Modify a Template for Public Cloud

Before you begin:

Log in or switch enterprises to the tenant that owns the template

To modify a VM template:

Select the template and click on the control menu button in the top-right corner and select Edit

Privilege: Manage VM templates from Apps library

In private cloud datacenters, standard templates have disks that will deploy to the hypervisor datastore, in contrast to persistent templates that have disks on external storage volumes. This documentation describes standard templates.

Edit template General information

Troubleshooting minimum and maximum CPU and RAM values

The platform stores 0 as an empty value, so if you enter "0", it will disappear!
If users edit existing VMs that already had out-of-range values, the platform displays a warning but does not enforce the range.
Changes can affect recommended hardware profiles on the Advanced tab, so you may need to review them
Users with the Override VM constraints privilege can enter values outside this range

For more details see GUI Edit template General information

Edit VM template variables

To add variables to a VM template, enter the Key and Value, then click Add.

To edit an existing value, click the pencil icon, enter the new Value, then click ok. To save your changes to the template, click Save.

The variables will be added automatically to new VMs. Users can edit the variables when configuring the VM.

After the VM deploys, users can then access variables in the guest.
For example, AWS stores the variables in the ~/vm-variables.rc file. Cloud-init may use variables.

Scopes tab for sharing VM templates

To share a template with the enterprises in one or more scopes, select template scopes.

To remove enterprise access to a template, remove the scope containing the enterprise.

You cannot remove a scope from the template if an enterprise in the scope is using the template, for example, if it has deployed VMs or instances of VMs.

To make a template private to the owner enterprise, unselect all scopes.

Edit template Advanced tab

You can also specify some Advanced template values using the OVF and the API. See Extended OVF Support and Template Definition.

Field	Value
Guest setup	Select Guest setup option of Cloud-init or Hypervisor tools.
Guest initial password	If Guest setup is selected, select this option to request an initial password
Cost code	Pricing cost code for this template. Requires the "Add a cost code in VM Template edition" privilege. See Pricing View
Operating system	Sets the VMware guest operating system type. Select from the pull-down list. For more details, see Guest operating system definition for VMware and Extended OVF Support and Template Definition. This attribute also enables users to search for templates in public cloud (e.g. Ubuntu 64-bit template). To use the latest version of an operating system, select a generic type, e.g. WINDOWS, and do not enter the version. If the template does not have an icon, the platform will load the default icon defined for the OS or the generic OS type.
Os Version	OS version is used to: add operating systems not included in the list of codes provide details of operating systems set the VMware guest operating system type See Guest operating system definition for VMware and Extended OVF Support and Template Definition for further details.
User	Default user for a VM created from this template for SSH access.
Password	Default password for the default User of a VM created from this template.
NIC driver	Abiquo always supports E1000 drivers On ESXi, Abiquo also supports PCNet32 and VMXNET3 On KVM, Abiquo supports VIRTIO drivers.
Enable UEFI boot	When selected, disable BIOS boot and enable UEFI boot. Requires templates with UEFI firmware and operating system support for UEFI boot. Abiquo recommends that users: Do not change the template's disk controllers Meet the minimum hardware requirements for the OS Correctly indicate the 32/64 bit architecture For VMs, the uefiEnabled attribute is read-only and it is available via the API.
Enable hot add / reconfigure in VM	See separate section
Creation user	SYSTEM means that the platform created the template, for example, from an OVF file in the NFS repository.
Creation date	Date and time when the template was created.

Enable hot add and hot reconfigure for VM templates

To allow users to reconfigure their VMs without powering off, set these values as described on the Advanced tab of the VM edit dialog.

Option	Description
Enable hot-add or hot reconfigure in VM	Supported providers only with supported guest operating systems. Check that the Operating system and OS version are correctly set for your system ESXi: See VMware documentation. After you hot-add or hot-reconfigure, remember to update your guest system as required
CPU hot-add	Enable users to add CPUs in the platform while the VM is powered on
RAM hot-add	Enable users to add RAM in the platform while the VM is powered on
Disks hot-reconfigure	Enable users to remove SCSI disks from the boot sequence and add SCSI disks to the end of the boot sequence while the VM is powered on IDE disks are not supported The platform will save other changes to the boot sequence but it will not implement them in the hypervisor. To implement these changes, power off the VM and make another configuration change that will trigger a reconfigure
NICs hot-reconfigure	Enable users to add and remove NICs in the platform while the VM is powered on
Remote access hot-reconfigure	Enable users to reset remote access in the platform while the VM is powered on. On ESXi, if the user changes the VNC password, the change will apply after the power on

Manage VM templates with the API

API Documentation

For the Abiquo API documentation of this feature, see Abiquo API Resources and the page for this resource VirtualMachineTemplatesResource.

Pages related to VM templates

Main Apps library page with links to related pages: Appliance Library View
Guest setup