[chef-dev] Re: Re: [chef] Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

[< >]

Hi Anna,

I’ve built a Portal for requesting VM’s by users.  Basically,  from a web
frontend,  they choose what type of VM build to build (rhel ver, cpu, memory,
etc).  This generates an approval email, where you click a link to build the
VM.  The link brings up a page where you can select “Build VM”.  The php
code is executing the chef vsphere plugin to clone a template to create the 
VM.
 It then runs configuration scripts on the VM, and 5 minutes later, you have a
working VM.  

As far as the problems you have encountered:  

1)      I’m able to clone a VM using “-“ in the name.  Here’s a snippet
from php VM clone:

$DATASTORE = chop(shell_exec("/usr/bin/knife vsphere datastore maxfree --regex
$resource_pool --vsuser $vuser --vspass $vspass"));
$BUILD_VM = "/usr/bin/knife vsphere vm clone $request_vm_name --vsuser $vuser
--vspass $vspass --resource-pool $resource_pool --datastore $DATASTORE 
--folder
Templates --template $request_os --dest-folder '$FOLDER' --start --ccpu
$request_vm_cpus --cram $request_vm_memory --cspec 'DHCP v1' --format text
--verbose"; 
exec("$BUILD_VM",$retval,$ret);

2)      I’m using VM names’ longer than 14 characters

3)      In my template, it already has 2 VMDK’s, one for the OS, and another
for user VG.  When I tried to use the knife vsphere esx plugin to clone a VM 
it
wouldn’t add the second VMDK.  Since using the vsphere plugin, it works fine.

4)      If I try to add another VMDK, it works for top level folder, but not
sub-folders.  Looking at the code.

def traverse_folders_for_vm(folder, vmname)
        # not sure why @vm is necessary, but it returns class Array
        # instead of class VirtualMachine without it... ugh
        @vm = nil
        folders = find_all_in_folder(folder, RbVmomi::VIM::Folder)  <<< 
folders
is empty when you used a sub folder
        folders.each do |child|
          traverse_folders_for_vm(child, vmname)
          vms = find_all_in_folder(folder, RbVmomi::VIM::VirtualMachine)
          vms.each do |vm|
            if vm.name == vmname

5)      Related to #4

Once it’s setup, it works great.