VM variables

Add VM variables

Before you deploy a VM, you can set guest variables to pass user data to your VM. This functionality uses cloud-init and requires appropriate templates. In private cloud, the templates must have the guest setup flag set to cloud init. The administrator can add default variables for the VM template.

This functionality is available through the API. The platform stores variables in the VirtualMachine variables attribute, which is a dictionary of keys and values. See “Update a virtual machine” in VirtualMachinesResource

You can modify VM variables before you deploy the VM

Check your cloud providers' documentation for their recommendations about confidential information in variables

To add VM variables:

Go to Virtual datacenters and edit a VM that is not deployed
Go to Variables
Enter a Key and Value
1. The length of these can be up to 255 characters each
Click Add
Edit a VM and add variables
Add more variables as required
To delete a variable click the trash can symbol beside the Key. To edit the Value of a variable, click the pencil edit button beside the Value
To apply changes to variables, and other changes to the VM, click Save

Read guest variables

The location of the variable will depend on the method of guest setup that you are using for your VM.
Here are some general guidelines.

Cloud	Method	Variable location

Cloud	Method	Variable location
Private	Cloud-init	On the cloud-init ISO, which has the label `config-2`. The variables file is `openstack/latest/vm-variables.rc`
Private	Hypervisor tools	On ESXi, run this command on the guest to get the value of a variable: `vmtoolsd --cmd "info-get guestinfo.abiquo.<variable-name>"`
Private	Hypervisor tools	For vCloud Director, hypervisor tools does not support variables
Public	Cloud-init	The variables are stored in the `/opt/abiquo-env.rc` file
Amazon	Cloudbase-init ec2launchv2 ec2lanch ec2config	On Windows, the variables are stored in the `C:\ProgramData\Abiquo\abiquo-env.rc` file
Azure	Cloud-init	On Windows, according to the Azure documentation on custom data Custom data is placed in %SYSTEMDRIVE%\AzureData\CustomData.bin as a binary file, but it is not processed. If you wish to process this file, you will need to build a custom image, and write code to process the CustomData.bin.. On Linux, use cloud-init to read the variables from custom data.