Deploying BMC Discovery in the cloud

This section contains information on deploying a BMC Discovery virtual appliance (VA) into the cloud.

Related topics

What is not covered

This section does not cover general principles of running business tools in a hosted cloud, such as using secure storage, and managing keys and credentials, which are common to any deployed tool.

There are many ways to accomplish some of the tasks described here. The method chosen is used to illustrate the concept. Existing tools, practices, policies, or your organization's environment might make an alternative method more appropriate.

Using a VPN

If BMC Discovery is deployed in a dedicated virtual network in the cloud, which is connected to the corporate environment via a dedicated VPN with transparent connectivity, then you can configure and use it in the same way as if it were deployed locally.

What happens when I power on my BMC Discovery VA for the first time?

When you download a BMC Discovery VA from the BMC EPD site, it has no identity and no network configuration. Like many virtual machines, when you power it on for the first time, it generates some of the important identity related items that should be unique to each appliance, including:

SSL key
SSH key
PKI certificate
MAC address
BMC Discovery application UUIDs, secrets, and keys.

Consequently, you must start new BMC Discovery instances using a fresh image, rather than starting and cloning a single instance.

Preparing a Discovery VA to deploy

Cloned appliances share important identity related items if cloned after the original VM has been powered on. Consequently, it is important to account for this when choosing an image to upload.

When moving an existing Discovery instance from on-premises hosting to cloud hosting, only a single instance of which will run in the cloud, then shutdown the instance to be moved and export it as an OVF image from VMware.
When uploading an image from which to launch multiple appliances in the cloud, use a fresh appliance OVF image downloaded from the BMC EPD site.

In each case the only file that you upload to the cloud is the .vmdk (virtual machine disk) file which should be unpacked from the OVF image.

Supported cloud providers

The following topics provide detailed information on the deployment process for each supported cloud vendor: