Upload a template disk from the local filesystem

To make new VM templates available in the platform, add them to the Catalogue.

In private cloud, you can upload VM templates from a local filesystem in OVA format (multiple disks), or as an ISO file, or a single disk file.

This document describes how to upload a single disk from a local file to create a VM template.

Privileges: Upload virtual machine template

Before you begin:

Check your disk is in a compatible format
You must enter the disk Capacity, which is the deployed size of the disk. See Determine the size of a VM Disk File.

Notes

For very large files, it may be convenient to use another method of adding templates
If you do not have any hypervisors, the platform will convert the template into ALL possible hypervisor formats. So before you add templates, add your hypervisors to save space on the NFS repository. See V2V Conversion.

To add a new template from a disk in a local file:

Go to Apps library
Select the datacenter
On the Virtual machine templates tab, at the bottom of the templates panel, click the + add button
Select Create from local or ISO file

General information

Enter the General information to create a new VM template

Field	Value

Field	Value
Name	A short name to identify the VM template.
Description	A description of the services and applications installed on the VM template
Category	Select a category to organize the template. See Manage VM templates#OrganizeVMtemplatesintocategories.
CPU	Number of CPUs to assign to VMs from this template. If you are not sure, you can edit the template later
RAM	RAM for VMs from this template in MB, GB, or TB. If you are not sure, you can edit the template later
Cores per socket	Must be a divisor of CPUs
Icon	The URL of the template's icon in PNG, JPG or GIF format. Enter a complete URL with an IP address that is not localhost or 127.0.0.1. It may be a URL on a platform server. Recommendation: square images, 128x128 pixels, with a transparent background If you share the template, the same icon will display for all users.

Disks

Go to Disks and click the + add button

Select Disk from local file
Enter the details of the disk
Click Save. The platform will load the disk as the boot disk.

Field	Value

Field	Value
Type	The type of the template disk. See Disk Format Information. To use the disk in the platform, it must have a correct type (not Unknown). If you have not added any hypervisors yet, the V2V conversion process will generate conversions for ALL supported hypervisors
Capacity	The hard disk size required for the deployed disk in MB, GB, or TB. See Determine the size of a VM Disk File. Fixed formats, the capacity is the physical size of the template disk. For sparse and compressed formats, the capacity is the provisioning size.
File name	Click Select file and use your browser to choose the file to upload.
Require DS tier	Select Datastore tier will be required when creating a virtual machine to ensure that the user will select a datastore tier.
Allocation type	The user with appropriate privileges can modify this value in a VM before they deploy it
Controller type	Select a controller type from: IDE, SCSI, SATA (ESXi), and VIRTIO (KVM)
Controller	On ESXi you can enter a SCSI controller type. The default value is the lsilogic controller.
Name	The name of the disk

The platform saves the disk you uploaded as disk 0 in the boot Sequence.

The platform will send this disk to the hypervisor as the boot disk.

If your disk is not a bootable system disk, we recommend that you add a bootable system disk and move the original disk to another position.

You can edit the uploaded disk but you cannot delete it before you save the template.
You cannot resize the primary disk before you deploy the VM

Variables

Optionally go to Variables and enter variables as Key and Value pairs.

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. Cloud-init may use variables.

We recommend that you do not store confidential information in variables.

Advanced

Go to Advanced

Configure the Operating system and OS version for VMware and icon display. See:
To use the latest version of an operating system, do not set the OS version.
Enter the default User and Password of the template for VM remote access
Select the NIC driver. For all private cloud hypervisors, the platform supports E1000 drivers.
On ESXi and vCloud, it also supports PCNet32 and VMXNET3. On KVM, it also supports VIRTIO drivers

To create the template, click Save.

After you save the template, you can edit the template and add more disks, edit, reorder and delete disks. You can also add a cost code, for example, to track the use of software licenses.