Chapter 9. Creating and uploading a customized RHEL VMDK system image to VSphere

Procedure

1. Access Red Hat Image Builder on the browser.

   The Red Hat Image Builder dashboard appears.

2. Click Create image.

   The Create image dialog wizard opens.

3. On the Image output page, complete the following steps:

   1. From the Release list, select the Release that you want to use: for example, choose Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

   2. From the Select target environments option, select VMWare.

      Click Next.

4. On the Registration page, select the type of registration that you want to use. You can select from these options:

   • Register images with Red Hat - Register and connect image instances, subscriptions and insights with Red Hat. For details on how to embed an activation key and register systems on first boot, see Chapter 3, Creating a customized system image with an embed subscription using Red Hat Image Builder.
   • Register image instances only - Register and connect only image instances and subscriptions with Red Hat.

   • Register later - Register the system after the image creation.

     Click Next.

5. Optional: On the Packages page, add packages to your image. See Chapter 4, Adding packages during image creation by Using Red Hat Image Builder.
6. On the Name image page, enter a name for your image and click Next. If you do not enter a name, you can find the image you created by its UUID.

7. On the Review page, review the details about the image creation and click Create image.

   After you complete the steps in the Create image wizard, the Image Builder dashboard is displayed.

8. When the new image displays a Ready status in the Status column, click Download .vmdk in the Instance column.

   The .vmdk image is saved to your system and is ready for deployment.

   Note

   The .vmdk images are available for 6 hours and expire after that. Ensure to download the image to avoid losing it.

Procedure

1. In the vCenter, click Upload Files .

   After you upload the image to vCenter, you can deploy it into a virtual machine (VM).

2. Use your preferred method for VM creation in VMWare to create a virtual machine.

3. In the New Virtual Machine wizard, complete the steps to create a new VM. The following is required for your .vmdk image to function correctly:

   • For the Customize hardware step: When you create a VM, on the Device Configuration button on the upper right, delete the default New Hard Disk and use the drop-down to select an Existing Hard Disk disk image.

     Note

     You must use an IDE device as the Virtual Device Node for the disk you create. The default SCSI value results in an unbootable virtual machine.

   • For the Ready to complete step: Review the details and click Finish to create the image.

     The new VM is created and available in vSphere Client.

Procedure

1. Access the directory where you downloaded your .vmdk image.

2. Create a file named metadata.yaml. Add the following information to this file:

   instance-id: cloud-vm
   local-hostname: vmname

3. Create a file named userdata.yaml. Add the following information to the file:

   #cloud-config
   users
   - name: admin
     sudo: "ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL"
     ssh_authorized_keys:
     - ssh-rsa AAA...fhHQ== your.email@example.com

   • ssh_authorized_keys is your SSH public key. You can find your SSH public key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

4. Export the metadata.yaml and userdata.yaml files to the environment, compressed with gzip, encoded in base64 as follows. They will be used in further steps.

   export METADATA=$(gzip -c9 <metadata.yaml | { base64 -w0 2>/dev/null || base64; }) \
   USERDATA=$(gzip -c9 <userdata.yaml | { base64 -w0 2>/dev/null || base64; })

5. Launch the image on vSphere with the metadata.yaml and userdata.yaml files:

   1. Import the .vmdk image in to vSphere:

      $ govc import.vmdk ./composer-api.vmdk foldername

   2. Create the VM in VSphere without powering it on:

      govc vm.create \
      -net.adapter=vmxnet3 \
      -m=4096 -c=2 -g=rhel8_64Guest \
      -firmware=bios -disk=”foldername/composer-api.vmdk” \
      -disk.controller=ide -on=false \
       vmname

   3. Change the VM to add ExtraConfig variables, the cloud-init config:

      govc vm.change -vm vmname \
      -e guestinfo.metadata="${METADATA}" \
      -e guestinfo.metadata.encoding="gzip+base64" \
      -e guestinfo.userdata="${USERDATA}" \
      -e guestinfo.userdata.encoding="gzip+base64"

   4. Power-on the VM:

      govc vm.power -on vmname

   5. Retrieve the VM IP address:

      HOST=$(govc vm.ip vmname)

   6. Use SSH to log in to the VM, using the user-data specified in cloud-init file configuration:

      $ ssh admin@HOST