Provision a VMware virtual server

The provisioning task is assigned to a member of the VMware Operators group.

Before you begin

Role required: cloud_operator, vmware_operator, itil role (in the VMware approvers group) or cloud_admin role (in the Virtual Provisioning Cloud Administrators group)

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Service Desk > My Groups Work.
  2. Open the provisioning task and then fill in the fields as described in the table. Some information is pre-populated from the catalog request.
    Options Description
    Template Select an operating system template to be cloned for this virtual machine.
    Destination folder Each template belongs to a vCenter datacenter, which contains folders of virtual machines. Select a folder from the datacenter that contains the provisioned virtual machine. If no folder is selected, the resulting cloned instance is placed in the folder containing the template that was used to create the clone.
    Clone name Provide the name of the virtual machine as it should appear in VMware vCenter. This name must be unique on the ESX Server (or the cluster) on which it is being provisioned.
    Cluster Clusters appearing in the list are those from the datacenter in which the selected destination folder resides. If the virtual machine is not being attached to a cluster, choose None. In this case, make sure to select a non-clustered Host.
    ESX Host Select the ESX Server on which to deploy the virtual machine. If you selected None in the Cluster field, only those hosts that are not part of a cluster are available. If you did select a cluster for this virtual server, then the available hosts all belong to the selected cluster.
    Resource pool Select the ESX resource pool to use for this virtual machine. If a cluster was chosen, the available resource pools belong to that cluster. If a host was selected (and no cluster), the available resource pools belong to the selected host.

    Resource pools define the maximum amount of resources that templates using that pool can consume. An ESX Server property enables resource pools to expand when necessary if the ESX Server has additional resources to spare. If you select the Resources pool, the ESX Server creates a virtual machine for use under a normal load.
    Datastore Select the datastore on which to provision the virtual server and any data disks. To put the virtual server on the datastore where the template is located, select None. The available datastores are for the selected host.
    Network Select the network that the virtual server will use. Available networks are those from the datacenter in which the selected destination folder resides.
    Guest customizations If guest customizations are configured for this virtual server, select the appropriate value.
    • VM host name: [Required] Name of the server hosting the virtual machine being provisioned. Check the Notes in the request form for the name designated by the requester.
    • Windows/Linux configuration: [Required] Specifics for Windows or Linux virtual machines configured in VMware Cloud Management Instance > Customization Specifications. Configuration information includes DNS for Linux and the product key and domain credentials for Windows.
    • Network configuration: [Required] Select the network and the network configuration for the virtual server. The IP address allocated to the virtual server is selected from a list of available addresses configured in the network record.

    If you choose not to apply guest customizations to the virtual server, Orchestration provisions the server directly from the template, using only the configuration available to that template.
  3. Click Close Task.

Result

Provisioning rules enable an administrator to select which vCenter resources (datacenter, network, and folder) are used to provision virtual machines for a specific virtual machine category (such as Dev, QA, or Prod) or for any category if the Category field in the rule is left empty.