Creating a VGP in BMC Server Automation for a vCenter environment

Review the following sections for requirements and recommendations for creating VGPs.

About the VGP

A VGP bundles configuration changes so they can be deployed to hosts/clusters using a Virtual Guest Job. A VGP consists of an instruction set and any files needed for implementing configuration changes. Configuration changes can consist of additions, deletions, and modifications to any of the server objects BMC supports on all operating systems. This capability allows you to create multiple VGPs, each designed and tailored for a specific use.

Requirements

• You should create VGPs from virtual machine templates.

   Click here to review the requirements for creating VM templates.

  This section provides an overview of the steps when creating a VM template on VMware vCenter. A VM template is a reusable image created from an existing VM. You use these VM templates when creating a VGP in BMC Server Automation.

  Requirements

  Review the following requirements for VM templates.

  Requirement / Recommendation	Description
  IPv6 not supported	When creating templates for BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, ensure that IPv6 is disabled, as BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management does not support IPv6. For information about disabling IPv6, see the following Microsoft support article: How to disable IPv6 or its components in Windows
  OS customization support	Before creating a VM template, ensure that your version of vCenter supports OS Customization for the specified guest OS. See the VMware vSphere online documentation regarding Operating System Compatibility for vCenter Server.
  VMware Tools	VMware Tools must be installed in all templates. Refer to the VMware online documentation for installation details.
  Microsoft System Preparation (Sysprep) tool	VMware vCenter uses the Microsoft System Preparation (Sysprep) tool to automate the deployment of various Microsoft operating systems. Sysprep must be present on the vCenter to support OS Customization for Microsoft Windows. If Sysprep is not present for a specific version of Windows, OS Customization will fail. This in turn causes the VirtualGuest create task to fail.

  Recommendations for multiple vCenter environments

  See Working with multiple vCenter deployments.

  Adding a BMC Server Automation agent to the VM template

  Before you use a VM template to create a VGP, use the following procedure to add a BMC Server Automation RSCD agent to the template:

  1. Convert the template to a VM.
  2. Install a BMC Server Automation RSCD agent on the VM (see Installing only the RSCD agent (Linux and UNIX) and Installing an RSCD agent (Windows)).
  3. From a remote machine, use the BMC Server Automation agentinfo utility to ensure connectivity. Enter the following command:
     agentinfo hostname
     If the agent is not reachable, you may need to disable the firewall on the VM.
  4. Delete the BladeLogicRSCD user before converting the VM to a template.
  5. Convert the VM back to a template.

  Linux VM templates

  Linux VM templates must include the following:

  1. Modify the /etc/rc.d/rc.localscript to ensure successful DNS registration. See the following example for the recommended modification:

     dhcpHostname=`grep "DHCP_HOSTNAME=.*" /etc/sysconfig/network`
     dhcpHostname=`echo "$dhcpHostname" | sed "s/\s*//g"`
     if [ -z "$dhcpHostname" ]; then
     echo "DHCP_HOSTNAME=$HOSTNAME" >> /etc/sysconfig/network
     reboot
     else if [ "DHCP_HOSTNAME=$HOSTNAME" != "$dhcpHostname" ]; then
     sed "s/DHCP_HOSTNAME=.*/DHCP_HOSTNAME=$HOSTNAME/g" /etc/sysconfig/network > /tmp/hostnamechange
     mv /tmp/hostnamechange /etc/sysconfig/network
     reboot
     fi
     fi
     

  2. Distribute the UNIX Users custom object to the BMC Server Automation agent to validate users created on VMs. See the BMC Server Automation online technical documentation for details).

  Note

  For creating VM templates for the SUSE Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Cent OS platform, a cloud user must create the templates in VMware vCenter with Guest OS as RedHat Linux. BMC Server Automation supports creation of virtual guest package on these templates only.

• Create VGPs in the CSM_Virtual_Guest_Packages folder (under Depot) in the BMC Server Automation Console.
• To support hostname configuration in the virtual guest, select the Custom option in the VM Config Type Settings tab. For more information, see VMware - Config.
• To make sure the VMs provisioned using the VGPs can be enrolled in BMC Server Automation successfully, the primary DNS server specified on the BMC Server Automation Application Server should be the same DNS server utilized by the vCenter. Otherwise, BMC Server Automation is forced to wait for DNS propagation before it can communicate with the BMC Server Automation agent on the virtual guest.
• Ensure that the VGP for bare-metal virtual machines is assigned a larger disk space amount than what is assigned to the system package. Otherwise, the provisioning fails with the somewhat misleading error message OS Not Found.

Recommendations

Consider the following general recommendations for creating VGPs:

• Do not include any static IP addresses in the configuration of the VGP.
• Do not include any information that is instance-specific, such as a hard-coded host name.

Consider the following recommendations if you have mulitiple VMware vCenters in the deployment (a multi-site deployment, for example):

• Make sure you have the same VM template names available on all of the vCenters. You can then create Virtual Guest Packages (VGPs) from one vCenter and still provision VMs to other vCenters.
• To minimize template overhead, it is highly recommended to keep templates as minimal as possible (such as, only OS with optionally an enterprise-based software stack, such as antivirus program).