vRA 8.4 deployment of template with no os (PXE boot/build) takes a long time to complete.

[qc4vmware]

I have some cloud templates that are empty shells that I set the cpu, disk, and memory values for then these will network boot via PXE and install an operating system.  The issue is that after the vm's are created its taking about 15-20 minutes before the event is triggered for "Compute Post Provision".  Once that event hits I have everything I need to update our internal systems and successfully pxe build the system.  I'm wondering if there is something I can set to help speed along the build.  I know in the 7.x days there was a property I would set to specify the agent wasn't in use so I'm assuming something similar is going on here.  Something is taking a while to timeout as I have no operating system, vmtools, etc running.

[xian_]

Not a solution, but the cause only: waiting for VM reachable via its IP address.

[bdamian]

vRA seems wait until it gets the VM IP address. In vRA 7.x there was an option to create an Empty VM, but I cannot find nothing like it in vRA 8.x. I cannot find either an option to "ignore waiting for IP/VMware tools"...

[xian_]

Can you assign a temporary address?

[qc4vmware]

I can set a property if that is what it is looking for.  Do you know which property?  If its actually trying to ping or looking for VMtools then no because it won't have any OS until the pxe build starts.  It does already have an ip via dhcp and I know the address from our IPAM the final build will use so I can update a property.  I'm new to 8.x so not totally familiar with all of the deployment properties.

[qc4vmware]

@bdamian As close as I can get to the creation workflow from 7.x is I have created template stubs with 1 cpu and 256mb of memory and no disk with a single scsi controller.  I've made one per OS type.  Then on deployment I can use a flavor or set the values for cpu, memory, and disk sizes via inputs.  This is working great so far aside from this lag in the deployment so hopefully VMware has a way to bypass that ip address wait or whatever it is that is holding up the show.

[bdamian]

I hope so. There are many things to improve in vRealize Automation. Even though, it's far better than 7.6

[qc4vmware]

Yeah I am really enjoying the new products as I wrap my head around everything.  I know in this case I am breaking the model a bit but still I can't be the only person running into this.

[xian_ · Accepted solution]

Try awaitIp

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Assembly/services/Using-and-Managing/GUID-7AAE0B88-1D02-4179...

[qc4vmware]

What is funny is I actually got this information from a VMware resource but they told me not to share it as it wasn't fully supported yet.  Looks like the documentation was updated in July though so I guess it was!  I never ran into this while looking through the documentation but glad to hear its in there!