vCloud Director 5.1 Boot to ISO after OS is installed?

[thewb005]

I have an Org. Admin that needs to boot some of his VMs with an OS already installed into a Live CD.  Mounting the LiveCD ISO and rebooting the VM through the vCD UI will not work because the default boot options of the VMs are HDD then CD-ROM.  Is there a way to force a boot to CD-ROM through the vCD UI or is my Org. Admin stuck creating a support ticket for me to change VM boot settings through vCenter?

FYI, my current work around is to:

1. Add a  boot delay (5000ms) to the VM through vCenter
2. Start a console for the VM from vCD
3. Issue a reboot command from the OS (or reset from vCloud UI)
4. ESC for BOOT settings (or F2 for BIOS settings)
5. Mount CD/DVD ISO from vCloud UI
6. Choose CD-ROM Drive in the BOOT settings

[b0rbb]

I was in the same boat not that long ago.  In vCD 1.5 and 5.1 there's no way to set any kind of VM boot settings or force to go to BIOS, and you're pretty much stuck setting those through vSphere/vCenter.  The one thing I never got around to testing though was to see if you could permanently set the boot order to go CD first, then HDD, and then also see if that change would persist through VM reboots in vCD, as vCD tends to overwrite changes made to the VM "underneath" vCD.

[cfor]

We have done this two different ways - neither very good; but vCloud really does not offer a clean solution.

1. vSphere API

2. Micro linux boot on HDD #1 - small HDD.  This would just give a boot menu for HDD#2 boot; or CD.  This way a live CD could be selected.

3 - not tested but might work --

Boot to bios - set the boot order to be CD first - save.  Then add this to catalog in this format; some of these settings stay, I have not tested this one but thought about it while writing this.

[Exwork]

If you open a console session, then reboot the guest, you can hit Escape to bring up the boot menu, and select CD-ROM.

The time window is < 1 second, so it's easy to miss.

[f00fbug]

Okay, I've got one. It's a bit wonky.

To boot a system in vCD from iso, using only the vCD interface:

• Shut down the machine.
• Open the system properties - hardware tab.
• in the Hard Disks section, Click Add to make a new blank disk. Any size will do.
• Change the unit numbers of the current disks to a high number so the system will attempt to boot from the new, blank disk.
• insert the .ISO
• Power on the system.

The guest VM will attempt to boot from the lowest numbered disk, and fail over to the .ISO. Of course the device ids will be wonky, but at least it boots. Put everything back the way you found before booting without the .ISO and the guest VM boots normally again.