Template and InstanceType Management

The tasks that we are about to perform will require us to provision a few additional VMs. In preparation we are going to ask that you shut down the existing fedora01 and fedora02 virtual machines to ensure that your shared environment has enough resources to complete the lab.

Navigate to Virtualization persona in the left-side menu and then click on Virtualmachines.

Each project that you have access to that is hosting VM workloads will be listed in the center column treeview. (At a minimum you should expand projects vmimported-{user} and vmexamples-{user} to check virtual machine status.)

If any VMs are showing a status of Running, highlight the VM in the center tree column, and select the Stop button or option from the Actions dropdown menu..

To begin, click on Templates in the left-side menu, and select openshift for your project. You may need to toggle the Show default projects button in order for the openshift project to appear.

In the search bar type in centos9 and press Enter. In the list of templates that appear find the template for centos-stream9-server-small.

Click on the template name for centos-stream9-server-small, you will be prompted with a message that default templates cannot be edited and asked if you’d like to clone. Click the Create a new custom Template option.

A new menu called Clone template will appear, fill in the the following values, and when finished click on the Clone button.

This will take you to the Details page for the template where we will be able to customize some options. Start by finding the CPU and Memory near the bottom of the page, and click on the pencil icon to edit it.

A new window will pop out where you can edit the amount of CPU and Memory. For our custom template set the value of CPUs to 2, and Memory to 4 GiB, and click the Save button.

Next click on the Scripts tab at the top, and in the section called Cloud-init click the Edit button.

When the Cloud-init dialog opens, click the radio button to Configure via: Script then replace the YAML with the following YAML snippet.

userData: |-
  #cloud-config
  user: centos
  password: ${CLOUD_USER_PASSWORD}
  chpasswd: { expire: False }
  packages:
    - mariadb-server
  runcmd:
    - systemctl enable mariadb
    - systemctl start mariadb

Click the Save button, you will see a green Saved prompt, then follow that by clicking the Apply button.

Now click on the Catalog item on the left-side menu, select the Template catalog option, followed by User templates. You should see your created template available as a tile.

Click on the tile and you will be prompted with the VM startup screen. Click the Quick create VirtualMachine button.

When the virtual machine boots you can see on the Overview page that it was created from our template, and has the additional resources we defined. We just need to verify that it installed MariaDB for us.

Click on the Console tab at the top and use the Guest login credentials that are provided and the Copy and Paste to console buttons to log into the console of the virtual machine.

Once you are logged into the virtual machine, run the following command to test the install of MariaDB.

sudo mysql -u root

Hit Ctrl-D twice to log out of the VM.

From the left menu, navigate to Catalog, and click on the Template catalog tab near the top..

Type the word win in the search bar, or scroll down until you find the Microsoft Windows Server 2019 VM tile.

A dialog will appear showing the default configuration related to the template.

In this dialog:

With the options filled out, we want to click on the Customize VirtualMachine button at the bottom to continue configuring our Template.

On the Customize and create VirtualMachine screen, click on the edit pencil by the Boot mode option.

When the Boot mode menu pops up, select the BIOS boot mode from the drop-down menu and click the Save button.

Now click on the Scripts tab, and then scroll down to the Sysprep section and click on the Edit button.

A new window will pop up for you to create Sysprep actions for your new template.

Copy and paste the following code block, which helps to automate the installation and configuration of the Windows server into the autounattend.xml section:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
  <settings pass="windowsPE">
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <DiskConfiguration>
        <Disk wcm:action="add">
          <CreatePartitions>
            <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
              <Order>1</Order>
              <Extend>true</Extend>
              <Type>Primary</Type>
            </CreatePartition>
          </CreatePartitions>
          <ModifyPartitions>
            <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
              <Active>true</Active>
              <Format>NTFS</Format>
              <Label>System</Label>
              <Order>1</Order>
              <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
            </ModifyPartition>
          </ModifyPartitions>
          <DiskID>0</DiskID>
          <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
        </Disk>
      </DiskConfiguration>
      <ImageInstall>
        <OSImage>
          <InstallFrom>
            <MetaData wcm:action="add">
              <Key>/IMAGE/NAME</Key>
              <Value>Windows Server 2019 SERVERSTANDARD</Value>
            </MetaData>
          </InstallFrom>
          <InstallTo>
            <DiskID>0</DiskID>
            <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
          </InstallTo>
        </OSImage>
      </ImageInstall>
      <UserData>
        <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
        <FullName>Administrator</FullName>
        <Organization>My Organization</Organization>
      </UserData>
      <EnableFirewall>false</EnableFirewall>
    </component>
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <SetupUILanguage>
        <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
      </SetupUILanguage>
      <InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale>
      <SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
      <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
      <UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale>
    </component>
  </settings>
  <settings pass="offlineServicing">
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-LUA-Settings" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <EnableLUA>false</EnableLUA>
    </component>
  </settings>
  <settings pass="specialize">
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <AutoLogon>
        <Password>
          <Value>R3dh4t1!</Value>
          <PlainText>true</PlainText>
        </Password>
        <Enabled>true</Enabled>
        <LogonCount>999</LogonCount>
        <Username>Administrator</Username>
      </AutoLogon>
      <OOBE>
        <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
        <HideLocalAccountScreen>true</HideLocalAccountScreen>
        <HideOnlineAccountScreens>true</HideOnlineAccountScreens>
        <HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
        <NetworkLocation>Work</NetworkLocation>
        <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC>
        <SkipMachineOOBE>true</SkipMachineOOBE>
      </OOBE>
      <UserAccounts>
        <LocalAccounts>
          <LocalAccount wcm:action="add">
            <Description>Local Administrator Account</Description>
            <DisplayName>Administrator</DisplayName>
            <Group>Administrators</Group>
            <Name>Administrator</Name>
          </LocalAccount>
        </LocalAccounts>
      </UserAccounts>
      <TimeZone>Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
    </component>
  </settings>
  <settings pass="oobeSystem">
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale>
      <SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
      <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
      <UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale>
    </component>
    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS">
      <AutoLogon>
        <Password>
          <Value>R3dh4t1!</Value>
          <PlainText>true</PlainText>
        </Password>
        <Enabled>true</Enabled>
        <LogonCount>999</LogonCount>
        <Username>Administrator</Username>
      </AutoLogon>
      <OOBE>
        <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
        <HideLocalAccountScreen>true</HideLocalAccountScreen>
        <HideOnlineAccountScreens>true</HideOnlineAccountScreens>
        <HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
        <NetworkLocation>Work</NetworkLocation>
        <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC>
        <SkipMachineOOBE>true</SkipMachineOOBE>
      </OOBE>
      <UserAccounts>
        <LocalAccounts>
          <LocalAccount wcm:action="add">
            <Description>Local Administrator Account</Description>
            <DisplayName>Administrator</DisplayName>
            <Group>Administrators</Group>
            <Name>Administrator</Name>
          </LocalAccount>
        </LocalAccounts>
      </UserAccounts>
      <TimeZone>Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
    </component>
  </settings>
</unattend>

Once the code is pasted, click the Save button on the dialog.

With the Sysprep in place, click the Create VirtualMachine button at the bottom of the screen.

The Virtual Machine will start the provisioning process by downloading the ISO image, configuring, and starting the instance.

This process may take a few minutes due to needing to download the boot ISO image. You can check on the progress of the download by clicking the Diagnostics tab.

After a few moments, the virtual machine will start, and the status will change to Running. Click to the Console tab to view the autoattend installation process:

Once the VM installation process is complete (provisioning will take 3-5 minutes, starting and configuring will take about 10 minutes), go ahead and power it off with the stop button.

With the machine powered down we want to make a clone of the root volume that we can use for future Windows template-based installs, without having to run through the customization process each time.

On the left-side menu, click on Storage and then PersistentVolumeClaims to see a list of PVCs available in the vmexamples-{user} namespace.

Find the win-sysprep PVC created with our installation, and using the three-dot menu on the right select Clone PVC.

On the menu that pops up, fill in the following options, then click the Clone button:

Once this is saved, you can use it to quickly create Windows VMs in the future.

Return to the Catalog menu item, and use this cloned PVC as a boot source for quick-creating new virtual machines by selecting the option for PVC (clone PVC) as the Disk source, and selecting the Windows-2k19-Sysprep-Template PVC as the PVC name to clone, and click the Customize VirtualMachine button to configure boot mode BIOS instead UEFI.

Configure BIOS and press Create VirtualMachine

In a few moments the new Windows Server 2019 virtual machine will boot up from our cloned PVC.

To get started click on Catalog on the left-side menu. You will see the default catalog item is InstanceType.

The first step in using an instance type is to select a volume to boot from. Similar to the templates that provide boot sources, these boot sources are available to use for guests provisioned with an InstanceType. You can see the included volumes by selecting the openshift-virtualization-os-images project, or you can upload your own with the Add volume button.

Click on the rhel9 boot volume to select it as the volume type to boot from. Selecting it will be denoted by a small vertical blue line to the left of the image name and the name itself being changed to a bold font.

Next you can select the instance type you would like to use. There are Red Hat provided instance types by default, or you can create your own for your specific use case. If you hover over a provided instance type you can see a description of its intended use.

Click on the U series tile to see a dropdown list of defined resources for general instance types. The default option here is medium: 1 CPUs, 4 GiB Memory. Select it. Again selection will be indicated by a blue line, and a bolding of the font for the instance type.

The last section that needs to be completed when provisioning using an instance type is similar to the template section. You need to provide a name for the virtual machine, and select the storage class to be used for a backing disk. By default, a name will be generated for the VM, and the default storage class will be selected. When you are satisfied, click the Create VirtualMachine button.

You will be directed to the virtual machine overview page, and see that the VM provisioned using an instance type is now up and running.

Navigate to Virtualization persona in the left-side menu and then click on Virtualmachines.

Each project that you have access to that is hosting VM workloads will be listed in the center column treeview. (At a minimum you should expand projects vmimported-{user} and vmexamples-{user} to check virtual machine status.)

If any VMs are showing a status of Running, highlight the VM in the center tree column, and select the Stop button or option from the Actions dropdown menu..