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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.

Note

The BMC eZDeploy toolkit is validated with the .eZ packages of BMC Zipkits for CLM uploaded in BMC Communities. Before using this toolkit for importing or exporting other service blueprint and service catalog components please refer to the Limitations of the eZDeploy utility.

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 2.1 of the eZDeploy utility

This section provides the information about version 2.1 of the eZDeploy utility.

Note

For known and corrected issues in eZDeploy version 2.1, see Known-and-corrected-issues.

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 4.1
  • Set an eZDeploy profile as a Global profile to be used for the import or export command.
  • Utilize system validation command.
  • Export or import service blueprints on the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.1
  • Support blueprint versioning.
  • Export or import a multitier blueprint created using reused service blueprints. 
  • Export or import the service catalog along with postdeployment actions with option and option choice
  • Support additional providers like Amazon, OpenStack, and so on. 
  • Use additional command line parameters to specify whether you want to create duplicate options.
     

Product compatibility

The eZDeploy 2.1 utility release integrates with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.1.00 only.

Limitations of the eZDeploy utility

  • Only a single session of eZDeploy can be active from a single server.
  • Postdeployment actions attached with the option and option choices are imported from an eZDeploy package, if you have exported the service (created the eZDeploy package) with the option and option choices attached to the postdeployment action of the service.
  • By default, an imported postdeployment action is in online mode. The offline button is not available for an imported postdeployment action, so you cannot make an imported postdeployment action offline. You can choose to delete the imported postdeployment action, and manually create a new postdeployment action to have the online offline feature.
  • Option included in the exported service must have at least one option choice.
  • 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 4.0 cannot be imported in BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.1.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Before performing eZDeploy operations for any third-party provider (for example: OpenStack, or Azure), ensure that the provider is registered and the corresponding Product Catalog entries are onboarded in the target environment.
  • 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.
  • In a service catalog, eZDeploy supports the import of a single service blueprint, but does not support multiple service offerings with different service blueprints (for example: one has an AWS blueprint and another has an Azure service blueprint).

Note

 For troubleshooting issues related to the eZDeploy utility, see Troubleshooting eZDeploy issues.

 

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