Managing virtual machines

Virtual machines (VMs) are associated with dispatchers and servers, and are deployment targets. You can define as many VMs as needed. The Instantiate, Release (Pass), and Release (Fail) actions are associated with them. BMC VaraLogix Q Deployment Automation manages servers which were provisioned by virtual machines. During the deployment, the application can provision new instances, in case if they were not provisioned earlier.

For example, suppose that you have an environment with three servers:

• Servers 1 and 2 are VMs, each with one Apache load balancer. These make up pool 1.
• Server 3 is a physical computer with two Apache load balancers. These make up pool 2.

At the start of deployment, the system determines what computers are in the environment, instantiates any VMs (the Instantiate action), and then pulls the load-balanced channels in pool 1 out of the loop temporarily. The system deploys to the channels in pool 1, then returns them to the load balancer. The same steps are taken with pool 2. At the end, the VMs are released (the Release Pass/Fail action). In this way, you can keep a site live while deploying, ensuring that the first version remains live until the second version is successfully deployed, and then pulling out the first version.

For each VM interface:

• The Instantiate action runs only at the beginning of the deployment, after any pre-environment setup but before any deployment processes.
• The Pass/Fail action runs after all deployment processes have finished but before any sync processes.
• If the Instantiate action fails, the VM post-fail process does not start.

For details about the load balancer steps, see Managing-load-balancers.

For more information about environments and pools, see Managing-environments-and-pools.

You can find additional information about VMs in Using-virtual-machines-in-your-topology.

To define a VM

1. Click the System tab.
2. In the Configure menu on the left, click VMs.
3. On the right under the list of virtual resources, click New VM.
4. Enter a descriptive label for the VM.
5. From the Module pull-down menu, select the module you want.
6. Click Create.
7. In the Configure section, modify settings for the VM as needed by clicking the value, then selecting or entering a new value and clicking the Submit checkmark icon.
8. On the Servers tab, add a managed server by dragging-and-dropping from the Available Servers list below.
9. On the Properties tab, click Add Property to add properties as needed.

The new VM is added to the list of Virtual Resources (VM) on the System tab.