Customizing network information for VMware Linux guests

Guest customization is intended for template images. You can provide the expected network information by using the --metadata parameter during the boot process. If you do not provide the network device attributes with metadata options, then nova-compute service gets the network device attributes from the Neutron subnet information.

1. Configure IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack to use VMware nodes. For more information, see Deploying with VMware compute nodes.
2. Install VMware tools on the virtual machine and then convert it to a template on vCenter. For more information, see Installing and Configuring VMware Tools.
3. Get the template image by using the VMware driver discovery service. For more information about the VMware driver discovery service, see VMware driver discovery service.
4. Create the net and subnet in OpenStack. You can choose to create a subnet with network information specified.
   Note: DHCP is disabled.
   For example:

   [root@icm ~]# neutron net-create MY_NET
   [root@icm ~]# neutron subnet-create --enable-dhcp=False --gateway 20.9.0.1 --dns-nameserver 24.9.0.6 MY_NET 20.9.0.0/24
   [root@icm ~]# neutron subnet-show 8752e022-c28b-4301-acbd-10c9c517b2b6
   +-------------------+--------------------------------------------+
   | Field             | Value                                      |
   +-------------------+--------------------------------------------+
   | allocation_pools  | {"start": "20.9.0.2", "end": "20.9.0.254"} |
   | cidr              | 20.9.0.0/24                                |
   | dns_nameservers   | 24.9.0.6                                   |
   | enable_dhcp       | True                                       |
   | gateway_ip        | 20.9.0.1                                   |
   | host_routes       |                                            |
   | id                | 8752e022-c28b-4301-acbd-10c9c517b2b6       |
   | ip_version        | 4                                          |
   | ipv6_address_mode |                                            |
   | ipv6_ra_mode      |                                            |
   | name              |                                            |
   | network_id        | 666f39d9-700f-4109-99fd-12392459370f       |
   | tenant_id         | 4f9d5c5dd0aa43ceac5bce2fb38088f1           |
   +-------------------+--------------------------------------------+
   [root@icm ~]#

5. Start the instance with metadata values. When you start the instance, you can provide the following metadata keys.

   networkdevice.Network adapter 1.ipaddress
   networkdevice.Network adapter 1.gateway1
   networkdevice.Network adapter 1.netmask
   linux.dns1
   dns.suffix
   linux.domainname
   linux.hostname

   The following example is a sample Nova command for one NIC:

   nova boot --flavor 10 --image  xiej-rh65-template 
   --nic net-id=4ba1523c-2343-4368-bada-aed9beafdffa
   --meta linux.dns1=10.9.0.14  --meta "networkdevice.Network adapter 1.ipaddress"=10.9.0.236 
   --meta "networkdevice.Network adapter 1.netmask"=255.255.252.0 
   --meta  "networkdevice.Network adapter 1.gateway1"=10.9.0.1 --meta dns.suffix=sce.cn.ibm.com 
   --meta linux.domainname=xj-domainname test-cust-236 –meta linux.hostname test

   Notes:

   • linux.hostname can be specified in metadata. If it is not specified in metadata, the instance name is used for the hostname. The instance name should not contain underscores or other special characters because of a vCenter limitation. If non-supported characters are included, you might see errors such as the following error:

     VMwareDriverException: A specified parameter was not correct, spec.identity.hostName.

   • If you plan to provide the network information by using metadata, you must specify the following parameters together: dns, ipaddress, netmask, and gateway.

     Otherwise, add dns-nameserver and gateway when you create the subnet. Then, the dns, ipaddress, netmask, and gateway values are supplied by Neutron. If this information is specified in both metadata and the Neutron subnet at the same time, the information in the metadata has priority.

   • You can specify the options dns.suffix and linux.domainname in metadata. You can also configure these two options in the vmware section of nova.conf as the configuration items dns_suffix and domain_name. The metadata parameter has higher priority. Finally, if you do not configure these two options in nova.conf, the default value is used.
   • If you want to configure two NICs, you must provide the related information for NIC 2. For example, networkdevice.Network adapter 2.ipaddress, networkdevice.Network adapter 2.netmask and networkdevice.Network adapter 2.gateway1 must be provided in the metadata.