Onboarding and offboarding compute resources

You must onboard the compute resources that will be used in the cloud. You can onboard virtual clusters and physical servers. When you onboard a virtual cluster, any associated virtual resource pools, virtual hosts, and virtual disk repositories are also onboarded. When you onboard a resource, it is placed in the pod's default compute pool until that resource is assigned to a specific, administrator-created resource pool. The default pool's name is <pod_name>_default_pool. There is one default pool for each pod. An onboarded compute resource cannot be used until it is assigned to an administrator-created compute pool.

This topic describes how to onboard and offboard compute resources. It contains the following sections:

Before you begin

• You must have a registered compute provider before you can onboard compute resources.
• On VMware virtual clusters, the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) must be enabled.

Considerations when onboarding compute resources

• When onboarding a new VMware cluster, it may take up to 30 minutes before the resource is available in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management user interface.
• Onboarding a virtual cluster may fail if the target VMware vCenter server contains VMs that do not have IP or DNS entries. It might take up to 2 hours for the VMs to be filtered out before the cluster can be onboarded successfully.
• Onboarding a VMware virtual cluster also onboards any associated data store clusters. The VMware data store clusters appear under the Virtual Disk Repository resource type with the following format in the Type column: Cluster:<fileType>. A VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) data store cluster would be displayed in the Type column as Cluster: VMFS. 
• For physical devices, after offboarding a resource, it may take up to 30 minutes before the resource can be onboarded again. During this time, you may see the error "Did not find Physical Server to be onboarded" when you attempt to onboard the resource again.
• You can reset a physical device to make it available in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. In the BMC Server Automation console, right-click the device under the Devices node in and select Provision Later. It might take up to 30 minutes before the physical resource is available in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management user interface.

To onboard compute resources

1. From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration console, click the vertical Workspaces menu on the left side of the window and select Resources
2. Under Quick Links on the left, click Resources under the Compute section.
3. Click the Onboard Resource icon .
   The Onboard Resource dialog box is displayed.
   
4. Select the Pod, Provider Name, and Resource Type for the resource you want to onboard. By selecting a Resource Type, you can onboard resources from a virtual cluster or physical server. When you onboard a virtual cluster, you are also onboarding the virtual hosts, virtual resource pools, and virtual disk repositories (also called datastores) associated with the virtual cluster. An alphabetical list of resources is displayed in the Available Resources table.
5. Find the resources that you want to add.
   • You can page through a long list by clicking the Page button .
   • You can search for resources by entering a search string in the Search box and clicking the search icon .

Select one or more resources and click the Add button to move them to the Selected Resources table. You can also drag and drop resources from the Available Resources table to the Selected Resources table.

When you have finished selecting resources, click Onboard to onboard the selected resources and close the dialog box. The onboarded resources are placed in the default compute pool. The onboarded compute resources are now available to be added to resource pools, as described in Creating compute resource pools. Compute resources cannot be used until you add them to a resource pool.

Offboarding compute resources

When a compute resource is no longer needed or available, you can offboard the resource to remove it from the system.

You can offboard the following compute resource types when the listed conditions are true:

• Virtual cluster—You can offboard a virtual cluster when:
  • There are no virtual guests associated with the virtual cluster
  • There are no virtual guests associated with virtual host associated to the virtual cluster
  • There are no virtual guests associated with a virtual disk repository associated to the virtual cluster
    When you offboard a virtual cluster, you also offboard its associated virtual resource pools, virtual hosts, and virtual disk repositories.
• Virtual host—You can offboard a virtual host when there are no virtual guests associated with it.
• Virtual resource pool—You can offboard a virtual resource pool when when there are no virtual guests associated with it.
• Virtual disk repository—You can offboard a virtual disk repository at any time.
• Physical server—You can offboard a physical server when there are no cloud services running on it.

To offboard a compute resource

1. From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration console, click the vertical Workspaces menu on the left side of the window and select Resources.

2. Under Quick Links on the left, click Resources under the Compute section.
   The system lists all available compute resource pools.  
3. Double-click the resource pool that contains the resource that you want to offboard.
   The list of resources in the selected pool is displayed.
4. Select the resource that you want to offboard and click the Offboard icon .
   

   The resource is no longer available in the system.

Updating a virtual cluster

Onboarded virtual clusters might be reconfigured outside of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. You can update the virtual hosts, virtual resource pools, and virtual disk repositories associated with the virtual cluster by selecting the virtual cluster and clicking the Synchronize Virtual Cluster icon .

The following BMC Communities video (3:28) describes the changes required in cluster classes when you replace a cluster.

 https://youtu.be/HCsR7VJfyLg

Pending activities

When background activity is required from a command issued in the user interface, the Pending Activity section opens to display the progress and status of the background activity. You can:

• Remove a completed activity record from the Pending Activity table by selecting the record and clicking the Delete Activity icon .
• Get detailed error information about a failed activity by selecting the record and clicking the Advanced Error Information icon .
• Display the Audit Trail workspace by clicking the Audit Trail icon .
• Click the Refresh icon in the Pending Activity section to refresh the table.

For information on purging, archiving, and managing pending activities, see Managing pending activity records.

After the activity is marked as complete, you can click the Refresh icon in the upper-right corner of the window to refresh the Resources table so that the newly onboarded resources appear in the table.

Moving an existing VM from one cluster to another

If you want to move VMs from one cluster in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management to another, you can move them individually or in bulk.

To move VMs individually

1. Onboard the new cluster.
2. Run a POST request to /csm/serviceofferinginstance/GUID to update the cluster information.
   See ServiceOfferingInstance refresh request.

To move all VMs (in bulk) from one cluster to another

1. In BMC Server Automation, open the vCenter, right-click the cluster, and select Properties.
2. Make a note of the value in the Internal Attribute 1 field (for example, domain-cxxx).
3. Open the BMC.CORE:BMC_Cluster form (at http://midTierServerName:port/arsys/forms/enterpriseARServerName/BMC.CORE%3ABMC_Cluster) on the Cloud database, and perform the following tasks:
   1. Find the BMC.ASSET entry for the cluster.
   2. Change the Name, ShortDescription, and TokenId fields to the correct values of the vCenter name and domain-cxxx.
   3. Click the Custom tab.
   4. Open the dialog box for the ExternalID field, and make a note of the old domain-cxxx value so that you can search for it in the BMC.CORE:BMC_StorageVolume form in step 4.
   5. Correct the domain-cxxx value.
   6. Click the Custom 2 tab, and update the VimID field with the correct domain-cxxx value.
4. Open the BMC.CORE:BMC_StorageVolume form (at http//midTierServerName:port/arsys/forms/enterpriseARServerName /BMC.CORE:BMC_StorageVolume), and perform the following tasks:
   1. Perform a search with %domain-cxxx% in the ExternalID field (where domain-cxxx is the old ID from previous steps).
   2. As needed, replace all of the old domain-cxxx values with the new value.
5. Verify whether the VMs are using the new cluster in the virtualization instance:
   1. In BMC Server Automation, open the virtualization built-in property class.
   2. Click the Instances tab.
   3. Find the instance, and click Edit.
   4. Make sure the VIRTUAL_ENTITY_MANAGER matches the new vCenters.

The following BMC Communities video describes how to move an existing VM from one cluster to another. The video discusses the classes (or forms) that need to be updated.

https://youtu.be/W3meW9VO9vM

Related topics

Listing onboarded compute resources

Editing and removing resources

Adding compute resources to compute resource pools

Troubleshooting an error when onboarding a cluster