vCAC 6 series – Part 10 – Prepare for provisioning

There are several ways to deploy virtual machines with vCloud Automation Center 6.0 and vSphere.

Link Clone

Provision a space-efficient copy of a virtual machine called a linked clone. Linked clones are based on a snapshot of a VM and use a chain of delta disks to track differences from a parent machine. No required pre-provisioning preparations for link clone.

Clone

Provision machines by cloning from a template object created from an existing Windows or Linux machine (called the reference machine) and a customization specification

Flex Clone

Provision a space-efficient copy of a virtual machine by using NetApp FlexClone technology.

Preparing Linux and Windows VM for Flex Clone or Clone

When VM is deployed by flex clone or clone.

Windows

• Navigate to the vCloud Automation Center Appliance management console installation page.
• For example: https://vca01.lab.local:5480/installation.
• Download and save the Windows guest agent files.
  • Windows guest agent files (32-bit.)
  • Windows guest agent files (64-bit.)
  

  builders

• Unpack GugentZip_version in C:\ on the reference machine.
• This produces the directory C:\VRMGuestAgent. Do not rename this directory.
• Configure the guest agent by running the following command in an elevated command prompt: winservice -i -h Manager_Service_Hostname_fdqn[:portnumber -p ssl.
• For example: winservice -i -h vca02.lab.local:443 -p ssl

C:\VRMGuestAgent>winservice -i -h vca02.lab.local:443 -p ssl
Service installed successfully
C:\VRMGuestAgent>

• After installation new service should appear in Windows Services called VCACGuestAgentService
• Power server off and convert to template

Linux

• Download package from vCAC appliance to Linux server
• Unpack the LinuxGuestAgentPkgs file.
• Navigate to the LinuxGuestAgentPkgs file and locate the subdirectory that corresponds to the guest operating system that you are deploying during provisioning.
• Install the guest agent using the RPM package.
• For example, rpm -i gugent-6.0.0-2025.x86_64.rpm.

[root@localhost rhel6-amd64]# rpm -ivh gugent-6.0.1-71.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:gugent                 ########################################### [100%]
[root@localhost rhel6-amd64]#

• Add agent installation path to $PATH

[root@localhost ~]# export PATH=$PATH:/usr/share/gugent

• Change directory to /usr/share/gugent
• Configure the guest agent to communicate with the Manager Service by running ./installgugent.sh -Manager_Service_Hostname_fdqn:portnumber ssl.

  [root@localhost share]# cd /usr/share/gugent
  [root@localhost gugent]# ./installgugent.sh vca02.lab.local:443 ssl
  [root@localhost gugent]#