Import Existing vCenter¶

Step 1. Sunstone login¶

Log in into Sunstone as vOneCloud, as explained in the previous section.

Step 2. Acquire vCenter Resources¶

In Sunstone, proceed to the Infrastructure --> Hosts tab and click on the “+” green icon.

In the dialog that pops up, select vCenter as Type in the dropdown. You now need to fill in the data according to the following table:

After the vCenter cluster is selected in Step 2, a paginated list of vCenter VM Templates and both Networks and Distributed vSwitches will be presented to be imported into vOneCloud. Select all the Templates, Networks and Distributed vSwitches you want to import, and vOneCloud will generate vOneCloud VM Template and Virtual Networks resources representing the vCenter VM templates and vCenter Networks and Distributed vSwitches respectively.

Networks, Distributes vSwitches and VM Templates resources imported from vCenter will have their names appended with a the name of the cluster where this resources belong in vCenter, to ease their identification within vOneCloud.

These vOneCloud VM templates can be modified selecting the VM Template in Virtual Resources --> Templates and clicking on the Update button, so the resulting VMs are adjusted to user needs. Among other options available through the Sunstone web interface:

• Information can be passed into the instantiated VM, through either Contextualization or Customization.
• Network interface cards can be added to give VMs access to different networks
• Capacity (MEMORY and CPU) can be modified
• VNC capabilities can be enabled

Also, Virtual Networks can be further refined with the inclusion of different Address Ranges. This refinement can be done at import time, defining the size of the network one of the following supported Address Ranges:

• IPv4: Need to define at least starting IP address. MAC address can be defined as well
• IPv6: Can optionally define starting MAC adddress, GLOBAL PREFIX and ULA PREFIX
• Ethernet: Does not manage IP addresses but rather MAC addresses. If a starting MAC is not provided, vOneCloud will generate one.

The networking information will also be passed onto the VM in the Contextualization process.

Regarding the vCenter VM Templates and Networks, is important to take into account:

• vCenter VM Templates with already defined NICs that reference Networks in vCenter will be imported without this information in vOneCloud. These NICs will be invisible for vOneCloud, and therefore cannot be detached from the Virtual Machines. The imported Templates in vOneCloud can be updated to add NICs from Virtual Networks imported from vCenter (being Networks or Distributed vSwitches).
• We recommend therefore to use VM Templates in vCenter without defined NICs, to add them later on in the vOneCloud VM Templates

(Optional) Step 3. Import / Reacquire Virtual Machines, VM Templates and Networks¶

If the vCenter infrastructure has running (or powered off) Virtual Machines, vOneCloud can import and subsequently manage them. To import vCenter VMs, proceed to the WILDS tab in the Host info tab representing the vCenter cluster where the VMs are running in, select the VMs to be imported and click on the import button.

After the VMs are in the Running state, you can operate on their lifecycle, assign them to particular users, attach or detach network interfaces, create snapshots, do capacity resizing (change CPU and MEMORY after powering the VMs off), etc. All the funcionality that vOneCloud supports for regular VMs is present for imported VMs.

Running VMs with open VNC ports are imported with the ability to stablish VNC connection to them via vOneCloud. To activate the VNC ports, you need to right click on the VM while it is shut down and click on “Edit Settings”, and set the remotedisplay.* settings show in the following images.

The following operations cannot be performed on an imported VM:

• Delete –recreate
• Undeploy (and Undeploy –hard)
• Migrate (and Migrate –live)
• Stop

vCenter VM Templates can be imported and reacquired using the Import button in Virtual Resources --> Templates. Fill in the credentials and the IP or hostname of vCenter and click on the “Get Templates” button. Similarly, Networks and Distributed vSwitches can also be imported / reacquired from using a similar Import button in Infrastructure --> Virtual Networks.

Step 4. Check Resources¶

Now it’s time to check that the vCenter import has been succesful. In Infrastructure --> Hosts check vCenter has been imported, and if all the ESX hosts are available:

Step 5. Instantiate a VM Template¶

Everything is ready! Now vOneCloud is prepared to manage Virtual Machines. In Sunstone, go to Virtual Resources --> Templates, select one of the templates imported in Step 2 and click on Instantiate. Now you will be able to control the lifecycle of the VM.

More information on available operations over VMs here.