Preparing vSphere Templates – vRealize Automation Series Part 13

Jonathan Frappier Virtxpert

In order to use vSphere templates in vRealize Automation / vCloud Automation Center and Application Services / Application Director there is a bit of preparation you need to do, especially if you want to use Application Services. There are guest agents for both vRealize Automation and Application Services so lets get started. A quick assumption here, you already have a linux virtual machine installed with VMware Tools. I am going to cheat a bit here and use the e1000 NIC, if you want to use the VMXNET3 adapter see my post on how to install VMware Tools…which needs Perl…which needs network access…which needs Perl! Let’s get started with the specifics on configuring your Linux VM; I have a CentOS virtual machine called vxprt-centos-tmp that is powered on and ready to configure. Log in via the VMRC or SSH to get started:

Note that as of Application Services 6.1, you cannot use CentOS7 – at the very least the guest agent will not install, I have not tested beyond the agent installation so certain functionality may work. The support matrix has more details on supported operating systems.

For linux, this is bundled into an installer
Logged in as root run wget http://192.168.6.22/tools/preparevCACTemplate.sh – replace with your server name as necessary (I’ve not configured all network settings for this VM)
- If wget is not installed, run yum install wget
Type ls – notice preparevCACTemplate.sh is grey
Now run chmod +x ./preparevCACTemplate.sh
Type ls again, notice now its green; +x added execute permission on the script
Now run the script; ./preparevCACTemplate.sh – the vCloud Automation Center Agent Installer will start

VMware vCloud Automation Center / vRealize Automation Application Services linux agent installer

Enter the following information in the wizard:
- vCloud Automation Center Manager Service Server: 192.168.6.20
- vCloud Automation Center IaaS Server: 192.168.6.21
- Application Services Server: 192.168.6.22
- Check certificates: n
- Download timeout: Just press enter
- Download and install Java: y
- When prompted click Y to install

The installer will download all of the necessary components and place them in the correct location; a nice step forward from vCloud Automation Center and Application Director 6.0. You should receive a message that the Installation Complete Successfully and Ready to capture as a template… however there is still one more step we actually need to do – remove the 70-persistent-net.rules file. This file keeps track of MAC addresses and it will change every time we clone the template. By removing it, it will recreate the file on first boot.

Type cd /etc/udev/rules.d
Type rm 70-persistent-net.rules
Type y
Type shutdown now -h to shutdown the virtual machine
Return to the vSphere Web Client
Right click on the powered off virtual machine and select All vCenter Actions >> Convert to Template

We should now be ready to add the vSphere template as a Blueprint in vRealize Automation Center

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Preparing vSphere Templates – vRealize Automation Series Part 13

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