Technical Whitepaper | ZStack ZSphere · ZVF

ZSphere uses the resource model illustrated in Figure 1.

ZSphere has the following main resources:

Data Center: The largest resource namespace in the virtualization platform. It contains clusters, hosts, data storage, distributed switches, distributed port groups, and other resources.
Cluster: A logical collection of hosts, or compute nodes.
Host: An x86 or ARM physical server that runs the KVM hypervisor and provides compute, network, and storage resources to VMs.
VM: A virtual server that runs on a physical host and can run an operating system and business applications like a physical server.
Data Storage: A virtualized resource that provides storage space for VMs and application data. Data storage can use local or shared network storage.
Distributed Switch: A virtual switching device that provides unified virtual network management and monitoring for VMs in a cluster.
Distributed Port Group: A logical group of distributed switch ports used to manage port configuration.
Image Storage: A virtualized resource that stores image files used by VMs or disks. It can be a standalone or distributed image storage.
Image: An image file used by a VM or disk. Images include system images and disk images.

ZSphere resources maintain the following two types of relationships:

Hierarchical relationships: Describe parent-child, sibling, grandparent-grandchild, and peer relationships between resources.
Definitions:
- Parent-Child: Resource A is the parent or child of Resource B. For example, a host belongs to a cluster, and a VM runs on a host.
- Sibling: Resource A and Resource B share the same parent. For example, clusters and distributed switches, or clusters and data storage. Both pairs share the data center as their parent.
- Grandparent-Grandchild: Resource A is the direct grandparent or grandchild of Resource B. For example, a data center is the parent of a cluster, a cluster is the parent of a host, and a host is the parent of a virtual machine. Therefore, the data center is the grandparent of the host, and the cluster is the grandparent of the virtual machine.
- Peer: Resource A and Resource B do not have any of the preceding relationships but collaborate in specific scenarios. For example, data storage and image storage work together to provide services to clusters.
Cardinality relationships: Describe 1:n (one-to-many), n:1 (many-to-one), and n:n (many-to-many) relationships.
Definitions:
- 1:n: Resource A can contain, add, or be associated with multiple Resource B instances. For example, one cluster can contain multiple hosts, and one distributed switch can be associated with multiple clusters.
- n:1: Multiple Resource A instances can belong to or be associated with one Resource B instance. For example, multiple hosts can belong to the same cluster, and multiple clusters can be associated with the same distributed switch.
- n:n: Resource A can be associated with multiple Resource B instances, and Resource B can also be associated with multiple Resource A instances. For example, one image storage can be associated with multiple data centers, and one data center can use multiple image storage resources.