Back To Basics Part 4 - Templates

In our couple of blog post related to Back to Basics Series we discussed about Virtual Machine Files (Part1) Standard Switches (Part2) vCenter Server (Part 3) and we also discussed about the various tasks related to building Home Lab Part1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4 and Part 5.

Let's Talk about Templates which is one of the important feature used being a VMware vSphere Administrator in day to day activities.

Template -

• Master Copy, Base Image, Golden Image which can be used for future deployments of Virtual Machines.
• Includes Guest OS, VM configuration.
• Make the Provisioning of VM much faster and free from any user related errors.
• Options which are available when working with the templates Clone To template and Convert to Template and Clone To Template.
• Clone to Template Will Clone the Template out of VM and will offer us a choice of format to store the VM disks - Same Format as source, Thin Provisioned, Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed, Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed.
• When Cloning to Template VM state can be Powered On or Powered Off.
• Convert to Template will convert the Virtual Machine into a template or in other words the .vmx Configuration file of the VM will get converted into .vmtx template configuration file.
• When Converting to Template VM Must Be Powered Off.
• Clone To Template is used to create a new template from existing one.
• When Deploying the VM from template we need to provide the Name, location, Host and datastore information.

Updating Template -

• For updating the template to include latest patches and updates no need of creating another template rather we can make use of same existing template by updating it and using it for future deployments, which now contains all the latest updates and release.
• To do the same first convert the Template back to VM.
• Make Appropriate changes to the VM (include latest patches and updates).
• Convert the VM back to Template.