Automatic deployment of VM's

[Slingsh0t]

Hi guys, bit of a general/broad question here...

What products or solutions do you use when you need to deploy VM's automatically?

For Instance:  I'm currently looking into ways where a Netscaler VPX can trigger the creation of Virtual Machines based on the load of the active member servers.  The reciprocal is also true... it will then need to shut-down and delete VM's that are no longer required, etc...

So far I'm struggling to find any helpful info on the web and will soon have to resort to writing lots of scripts and putting together some intricate, custom built solution, but before going down that road thought I'd put the word out on the forums for advice.

Thanks in advance,

Andy

[mcowger]

Generally, you shoudl expect a bunch of custom work.

vCenter Orchestrator can be good for this, though.

[Samcer]

If you need to create a bunch of VMs, you may consider to use PowerCLI cmdlet New-VM (http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI50/html/New-VM.html)

I used it to create 600 VM in just 1 night providing: a template, a customization file, a set of destination hosts and datastores.

DRS and SDRS if present will distribute workloads after the deployment

if you need to create VMs on demand, in a self-service mode (without vCloud stuff) you can still use PowerCLI but I think VCO is a better option.

HTH

Sam

[admin]

Hi Slingsh0t

Please find below link its really good script.

http://mattlog.net/2010/07/21/auto-deploy-multiple-vmware-virtual-machines.

"Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoe."

[Slingsh0t]

Thanks guys, appreciate the responses.  I have been working with PowerCLI for quite a while now and aware of the ability to provision VM's en masse...

It's more a question of how a VM provisioning script could be triggered, by a load balancer in particular.  I'm beginning to resign myself to the fact that this won't be a simple solution and will have to start planning something complicated to get the job done...