Chapter 12. Provisioning virtual machines in VMware vSphere

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Resources, and in the Compute Resources window, click Create Compute Resource.
2. In the Name field, enter a name for the resource.
3. From the Provider list, select VMware.
4. In the Description field, enter a description for the resource.
5. In the VCenter/Server field, enter the IP address or host name of the vCenter server.
6. In the User field, enter the user name with permission to access the vCenter’s resources.
7. In the Password field, enter the password for the user.
8. Click Load Datacenters to populate the list of data centers from your VMware vSphere environment.
9. From the Datacenter list, select a specific data center to manage from this list.
10. In the Fingerprint field, ensure that this field is populated with the fingerprint from the data center.
11. From the Display Type list, select a console type, for example, VNC or VMRC. Note that VNC consoles are unsupported on VMware ESXi 6.5 and later.
12. Optional: In the VNC Console Passwords field, select the Set a randomly generated password on the display connection checkbox to secure console access for new hosts with a randomly generated password.
13. From the Enable Caching list, you can select whether to enable caching of compute resources. For more information, see Section 12.17, “Caching of compute resources”.
14. Click the Locations and Organizations tabs and verify that the values are automatically set to your current context. You can also add additional contexts.
15. Click Submit to save the connection.

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Resources.
2. Select your VMware compute resource.
3. Click Create Image.
4. In the Name field, enter a name for the image.
5. From the Operating System list, select the base operating system of the image.
6. From the Architecture list, select the operating system architecture.
7. In the Username field, enter the SSH user name for image access. By default, this is set to root.
8. If your image supports user data input such as cloud-init data, click the User data checkbox.
9. Optional: In the Password field, enter the SSH password to access the image.
10. From the Image list, select an image from VMware.
11. Click Submit to save the image details.

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Profiles.
2. Select a compute profile.
3. Select a VMware compute resource.
4. In the CPUs field, enter the number of CPUs to allocate to the host.
5. In the Cores per socket field, enter the number of cores to allocate to each CPU.
6. In the Memory field, enter the amount of memory in MiB to allocate to the host.
7. In the Firmware field, select the firmware type for the host. By default, this is set to Automatic.
8. In the Cluster list, select the name of the target host cluster on the VMware environment.
9. From the Resource pool list, select an available resource allocations for the host.
10. In the Folder list, select the folder to organize the host.
11. From the Guest OS list, select the operating system you want to use in VMware vSphere.
12. From the Virtual H/W version list, select the underlying VMware hardware abstraction to use for virtual machines.
13. If you want to add more memory while the virtual machine is powered on, select the Memory hot add checkbox.
14. If you want to add more CPUs while the virtual machine is powered on, select the CPU hot add checkbox.
15. If you want to add a CD-ROM drive, select the CD-ROM drive checkbox.
16. From the Boot order list, define the order in which the virtual machines tried to boot.
17. Optional: In the Annotation Notes field, enter an arbitrary description.
18. If you use image-based provisioning, select the image from the Image list.
19. From the SCSI controller list, select the disk access method for the host.
20. If you want to use eager zero thick provisioning, select the Eager zero checkbox. By default, the disk uses lazy zero thick provisioning.
21. Optional: Select Virtual TPM if you want to add a Virtual Trusted Platform Module for enhanced security. This is compatible with UEFI firmware only.
22. From the Network Interfaces list, select the network parameters for the host’s network interface. At least one interface must point to a Capsule-managed network.
23. Optional: Click Add Interface to create another network interfaces.
24. Click Submit to save the compute profile.

Procedure

1. Create a compute profile:

   $ hammer compute-profile create --name "My_Compute_Profile"

2. Set VMware details to a compute profile:

   $ hammer compute-profile values create \
   --compute-attributes "cpus=1,corespersocket=2,memory_mb=1024,cluster=MyCluster,path=MyVMs,virtual_tpm=true,start=true" \
   --compute-profile "My_Compute_Profile" \
   --compute-resource "My_VMware" \
   --interface "compute_type=VirtualE1000,compute_network=mynetwork \
   --volume "size_gb=20G,datastore=Data,name=myharddisk,thin=true"

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Create Host.
2. In the Name field, enter a name for the host.
3. Optional: Click the Organization tab and change the organization context to match your requirement.
4. Optional: Click the Location tab and change the location context to match your requirement.
5. From the Host Group list, select a host group that you want to assign your host to. That host group will populate the form.
6. From the Deploy on list, select the VMware vSphere connection.
7. From the Compute Profile list, select a profile to use to automatically populate virtual machine-based settings.
8. Click the Interfaces tab, and on the interface of the host, click Edit.

9. Verify that the fields are populated with values. Note in particular:

   • Satellite automatically assigns an IP address for the new host.
   • Ensure that the MAC address field is blank. VMware assigns a MAC address to the host during provisioning.
   • The Name from the Host tab becomes the DNS name.
   • Ensure that Satellite automatically selects the Managed, Primary, and Provision options for the first interface on the host. If not, select them.
10. In the interface window, review the VMware-specific fields that are populated with settings from our compute profile. Modify these settings to suit your needs.

11. Click OK to save. To add another interface, click Add Interface. You can select only one interface for Provision and Primary.

    For more information about network interfaces, see Configuring network interfaces in Managing hosts.

12. Click the Operating System tab, and confirm that all fields automatically contain values.

13. Select the Provisioning Method that you want:

    • For network-based provisioning, click Network Based.
    • For image-based provisioning, click Image Based.
    • For boot-disk provisioning, click Boot disk based.
14. Click Resolve in Provisioning templates to check the new host can identify the right provisioning templates to use.
15. Click the Virtual Machine tab and confirm that these settings are populated with details from the host group and compute profile. Modify these settings to suit your requirements.
16. On the Parameters tab, click Add parameter. Add a parameter named kt_activation_keys, select the string type, and enter the name of the activation key as the value. The activation key has to belong to the same organization as your host. You can also enter a comma-separated list of multiple activation keys.
17. Click Submit to provision your host on VMware.

1. The user provisions one or more virtual machines using the Satellite web UI, API, or Hammer
2. Satellite calls the VMware vCenter to clone the virtual machine template
3. Satellite userdata provisioning template adds customized identity information
4. When provisioning completes, the Cloud-init provisioning template instructs the virtual machine to call back to Capsule when cloud-init runs
5. VMware vCenter clones the template to the virtual machine
6. VMware vCenter applies customization for the virtual machine’s identity, including the host name, IP, and DNS
7. The virtual machine builds, cloud-init is invoked and calls back Satellite on port 80, which then redirects to 443

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > Templates > Provisioning Templates.
2. Search for the CloudInit default template and click its name.
3. Click the Association tab.
4. Select all operating systems to which the template applies and click Submit.
5. Repeat the steps above for the UserData open-vm-tools template.
6. Navigate to Hosts > Provisioning Setup > Operating Systems.
7. Select the operating system that you want to use for provisioning.
8. Click the Templates tab.
9. From the Cloud-init template list, select CloudInit default.
10. From the User data template list, select UserData open-vm-tools.
11. Click Submit to save the changes.

Procedure

1. To use the cloud-init template for provisioning, you must configure a virtual machine so that cloud-init is installed, enabled, and configured to call back to Satellite Server.
2. For security purposes, you must install a CA certificate to use HTTPS for all communication. This procedure includes steps to clean the virtual machine so that no unwanted information transfers to the image you use for provisioning.
3. If you have an image with cloud-init, you must still follow this procedure to enable cloud-init to communicate with Satellite because cloud-init is disabled by default.

Procedure

1. On the virtual machine that you use to create the image, install the required packages:

   # dnf install cloud-init open-vm-tools perl-interpreter perl-File-Temp

   On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, you also require the dbus-tools package for network connectivity.

2. Disable network configuration by cloud-init:

   # cat << EOM > /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/01_network.cfg
   network:
     config: disabled
   EOM

3. Configure cloud-init to fetch data from Satellite:

   # cat << EOM > /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/10_datasource.cfg
   datasource_list: [NoCloud]
   datasource:
     NoCloud:
       seedfrom: https://satellite.example.com/userdata/
   EOM

   If you intend to provision through Capsule Server, use the URL of your Capsule Server in the seedfrom option, such as https://capsule.example.com:9090/userdata/.

4. Configure modules to use in cloud-init:

   # cat << EOM > /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
   cloud_init_modules:
    - bootcmd
    - ssh
   
   cloud_config_modules:
    - runcmd
   
   cloud_final_modules:
    - scripts-per-once
    - scripts-per-boot
    - scripts-per-instance
    - scripts-user
    - phone-home
   
   system_info:
     distro: rhel
     paths:
       cloud_dir: /var/lib/cloud
       templates_dir: /etc/cloud/templates
     ssh_svcname: sshd
   EOM

5. Download the katello-server-ca.crt file from Satellite Server:

   # wget -O /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/cloud-init-ca.crt https://satellite.example.com/pub/katello-server-ca.crt

   If you intend to provision through Capsule Server, download the file from your Capsule Server, such as https://capsule.example.com/pub/katello-server-ca.crt.

6. Update the record of certificates:

   # update-ca-trust extract

7. Stop the rsyslog and auditd services:

   # systemctl stop rsyslog
   # systemctl stop auditd

8. Clean packages on the image:

   • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and later:

     # dnf remove --oldinstallonly

   • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and earlier:

     # package-cleanup --oldkernels --count=1
     # dnf clean all

9. Reduce logspace, remove old logs, and truncate logs:

   # logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf
   # rm -f /var/log/*-???????? /var/log/*.gz
   # rm -f /var/log/dmesg.old
   # rm -rf /var/log/anaconda
   # cat /dev/null > /var/log/audit/audit.log
   # cat /dev/null > /var/log/wtmp
   # cat /dev/null > /var/log/lastlog
   # cat /dev/null > /var/log/grubby

10. Remove udev hardware rules:

    # rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70*

11. Remove the ifcfg scripts related to existing network configurations:

    # rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ens*
    # rm -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth*

12. Remove the SSH host keys:

    # rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*

13. Remove root user’s SSH history:

    # rm -rf ~root/.ssh/known_hosts

14. Remove root user’s shell history:

    # rm -f ~root/.bash_history
    # unset HISTFILE

15. Create an image from this virtual machine.
16. Add your image to Satellite.

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Resources.
2. Select your VMware provider.
3. On the Virtual Machines tab, click Delete from the Actions menu. This deletes the virtual machine from the VMware compute resource while retaining any associated hosts within Satellite. If you want to delete the orphaned host, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts and delete the host manually.

Procedure

1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Resources.
2. Select your VMware compute resource.
3. On the Virtual Machines tab, click Import as managed Host or Import as unmanaged Host from the Actions menu. The following page looks identical to creating a host with the compute resource being already selected.
4. Click Submit to import the virtual machine into Satellite.