Chapter 1. Installing Red Hat CloudForms

Red Hat CloudForms is able to be installed and ready to configure in a few quick steps. After downloading Red Hat CloudForms as a virtual machine image template from the Red Hat Customer Portal, the installation process takes you through the steps of uploading the appliance to a supported virtualization or cloud provider.

Important

After installing the Red Hat CloudForms appliance, you must configure the database for Red Hat CloudForms. See Section 2.3, “Configuring a Database for Red Hat CloudForms”.

1.1. Obtaining the Appliance

  1. Go to access.redhat.com and log in to the Red Hat Customer Portal using your customer account details.
  2. Click Downloads in the menu bar.
  3. Click A-Z to sort the product downloads alphabetically.
  4. Click Red Hat CloudForms → Download Latest to access the product download page.
  5. From the list of installers and images, select the CFME VMware Virtual Appliance download link.

1.2. Uploading the Appliance on VMware vSphere

Uploading the Red Hat CloudForms appliance file onto VMware vSphere systems has the following requirements:

  • 44 GB of space on the chosen vSphere datastore.
  • 12 GB RAM.
  • 4 VCPUs.
  • Administrator access to the vSphere Client.
  • Depending on your infrastructure, allow time for the upload.
Note

These are the procedural steps as of the time of writing. For more information, consult the VMware documentation.

Use the following procedure to upload the Red Hat CloudForms appliance OVF template from your local file system using the vSphere Client.

  1. In the vSphere Client, select File → Deploy OVF Template. The Deploy OVF Template wizard appears.

  2. Specify the source location and click Next.

    • Select Deploy from File to browse your file system for the OVF template, for example cfme-vsphere-5.4-43.x86_64.vsphere.ova.
    • Select Deploy from URL to specify a URL to an OVF template located on the internet.
  3. View the OVF Template Details page and click Next.
  4. Select the deployment configuration from the drop-down menu and click Next. The option selected typically controls the memory settings, number of CPUs and reservations, and application-level configuration parameters.
  5. Select the host or cluster on which you want to deploy the OVF template and click Next.
  6. Select the host on which you want to run the run the Red Hat CloudForms appliance, and click Next.
  7. Navigate to, and select the resource pool where you want to run the Red Hat CloudForms appliance and click Next.
  8. Select a datastore to store the deployed Red Hat CloudForms appliance, and click Next. Ensure to select a datastore large enough to accommodate the virtual machine and all of its virtual disk files.

  9. Select the disk format to store the virtual machine virtual disks, and click Next.

    • Select Thin Provisioned if the storage is allocated on demand as data is written to the virtual disks.
    • Select Thick Provisioned if all storage is immediately allocated.
  10. For each network specified in the OVF template, select a network by right-clicking the Destination Network column in your infrastructure to set up the network mapping and click Next.
  11. The IP Allocation page does not require any configuration changes. Leave the default settings in the IP Allocation page and click Next.
  12. Set the user-configurable properties and click Next. The properties to enter depend on the selected IP allocation scheme. For example, you are prompted for IP related information for the deployed virtual machines only in the case of a fixed IP allocation scheme.
  13. Review your settings and click Finish.

The progress of the import task appears in the vSphere Client Status panel.