Bring OVA/OVF file (V2 Legacy)

You can bring your own OVA/OVF file to onboard onto VMware as a content contributor. Before getting started with this please ensure you have reviewed and understood the basics of building a collection and have filled out the content contribution form.

Patterns & Templates

When it comes to bring a template source file, TechZone offers a dedicated environment to enable the process to be as seamless as possible. It's important to mention that before uploading a template, you need to ensure that there is no other alternative using TZCBI. Additionally, ensure you are following the security guidelines for content on TechZone.

Before getting started ensure you understand the role the pattern plays in the TechZone content development process, as a reminder you can review these useful articles:

• Patterns
• Content lifecycle

The following pattern allow to deploy VMware templates:

• vmware-template (recommended)

Building using your own template

For this example, we want to upload an OVF file template from a local machine. To get started, let's go ahead and reserve a Template Builder reservation that enables you to navigate vSphere where you will be uploading your files. Once the environment is ready you can begin working on uploading your template.

Ensure your OVA/OVF files files are ready to be uploaded as well. You can use VMware Fusion to export a VM image to OVA/OVF or use ovftool. Make sure you have an ISO file (if needed with your OVA/OVF when prompted for uploading to TechZone).

Step 1: Access your Template Builder reservation

Once you have reserved a Template Builder instance and that is ready to use, go ahead and access the environment. You can do that by navigating to your reservation and clicking on Open your IBM Cloud environment or by directly opening the Desktop URL below that button. Click on Remote Desktop to access or expand the TechZone dropdown, if you have never used Guacamole before.k

Step 2: Login and access vSphere

Log into vSphere using the credentials at the bottom of your Template Builder reservation.

• You can do that by opening a Firefox Browser into the VM in Guacamole and opening the URL pinned in the browser. (recommended)
• Alternatively, you can open that locally via VPN.

Step 3: Create a folder and tag

Create your folder in vSphere under templates-shared. Short unique naming conventions advised.

After that, create Tag first and then Assign Tag to Template Folder. We use Tags to identify template owners. You can do that by right clicking on template folder, selecting "Tags & Custom Attributes", then selecting "Assign Tag", followed by Add Tag.

Provide the following information:

Name        = [First and Last name]
Description = [email , vm_template_id, collection link] # If you have multiple Collections update your tags to include them
Category    = Owners

Your created Tag should appear in the list, use filter to find your tag, click the check box to select and click "Assign".

Step 4: Upload the OVA/OVF files to vSphere

Right click on your newly created template folder, selecting "Deploy OVF Template".

When you reach Select an OVF Template screen, select Local File and Click Upload Files. The OVF/OVA and ISO file (if required with your OVA/OVF) need to be downloaded to the Template Builder VM beforehand. From the Template Builder VM, open your URL where the OVF/OVA and ISO files are stored and download to the instance.

Ensure to check the number of files selected and click "Next". Then select your local Template Builder compute resource and click "Next".

Check "Review Details" screen and click "Next". Then, select the storage, you should select datastore with the word template in it and with enough free space to store template. Then click "Next".

After that ensure you select the network gym-segment-shared and Click "Next". After that you need to click Finish and wait for the process to complete.

Step 5: Upgrade compatibility

Right click on the VM Template file, then select "Compatibility" clicking on "Upgrade VM Compatibility". Change the version to:

Compatible with = ESXi 7.0 U2 and later

Step 6: Clone VM to a Template

In order to clone your VM to Template, right click the VM, select Clone and then click on Clone to Template.

Similar to the steps before, type in VM template name, choose a compute resource, select storage with the template in the name, then complete.

Congratulations, you have now build your environment. Let's resume by testing.

Variable overriding

In order to start testing you need to create your environment inside of your collection and select the vmware-template pattern. Additionally, you would need to map the account pool depending in which region your virtual instance is.

After that is all set up, you need to create your vm-map-string that will deploy your environment using the specific configurations needed. Ensure you have the following information noted: hostname, IP addresses, VM startup order (if more than 1 vm), subnet, router IP, domain name, published ports (if needed). You can use this as your starting vm-map-string:

{ "rhel9-base-na":              # replace this with your VM name
    { "ip": "192.168.252.2",         
      "ports": ["22/tcp"],      # ["<port_number>/<protocol>", …] TCP and UDP supported   
      "stage": 1,         
      "hostname": "watsonxdata" # replace with desired hostname
    } 
}

We recommend using Jsonformatter Web tool to ensure the correct format, as an incorrect format will fail your reservation: https://jsonformatter.org/.

Add the following Terraform overrides so that we are able to locate the exact template:

vm_template_id    = ""  # the name of the folder that is holding your vm
vm_template_foler = ""  # the higher-level folder name, in this example templates-shared
vm_map_string     = ""  # create and paste valid map-string
vm_dhcp_range     = ""  # include your DHCP range
vm_subnet         = ""  # add subnet
vm_route_ip       = ""  # if you have a router, mark the router IP
vm_domain         = ""  # outline the VM domain

The final result should look like this:

Adding published services

You can add published services to your environment. Published Services allow to expose TCP/UDP ports on VM to the Internet. They are commonly used to access a VM via SSH or direct RDP, or to access web or application services running on a VM. You must configure the VM guest operating system and applications running on the VM to accept the remote connection.

Review your port fields in your vm-map-string. The format is as follows

"ports": ["<port_number>/<protocol>", …]

Once you have set the ports, you can map VM’s internal IP:port with a link template. You can see 2 examples below:

Content Contribution Form

Testing & Validating

You can reserve to test and verify published services links for your exposed web-services in a browser. If you exposed the remote access services (RDP, VNC, or SSH), verify its direct connection with a client. (E.g. open MS Remote Desktop client and add the published service RDP link)

Ensure you fully test end to end your configuration and that you are happy with the result. Once you are ready to move past the testing stage and onboard this template to production there a few more steps.

Onboard to production

Once you are happy with your testing, you need to make this template available across all TechZone geos in VMware. This will ensure greater availability of your resources to all users.

You can contact the TechZone Support team via this form here. Let them know about the collection you have been building and provide the following information so that they can move your template across the board.

For Production rollout your VM folder (vm_template_id) in "templates-shared" needs to be copied to "templates" (production folder). This can only be completed by admins. To ensure the process is as fast as possible, provide the following information and please plan for this process to take 2-3 business days.

Collection url
Template Builder Reservation ID
vm_template_id

Production and Maintenance

Once you have received a notification that the onboard process has completed the following actions need to be performed:

• update vm_template_folder name to "templates" for production templates
• delete Template Builder reservation if you no longer need it
• update the regions and account under your reservation to match the standard for VMware as seen below:

This should be sufficient to run your template in production now.

Once the collection is in production, if there are any issues or changes to the pattern used, you will be notified. This is outlined in details in the asset lifecycle and general standards.