Have been playing around with VMWare’s vSphere 4i today. One of the major differences between it and the full version is being able to clone and make templates out of VM images. What I did today was setup a machine with a bunch of Solaris VM’s. But I did not want to installed them all from scratch. On the full version of ESX, cloning is supported for Windows and I believe Linux, but don’t think it is for Solaris. So to do the poor mans clone of Solaris was what I needed to do. So how do you do it? Sort of simple:
1. Install one of the VM’s from scratch from either a CD or ISO Image. (You can upload an ISO image to the server by going in to to the Configuration section of the vSphere Client, and clicking on storage and then browse the datastore. What I did was make a directory for the ISO Images, and then you can click the upload button and find the file on the local machine and it will upload it to the server. It makes it a lot faster to install from an ISO image vs the CDRom).
2. Once the OS is installed, I put the latest Security/Recommended patches on it. I also installed the VMWare Tools.
3. Do any “configuration” that you want to be done for all the VM’s. For example, modify the /etc/issue,/etc/ssh/sshd_config, create non root accounts, enable auditing, disable services, etc.
4. The next thing I did was ran a “sys-unconfig”. This will remove the root user’s password, clear the hostname, clear all IP information and the naming service info. It will leave other local created accounts though.
5. The final step of the sys-unconfig, halts the VM. This will be the “last” time you will boot this image. We will now use it as a poor man’s template for our other VM’s. (The reason I say last is unless you are going to update it to be used to “clone” new vm’s, you should never boot it again.) You should also probably rename this virtual machine to be something like “Solaris – Template – DNB” (DNB=Do Not Boot… )
6. Back in the Datastore browser, create a new folder for the to be “cloned” vm.
7. Now go in to the folder of the original vm you made that is in the “unconfiged” state. Once in there, select ALL the files in there and right click and select copy.
8. Now go to the newly created folder, and go in to it and right click and select paste. For a VM with a 20gb disk this takes about a minute or so to copy and paste.
9. Now go in to the cloned directory and right click on the VMX file and select “Add to Inventory”. It will pop up a dialog box and will let you “name” the new vm. Type in the new name of the new vm. (It won’t change the name of the files in that directory though.)
10. Next you can power on the new “cloned” vm. It will give you a pop up box asking if you have “moved” it or “copied” it or something else. Just select copied, and it will load the VM.
11. Now when Solaris boots, it will look like a clean machine, it will ask you for the hostname, ip, name service, etc, and then reboot after you enter in the information.
All said I did about 12 of these and had them all running at the same time and didn’t have a problem with them. If you need some different “hardware” for a vm, before you power it on, you can change the settings just as if you had installed it from scratch. One thing with the new vSphere it will support adding more than just a disk if the OS supports it. So you should be able to add processors, disk and possibly memory on the fly to a solaris VM.
Hope that helps people with the i version of ESX…
Solaris, VMWare
cloning, ESX, ESXi, Solaris, template, VMWare, vSphere
