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. You can later edit the template to add more disks.
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 Catalogue
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 |
|---|---|
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.
|
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 |
|---|---|
Type | The type of the template disk. See Disk Format Information. |
Capacity | The hard disk size required for the deployed disk in MB, GB, or TB. See Determine the size of a VM Disk File.
|
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 platform will automatically add these variables to new VMs. Users can edit the variables when configuring the VM.
After the user deploys the VM, they can then access variables in the guest. Cloud-init may use variables to configure the VM.
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.