Chapter 9. Creating and uploading a customized RHEL VMDK system image to vSphere

Procedure

1. Access Insights image builder on the browser.

   The Insights image builder dashboard appears.

2. Click Create image.

   The Create image dialog wizard opens.

3. On the Image output page, complete the following steps:

   1. From the Release list, select the Release that you want to use: for example, choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
   2. From the Select target environments option, select VMware.

   3. Select one of the options:

      • Open virtualization format (.ova)

      • Virtual disk (.vmdk) format

        Click Next.

4. On the Registration page, select the type of registration that you want to use. You can select from these options:

   • Register images with Red Hat - Register and connect image instances, subscriptions and insights with Red Hat. For details on how to embed an activation key and register systems on first boot, see Creating a customized system image with an embed subscription by using Insights image builder.
   • Register image instances only - Register and connect only image instances and subscriptions with Red Hat.
   • Register later - Register the system after the image creation.
5. Click Next.
6. Optional: On the Packages page, add packages to your image. See Adding packages during image creation by using Insights image builder.
7. On the Name image page, enter a name for your image and click Next. If you do not enter a name, you can find the image you created by its UUID.

8. On the Review page, review the details about the image creation and click Create image.

   After you complete the steps in the Create image wizard, the image builder dashboard is displayed.

9. When the new image displays a Ready status in the Status column, click Download .vmdk in the Instance column.

   The .vmdk image is saved to your system and is ready for deployment.

   Note

   The .vmdk images are available for 6 hours and expire after that. Ensure that you download the image to avoid losing it.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client, from the Actions menu, select Deploy OVF Template.
2. On the Deploy OVF Template page, complete the settings for each configuration option and click Next.

3. Click Finish. The .ova image starts to be deployed.

   After the image deployment is complete, you have a new virtual machine (VM) from the .ova image.

4. In the deployed image page, perform the following steps:

   1. From the Actions menu, select Edit Setting.

   2. On the Virtual Hardware tab, configure resources such as CPU, memory, add a new network adapter, between others of your choice.

      1. On the CD/DVD drive 1 option, attach a CD or DVD Drive that contains a cloud-init.iso, to provision a user on startup.

         The VM is now ready to boot with the username and password from the cloud-init.iso file.

Procedure

1. Access the directory where you downloaded your .vmdk image.

2. Create a file named metadata.yaml. Add the following information to this file:

   instance-id: cloud-vm
   local-hostname: vmname

3. Create a file named userdata.yaml. Add the following information to the file:

   #cloud-config
   users:
   - name: admin
     sudo: "ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"
     ssh_authorized_keys:
     - ssh-rsa AAA...fhHQ== your.email@example.com

   • ssh_authorized_keys is your SSH public key. You can find your SSH public key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

4. Export the metadata.yaml and userdata.yaml files to the environment, compressed with gzip, encoded in base64 as follows. They will be used in further steps.

   export METADATA=$(gzip -c9 <metadata.yaml | { base64 -w0 2>/dev/null || base64; }) \
   USERDATA=$(gzip -c9 <userdata.yaml | { base64 -w0 2>/dev/null || base64; })

5. Launch the image on vSphere with the metadata.yaml and userdata.yaml files:

   1. Import the .vmdk image in to vSphere:

      $ govc import.vmdk ./composer-api.vmdk foldername

   2. Create the VM in vSphere without powering it on:

      govc vm.create \
      -net.adapter=vmxnet3 \
      -m=4096 -c=2 -g=rhel8_64Guest \
      -firmware=bios -disk=”foldername/composer-api.vmdk” \
      -disk.controller=ide -on=false \
       vmname

   3. Change the VM to add ExtraConfig variables, the cloud-init config:

      govc vm.change -vm vmname \
      -e guestinfo.metadata="${METADATA}" \
      -e guestinfo.metadata.encoding="gzip+base64" \
      -e guestinfo.userdata="${USERDATA}" \
      -e guestinfo.userdata.encoding="gzip+base64"

   4. Power-on the VM:

      govc vm.power -on vmname

   5. Retrieve the VM IP address:

      HOST=$(govc vm.ip vmname)

   6. Use SSH to log in to the VM, using the user-data specified in cloud-init file configuration:

      $ ssh admin@HOST