Virtual Machines and Networks on the VMware ESX Platform

Abstract

This thesis considers a novel solution to deploy and administrate virtual machines and networks on the VMware ESX platform. The new solution is able to decrease network deployment complexity and increase automatic administration and coherence. Virtual machines and networks are described by MLN language. A plug-in esx.pl is developed to associate MLN to create and manage virtual machines and networks. Advanced features including network upgrade and migration are also implemented. Creating and administrating two different networks are demonstrated via MLN and plug-in esx.pl. More upgrade and migration cases are analysed as well. After that, data is collected to compare the ordinary and new solution to select a more efficient solution among several scenarios. Furthermore, a user interface is developed to make deployment and administration more convenient.