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This page describes how to create a Linux base image. These instructions should work regardless of the provisioning engine being used. If you are using these instructions to create an xCAT bare metal image, ignore the sections with titles beginning with VMware Only:. This document assumes familiarity with xCAT and VMware.

Terminology

  • Management node: Linux server with the following components installed:
  • Compute node: Refers to the target blade or virtual machine on which Windows is installed.
  • Provisioning engine: Software which is able to interact with the compute node making it possible to install an OS on it
    • VCL can utilize several different provisioning engines including xCAT, VMware Server, VMware ESX, and VMware ESXi.  xCAT is a cluster management tool used to install images on bare metal blades.
    • The provisioning engine may be a hypervisor if the compute nodes are virtual machines (VMware)
    • The provisioning engine may interact with the BladeCenter's management module if the compute nodes are IBM blades (xCAT)
    • The provisioning engine may utilize IPMI if the compute nodes support it (xCAT)

Requirements

You will need the following:

  • Compute node has already been added to the VCL database
  • Compute node installed with Linux distro, distro's currently supported are
    • CentOS,Redhat AS,Fedora core, Ubuntu
  • Two network adapters enabled on compute node OS, i.e. eth0, eth1
  • Ability to login as root via ssh identity key on the private network from management node.
    • This requires a private public ssh keys, the private key is to be listed in the management node's vcl profile identity keys section. The public key will need to copied into the /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the target compute node.

Setting up the OS so VCL can manage it

The main dependency for linux OS's is that the vcl management node has to able to login as root over ssh using an ssh identity key on the private network, which is normally eth0. This means there are two distinct ssh services, one for the private network and one for the external public network.

  • Private ssh service uses /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    • Started by default sshd startup file /etc/init.d/sshd
    • Purpose is to listen only on the private IP address and allows root access from the management node only using an ssh identity key
  • Public ssh service uses /etc/ssh/external_sshd_config
    • Started by custom ext_sshd startup file /etc/init.d/ext_sshd
    • Purpose is to listen only of the public IP address and only allow userid of requesting user to gain ssh access.
    • Gets created and modified during startup of use using /etc/rc.local.

Run vcld -setup

  1. Run the following command on the management node:

    /usr/local/vcl/bin/vcld --setup

  2. Navigate the menu options
    (Note: the names and numbers of the menu items may not match your installation):
    1. Choose an operation: Image Management → Capture Base Image
    2. Enter the VCL login name or ID of the user who will own the image:
      Enter your VCL user ID or the user ID of the user you want to own the image.  Pressing Enter without entering a user login ID will cause admin to be the owner of the new base image.
    3. Enter the hostname or IP address of the computer to be captured:
      Enter the name or private IP address of the computer which has already added to the VCL database.
    4. Select the OS to be captured (NOTE in the list, VMware means virtual and is not specific to the VMware hypervisor):
             1. Generic Linux (VMware)
      2. OSX Snow Leopard (VMware)
      3. Ubuntu (VMware)
      4. Windows 10.x (VMware)
      5. Windows 2003 Server (VMware)
      6. Windows 7 (VMware)
      7. Windows 8.x (VMware)
      8. Windows Server 2008 (VMware)
      9. Windows Server 2012 (VMware)
      10. Windows Server 2016 (VMware)
      11. Windows Vista (VMware)
      12. Windows XP (VMware ESX)
      13. Windows XP (VMware)
    5. Image architecture:
      1. x86
      2. x86_64
    6. Use Sysprep:
      1. Yes
      2. No
      Sysprep is usually only required if the image will be loaded on bare metal computers with varying different hardware.
    7. Enter the name of the image to be captured:
      The name you enter is the name that will be displayed in the list of environments.  It may contain spaces but including other special characters is not recommended.

The following happens once you enter an image name and press enter:

  • A new image is added to the VCL database
  • An imaging request is added to the VCL database
  • The vcld -setup automatically initiates 'tail -f /var/log/vcld.log' to monitor the vcld log file.  The output will be displayed on the screen for several seconds and then tail will be stopped. However, the capture process will continue. Manually running 'tail -f /var/log/vcld.log' will allow you to continue monitoring the capture process.

Watch the vcld logfile output to determine if the image capture process is successful or terminated because a problem occurred.  When the capture process terminates, there will either be a message near the end of the output saying "image capture successful" or there will be several WARNING messages, the last of which says something to the effect "image failed to be captured".  Further troubleshooting is required if the image fails to be captured.

Add the Base Image to an Image Group

The vcld -setup utility does not add the new base image to any image groups.  You must add the image to an image group using the VCL website after the image capture process is complete.  Reservations for the image cannot be made until this is done.  To add the image to an image group, browse to the VCL website and select Manage Images > Edit Image Grouping.

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