Template and InstanceType Management

Navigate to Virtualization → Virtualmachines

Make sure you select All Projects to see all VMs in the environment.

If any VMs are showing a status of Running click the three dots to the right and select Stop.

To begin, navigate to Virtualization → Templates and select All projects

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

Select the three-dot menu to the far right, and click on the option to Clone from the menu that pops out.

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 XL template set the value of CPUs to 4, and Memory to 16 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, followed by the Apply button.

Now click on the Virtualization → Catalog menu on the left, select the Template catalog option and click on User templates. You should see our 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 system resources we defined, and is already attached to the Pod network with an assigned IP address.

Click on the Console tab at the top and use the Guest login credentials option to login to 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.

Stop the VM to save resources:

Navigate to Virtualization → Virtualmachines

Make sure you select All Projects to see all VMs in the environment.

If any VMs are showing a status of Running (only the database VM should be running) click the three dots to the right and select Stop.

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

Make sure you are in the vmexamples project.

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 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 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.

You will be returned to the Customize and create Virtual Machine screen, Click on the Disks tab, and locate the line for the installation-CDROM, click the three-dot menu on the right, and select Edit.

Select the option for Use this disk as a boot source, and click on the Save button at the bottom.

When you return to the Disks tab, click on the Create VirtualMachine button at the bottom.

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

After a few minutes, the Virtual VM will be in Running status. Switch to the Console tab:

Once the VM installation process is complete (this will take a few minutes), go ahead and power it off with the stop button. We can now take a snapshot of the root disk, and use that to create a bootable volume template that we can use to boot other Windows 2k19 machines.

Click on Storage → PersistentVolumeClaims to see a list of PVCs available in the vmexamples namespace.

Find the windows PVC that is listed and using the three-dot menu on the right select Clone PVC. On the menu that pops up, name the new PVC windows-2k19-template.

Once this is saved, you can return to the Virtualization → Catalog menu, and use this cloned PVC as a future boot source for creating new Virtual Machines by selecting the option for PVC (clone PVC) as the Disk source, and selecting the Windows-2k19-Template PVC as the PVC name to clone.

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

The first step to using an instance type is to select a volume to boot from. Similar to the templates that provide boot sources, those boot sources are available to use for an instance type, or you can upload your own with the Add volume button.

Click on rhel9 to create a VM with that boot source.

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. If you hover over a provided instance type you can see a description of it’s 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.

The last section that needs to be completed to provision 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 virtualization 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 → Virtualmachines

Make sure you select All Projects to see all VMs in the environment.

If any VMs are showing a status of Running click the three dots to the right and select Stop.