Part 10 – Provision a VM Instance to an HVM Cluster

If you’re coming from vSphere, the model will feel familiar. Templates live in Virtual Images, which is VME’s content library. Guest customization is handled by cloud-init. And an optional agent plays the role of VMware Tools called VirtIO driver.

Similar to content library ISO images should either be uploaded to the Virtual Image store or you could use to download it directly from the HVM if there is connection to the internet.

Configuring Linux images for use with HVM Clusters

To add an Image for use with HVM Clusters, Go to Library → Virtual Images → Add → QCOW2

Select HVM and click Next.

Name: debian-13
OS: Ubuntu debian-13
Cloud-Init Enabled:
Install Agent:
Create image from: URL, https://cloud.debian.org/images/cloud/trixie/latest/debian-13-genericcloud-amd64.qcow2

You can either upload the ISO in here or use cloud init url to download the package. The agent is what pushes the VirtIO Drivers.

Manager downloads it in the background so just wait until the status shows Active.

Provision a new HVM workload on HVM Cluster:

This is an example image prep process for creating a deployable Ubuntu 24.04 image for HVM Clusters.

Go to Provisioning > Instances> Click Add

From the Group tab, select the correct Group and Cloud the HVM Cluster, provide a name for this Instance, and click Next.

On the Configure tab, provide all parameters required for a VM and choose the network as Sales-PG and place it on our Shared Storage

Under Advanced options, choose q35 as that’s the modern chipset, with PCIe, UEFI/Secure Boot and vTPM support. i440fx (legacy) is used for very old OS or may be appliances

Under Advanced options, choose any other parameters required

Click Next and Complete

Review and Complete

Here it is pulling the image from our Virtual Image Store

After few minutes, the VM powers on

All the VM’s are now ready

The first time you use this, this is bit tricky. For general operations like restarts etc it can be done from the main panel

But for allocating a disk for example you will need to enter the VM to do the configuration which opens up the reconfigure menu

To add a disk or attach an ISO, it’s all under the reconfigure tab.

All VM’s can be seen under Compute > Virtual Machines

Creating a VM Template

Deploy an Ubuntu VM and log in as the cloud-init user, which is set in Administration → Settings → Provisioning → Cloud-Init Settings. Then run these prep steps. Each one removes something that would otherwise be copied into every VM built from the template:

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt -y install qemu-guest-agent
sudo cloud-init clean –logs –seed
sudo truncate -s 0 /etc/machine-id
sudo rm -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
sudo apt clean && sudo rm -rf /tmp/* /var/tmp/*
history -c && sudo shutdown -h now

Once the VM shows as stopped, go to Actions → Import as Image

Here we just provide

Image Name: ubuntu-2604-golden
Bucket: leave it empty but for production this should be under a NFS datastore

Go to the history tab to see the status

The image then appears under Library → Virtual Images, and new VMs can be deployed from it.

To create a VM go to Provisioning tab and Click Add

Choose HVM

Name: ubuntu-02
Environment: leave it empty or pick Production. It’s only a label.
Labels: leave empty.

Reviewing the server settings for the new image.
Choose Image: ubuntu-2604-golden
Plan: change CPU /RAM as needed
Volumes: keep root at 10 GB. Change Auto – Datastore to shared-ds-01.
Networks: Finance-PG_1619, Virt IO.
Host: leave it empty so the Manager picks one.
User Config / Advanced Options: open them and check that the domain is Lab DNS zone. Leave everything else as it is. Your awk user comes from the cloud-init settings.
Then Next → Automation (leave it as it is) → Next → Complete.