Working with the eZDeploy utility
The eZDeploy utility is a command-line-based interface utility that is used to export and import BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management service blueprints. With this utility, you can import the downloaded content from BMC Communities and the appropriate artifacts in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management (service blueprints with option and option choices and service catalog), BMC Server Automation (BL packages), and BMC Atrium Orchestrator (Atrium Orchestrator workflows) to create a service offering in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. You can also use this utility to share your service blueprints with the rest of the BMC Communities and allow them to use your cloud deployment's best practices.
The following sections provide an overview of the eZDeploy utility:
The following topics provide information and instructions for configuring and using the eZDeploy utility:
Topic | Details |
|---|---|
This topic provides details on how to download the eZDeploy utility for your Linux or Microsoft Windows environment. Note: You do not need to install the utility. You just have to untar/unzip the downloaded Linux/Microsoft Windows eZDeploy utility. | |
This topic provides an overview of the tasks to be completed for configuring your environment for using the eZDeploy utility. For detailed steps see: | |
This topic provides an overview on how you can use eZDeploy utility to export or import a service blueprint or service catalog. You can also validate an exported or imported service blueprint or service catalog. For detailed steps see: |
About eZDeploy packages
An eZDeploy package is a zip file with the extension .eZ that contains files with details about service blueprints and service catalogs and their components, which include software packages, options and so on.
Benefits of the eZDeploy utility
Some of the benefits of exporting and importing service blueprints by using the eZDeploy utility are as follows:
- Service blueprints are exported and imported along with all BMC Server Automation artifacts (system packages, software packages, and NSH scripts). Prior to the eZDeploy utility, the service blueprint JSON file and BMC Server Automation artifacts were exported and imported manually.
- BMC Atrium Orchestrator workflows, if any, can also be exported and imported. Prior to the eZDeploy utility, BMC Atrium Orchestrator workflows were imported and exported manually from the BMC Atrium Orchestrator repository.
- Product Catalog entries from the Definitive Media Library are linked to the service blueprint during import. Prior to the eZDeploy utility, because BMC Server Automation artifacts could not be imported, no Product Catalog entries were created during import.
Version 2.0 of the eZDeploy utility
This section provides the information about version 2.0 of the eZDeploy utility:
Key features
- Import the eZDeploy package in an interactive or noninteractive mode.
- Specify a single location for the software to be used during import.
- Apply a custom prefix during import.
- Export a service catalog as an eZDeploy package.
- Remove BMC Server Automation console dependency.
- Create user profiles in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0
- Utilize system validation command.
- Export or import service blueprints on the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0
- Support blueprint versioning.
- Export or import a multitier blueprint created using reused service blueprints.
- Export or import the service catalog items.
- Support additional providers like Amazon, OpenStack, and so on.
Product compatibility
The eZDeploy 2.0 release integrates with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0.00 only.
Limitations of the eZDeploy utility
- Only a single session of eZDeploy can be active from a single server.
- If a custom prefix is not provided by the user, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management artifacts are imported with a default prefix of eZ-
- Postdeployment actions must be created manually after import of service catalog.
- Options must be associated with a service offering manually after importing the service catalog.
- Option included in the exported service must have at least one option choice.
- If an option is already present in the target system, new options are created with a numbered suffix when another service catalog is imported.
- The source and the target BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management environment versions for importing an eZDeploy package must be the same. eZDeploy packages exported from BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 3.1 cannot be imported in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.0.
- The VGP creation process uses the template reference and licenses, but not other properties, such as timezone. You must update these properties manually after you create the VGP.
- A Global entitlement package must be present in the target system during a service catalog import.
- If custom properties are defined for BMC Server Automation packages, these packages must be imported manually before running eZDeploy.
- In BL Packages, the deploy job name and PRODUCT_NAME must be same for eZDeploy to export packages.
- Ensure that you provide the correct BMC Atrium Orchestrator module version because eZDeploy does not validate this version. If the module that you specify does not exist, a file with a module name is created but does not have any content.
- eZDeploy creates request definitions type as Compute only irrespective of the original request definition type of the service imported. For example: OpenStack service has the request definition type as OpenStack, but after importing the OpenStack service the request definition type is set to Compute by eZDeploy. You must then manually set the correct request definition type for the imported service.
- eZDeploy supports importing a single service blueprint in a service catalog and does not support multiple service offerings with different service blueprints (for example: one has an AWS blueprint and another has an Azure service blueprint) in a service catalog.