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SCVMM Part 11 (Template and Profiles)

  • Articolo

In a prior post I promised more details on the template feature in SCVMM so here we go.  The Template which in my mind is linked with two other options in SCVMM which are known as profiles, the two profile types are:

  • Hardware

  • Guest OS

Going forward when you use SCVMM you may use these features individually or all together - you need to evaluate and see what is appropriate and beneficial to you, I’ll explain more as we progress.

All of this is new to anyone who has used Virtual Server in the past, and this can deliver some great benefits and consistency - we will start with the hardware profile, it will make sense why as we step through...but typically you would create the profiles before the template (as the template can leverage the profiles).

Hardware Profile

You create a new hardware profile using the "New Hardware Profile" option within the "Library" section as shown.

I have three [Hardware Profile] created on my system you may need more?  So what do they do, basically they are a container that you can name, which contains specific hardware related details, we will get to exactly what shortly.
I have called (in the screen shot shown below on the general tab) my profile "CLWATSON_MED_SERVER", this identifies this profile as belonging to me "CLWATSON", it's my MEDium profile and it's for a SERVER.

TIP:  Workout a naming convention that is clear, scalable and makes sense in your environment. 

When you have defined the Hardware Profile name, move to the tab called "Hardware Settings", it's here where you specify the values that apply to this profile, the options you have are:

  • Processor

  • Memory

  • Floppy drive

  • Virtual DVD drive

  • Network Adapter

  • Priority

This screen shows the main view with all the options listed, I have elected to make a few changes for this profile, I changed the emulated processor to a 3.07 GHz Xeon, from a 1.00Ghz PIII Xeon (which is the default one).  I then reduced memory from 512MB to 348MB, I then attached a ISO image from the SCVMM Library (have I told you about that yet?) to the Virtual DVD drive – which you can see displayed in the right hand pane.  I now have a profile for what I consider a MEDium system, which can be used during VM builds, as you may be able to guess I have also created two other hardware profiles called:

  • CLWATSON_SMALL_SERVER

  • CLWATSON_LARGE_SERVER

Template

Now we have the hardware profile(s) created, and you can make the Guest OS profiles in a similar manner, we can start to use them.  You need to create a "New Template" by right clicking an object in the "Library" section of the MMC as shown.

The first screen that is displayed (which I haven't a picture of) asks you to select a the source of the new template, the template can be created from either an existing template or from a virtual hard disk.  For this example I selected "Blank Disk-Small" which you may remember from my previous Post 9

This selection is shown in the next screen shot. 

After we select the source "Blank Disk-Small" in this case, we then get to name the Template, I called mine as can be seen, "CLWATSON_Template_MED" - again devise a scheme that works for you.

From the next screen you can either manually set the hardware settings for this template or from the "Hardware Profile" drop down - select one of the hardware profiles we just created.  This is a neat feature of SCVMM as it means that after a profile has been set, with the right process in place anyone creating a new machine has the choice to use one of the recommended profiles - should be easy to work out which one (if you named them smartly).

From this screen shot, you can see I selected the CLWATSON_MED_SERVER profile.

The next screen then asks you for the Guest OS details, either a Guest OS profile or manually entered parameters.  I won't post on how to set-up a Guest profile as it's the same as for a Hardware one, apart from the options which are:

  • Identity Information (Machine Name)
  • Admin Password
  • Product Key
  • Time Zone
  • Network identity (workgroup/domain)
  • Scripts

So for instance you may want a Guest OS profile that contains your Volume Licence Key, meaning that any machine you create from this template will get the right key - again a good time saver and a way to assist licensing standards.

  

So that's a quick walk through Templates and Profiles at a high level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    As you may know already System Center Virtual Machine Manager can be used to create virtual machine templates....
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    I was post dating my latest SCVMM blog entry as it was a long one, and adding screen shots takes...