Hey everyone! I'm fairly new to VMware and could use some guidance on creating RHEL VM templates. I'm planning to deploy around 50 virtual machines, each for different purposes like elastic storage, a Yum server, and more. My goal is to install RHEL, set up a local admin, and configure necessary partitions like swap and var before saving it as a template. This way, we can duplicate it and save a lot of time. I also want to include patches and STIGs to create a 'golden image'.
However, a colleague who's a RHEL expert but not too familiar with VMware believes we should just create a bare VM with the cores and RAM set, then mount the .iso and configure everything from scratch. It seems to me that my method might be more efficient, allowing us to adjust things like hostnames and IPs later on. Am I on the right track? What important details should I keep an eye on to avoid any issues? I'm open to any tips you have!
1 Answer
We actually use a basic VM template that includes only the essentials for our deployments. From that starting point, we use Ansible to customize each machine, managing things like network settings and other specifics after it's up and running. Starting from a 'blank' template is pretty efficient for us because we can scale resources as needed. Just a heads up, it usually helps to start with at least 4GB of RAM to avoid issues with dynamic memory adjustments—it seems like a lot, but it's critical to ensure smooth operation!
So, just to clarify, you're saying your base image already has Linux installed and those partitions set up? Then you configure everything else with Ansible once it's on the network, right?
Thanks for sharing this valuable info!