Editing VM NIC properties

[SVPOC]

Hi, this is a basic question regarding vCac user operations. 

What is the typical workflow for users of vCac who spin up a VM using a clone workflow from a Virtual vSphere blueprint?  Should they have the ability to add NICs and control which network profiles these NICs are on? I'm issuing a request of a VM, and it is spinning up, but I seem to have no ability to add NICs, change network profiles and so on.  I can add CPU and memory, but the networking seems to be locked down.  I'd like users to be able to add and remove NICs, and select the appropriate vlans (network profiles) per NIC. Any pointers?

Thanks in advance.

[willonit]

Selecting a network is not that hard to do. You have to use custom properties to do so though. There is a good article here that will walk you through allowing the user to select a network. There is another good article here that goes into more depth with build profiles and custom properties for networking. As far as allowing users to choose how many NICs and what VLANs each of them uses at provisioning time you might be out of luck. You can probably allow the user to choose how many NICs you want at provision time and then have a custom menu option to set the VLAN for each of those after the fact. Hope that helps.

[SVPOC]

Thanks echotome, this helps point me in the right direction and helps me understand the custom properties a bit.  Can I ask, what are the network profiles for then?  I have a few vlans that have been created in vSphere on a distributed vSwitch.  I'd like to use the network profiles under vCac to assign these vlans to a VM (perhaps using your above method) and have VMs get their IP assignments from the pools.  Would this be possible using the same or similar workflow?

[willonit]

Create an external network profile for each of your vlans and include the range of IPs that you want vCAC to use for your VMs. In your reservation, select the network paths that you wish to use and assign the correct network profile to them. Then create a drop down property as shown in the first article I referenced above so that the user can select the port group they want the VM on. This should set VirtualMachine.Network0.Name property to what the user selects in the drop down and that should set the profile name property for you. Then the machine will provision on that port group and use an IP address from the corresponding network profile.

[willonit]

Check out this thread VLAN Selection Question

This may have a lot of useful information that pertains to what you are trying to achieve.

[SVPOC]

Thank again for the info.  Regarding IP pools, there is no clarity on how to use them.  VMware representatives themselves have assured me they are only for OVF environments, and only work when deploying a VM from an OVF.  But their documentation makes a case for the opposite, citing cloning and IP pools working together:

From the vcac-6.0 property reference guide:

VirtualMachine.NetworkN.ProfileName-

Specifies the name of a network profile from which to

assign a static IP address to network device Nor from

which to obtain the range of static IP addresses that can be

assigned to network device N of a cloned machine

I've also heard from many like yourself who have mentioned a clone workflow along with IP pools.  I have never personally gotten them to work however (other than vCLoud with uses OVFs).  I'll look through these links and keep attempting to get this to work.

[willonit]

Are you referring to IP Pools in vCenter? Those are only for OVFs.

In vCAC, go to Infrastructure > Reservation > Network Profiles you can create an external profile for a range of IP addresses. Then apply that profile to a port group when making your reservations and when you deploy a VM on that port group it will be assigned an IP. Using a custom spec may be required for this feature to work but i'm not 100% sure about that.

[SVPOC]

Isn't a network profile in vCenter and a network profile in vCac the same thing?  I currently have the vCac network profiles created and associated with the vlans, etc etc, but I haven't gotten it working yet.

[Jer2224]

Just to clarify - in vCAC you use Network Pools to define IP addresses for instances deployed where there is no DHCP server available, or you want more control over how IPs are allocated across a particular network range. For example - in my lab I have an 'internal' network which has a /16 DHCP range specified on a particular vLAN. I also have a separate 'internet' vLAN and associated /24 IP range per cloud tenant with no DHCP available. In vCAC in each reservation, I select both networks to be available for provisioning, but only allocate the network profile for the /24 range to the 'internet' network. This way, when the VM / vApp spins up, Network0 connects to internal and gets a DHCP address (because no pool was defined), and Network1 gets a /24 IP allocated from the network pool.

Network Pools in vCenter are different beasts entirely. HTH.