Guest customization - vCloud Director and vSphere

One nice feature that VMware Tools brings is the possibility to inject and run scripts directly in the virtual machine - be it bash or batch. I`ve been using this feature called guest customization when deploying new virtual machines in either a vCloud organization or directly in vSphere environment.

Guest customization in vSphere using PowerCLI

I`ll start with vSphere, since I`ve done more customization in this environment than in vCloud. The task is simple: deploy a linux VM from a template and provide ssh connectivity. After template deployment, the VM runs and empty OS - no IPs, no routes, DNS, repositories... nothing. The solution is the following PowerCLI cmdlet: Invoke-VMScript. I will not explain the syntax since it can be found here. I`ll just show what it can do in next piece of code:

Start-VM $vmname
 
### check VMtools status 
$vmtoolsstatus = ""
do {
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
$vm = Get-VM $vmname
$vmtoolsstatus = $vm.Guest.ExtensionData.ToolsRunningStatus
echo "Tools not running... waiting 5 seconds"
} while ($vmtoolsstatus -ne "guestToolsRunning")

echo "configuring hostname"
$hostnamecfg = "sed 's/HOSTNAME\(.*\)/HOSTNAME=${vmname}.${domain}/g' -i /etc/sysconfig/network; hostname $vmname"

Invoke-VMScript -VM $(Get-VM $vmname) -GuestUser $GuestUser -GuestPassword $GuestPassword  -ScriptType bash -ScriptText $hostnamecfg

First the VM is started. Then a loop checks that VMware Tools have started. After, the script is being build in text variable $hostnamecfg - in this case a sed in /etc/sysconfig/network file (RedHat based distro). Last, Invoke-VMScript cmdlet injects $hostnamecfg script in the guest OS and runs it. This way you can set up all network interfaces, routes, yum repositories, ntp, dns, ssh, start-stop services. For example changing yum repo for CentOS to a local repository:

echo "configuring YUM repo"
if ( $template -eq "template-CentOS6") {
$yumcfg = " sed -i '/mirrorlist=http:\/\/mirrorlist\.centos\.org/s/^/# /' /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo;"
$yumcfg += " sed -i 's/#baseurl=http:\/\/mirror\.centos\.org/baseurl=http:\/\/yumlocal\.vmlab\.local/' /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo;"
}

Invoke-VMScript -VM $(Get-VM $vmname) -GuestUser $GuestUser -GuestPassword $GuestPassword  -ScriptType bash -ScriptText $yumcfg 

Guest customization in vCloud Director

vCloud Director brings guest customization directly in the portal. After the VM has been deployed from a vApp template in virtual machine properties - Guest OS Customization, Customization Script field:

#!/bin/bash

if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0 ]

then

sed -i 's/\.5\.1/\.52\.1/g' /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0

else

echo "192.168.60.0/24 via 192.168.52.1" >> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0

fi

In the example above, a bash script checks to see if route file for eth0 exists. If it does, then it changes gateway for existing route (sed), if it does not it creates route-eth0  and adds the route. Upon Power on (or Power on and force recustomization) the script will be run inside guest OS. 

Adding a route for Windows OS will replace the bash script with a batch script:

@echo off

(

route add 192.168.60.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.52.1 -p

)

The same rule as for vSphere applies: you can customize guest os (Linux or Windows) with whatever configuration you need and how much scripting allows it. I am not discussing workflow automation tools (vCenter Orchestrator), nor configuration management software (Puppet). It is just about making life easier for some repetitive tasks using basic scripting.