Create Blueprints

Blueprints are the attributes defined for the Virtual Machines to be provisioned and how it is to be provisioned and its policy/management settings. A machine blueprint is a complete specification for a virtual, cloud, or physical machine that defines resources, attributes, policies, and method of provisioning for the new system.

These are the options for the blueprints that can be created, first three are self explanatory, the fourth one which is Multi-machine management is a new feature in vCAC 6.0 release.

As per VMware, "A multimachine service is a compound service that is composed of multiple machines, but provisioned and managed as a single entity. The most common example is a multitier application consisting of Web, application, and database servers that interact to deliver a common service or application. A multimachine service can be any combination of virtual, physical, or public cloud machines that need to be provisioned and managed as a single entity."

To create blueprint, Goto --> Infrastructure-->Blueprints

Click on New Blueprint and select the appropriate option. I selected vSphere for this demo,

Enter the Blueprint information, this information is actually the Virtual Machine information that will be deployed. Select the Reservation Policy and Machine Prefix we created earlier,

Select the Build Information tab and enter the details. The blueprint 'Type' options are server, desktop, and hypervisor. These options reflect the use case of the machine being provisioned.

The blueprint 'Action' has multiple options like 'Create, Clone, Linked Clone and NetApp FlexClone'.

Create option - It creates an empty container and additional components must be in place for a guest operating system to be deployed.

Clone option - This creates a new machine as a full copy of an existing vSphere template.

Linked Clone option - The Linked Clone option deploys a space-efficient copy based on snapshots and chains of delta disks.

NetApp FlexClone - Creating the VM using NetApp FlexClone technology. Even I don't have much 
information on this

Set the Machine Resources that will be deployed on a new VM. Create a New Storage Volume with required size.

Note: The Maximum Storage Machine resource you allocated must be greater than the Volume size you created in Storage Volume. There are certain provisioning workflow options available,

Select the Actions under the Actions tab. The are various Virtual machine options.

Finally Click OK and check the newly created Blueprint. Now the next task is to publish the blueprints so that it becomes deployable.

Click on the Newly created blueprint and select the arrow and choose 'Publish'.

 Confirm and Click OK.

1. Tenant Configuration.

2. Endpoint & Agent Configuration.

3. Fabric Group creation.

4. Create Machine Prefix.

5. Business Group creation.

6. Create Reservations & Policies.

7. Create Network Profile.

8. Create Blueprints.

9. Create Service Catalogs.

10. Governance and Approval policies.

11. Demo.