Delete a VM Template

In a private cloud datacenter, to prevent users from working with a VM template, you can do the following

• Replace template disk(s) with new disk(s), so future VMs use the new disk(s). To replace a disk, use the Abiquo API. See Appliance Manager Template API Upload and Download
• Delete a template, which requires that no deployed VMs are using the template and it has no instances. Note that you can promote instances to master templates and then delete the instances
• Make a template unavailable to users, when it is in use

To delete a shared template or make it unavailable, you must be logged in to the owner enterprise. If you make it unavailabe, it will only be marked as unavailable for all users when the template owner performs a refresh of the Apps Library.

To remove a template that is not in use

1. click the template edit menu button and select Delete from the menu. 

Abiquo will remove the template from the Apps Library and the NFS repository file system.

Make a template unavailable to users

If you want to prevent users from creating new VMs from a template, but it is in use (in VMs or for instances) so you cannot delete it, then you can make it unavailable. This means that the platform will remove the template disk files and you cannot recover them within the platform. A template wiill also become unavailable if one or more of its disk files is deleted from the NFS repository file system outside of the platform. 

To make a template unavailable in the UI:

1. Select the edit menu button of a template that is in use and select Delete from the menu. A confirmation popup will open with details of the template use.
2. Confirm that you would like to force the delete. Abiquo will delete the disk files but not the template definition. The platform will mark this template as unavailable.
   

In the Apps library, the platform will not display the unavailable template in the default view. To display the template again, click the filter button and mark the checkbox to display Deleted templates, which are unavailable templates with no disk files. The platform will mark the template icon with a red X symbol.

Make a template available again

If one or more template disk files are deleted from the NFS repository, the template will become unavailable. However, if you restore the disk file(s) to the filesystem, then the template will become available again. If the template was downloaded from a remote repository, you can download it again to restore it. After you restore a template, when users redeploy VMs, they will work with the new template and its conversions. 

Delete Template Example

Here is a simple example of the process of deleting a template. An enterprise downloads a VM template from remote repository. A user deploys a VM from the template and modifies the VM. Then a user creates an instance from the deployed VM and deploys a new VM from the instance.