Cloud-init – Part 5 – Running Containers

In this last part of this series (for now) we will show how to use containers to run your PowerShell/PowerCLI scripts on the deployed instances. And although technically not a ‘real‘ cloud-init post, I consider it related to Part 1Part 2 and Part3 in this series. 

Continue reading Cloud-init – Part 5 – Running Containers

Cloud-init – Part 3 – Photon OS

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series we used Ubuntu as the guest OS of our target instances. In Part 3 we will show how to use VMware’s Photon OS as our guest OS.

The main reason to use Photon OS is that it is open-sourced, it has a small footprint and it is optimised for VMware vSphere.

Continue reading Cloud-init – Part 3 – Photon OS

Deploy Photon 2.0 – Part 2

In Deploy Photon 2.0 – Part 1, we showed how to create a Template with the Photon 2.0 guest OS. In Part 2 we will introduce the New-PhotonVM function, which allows to create one or more VMs, based on the template created in Part 1.

The basic concept for the New-PhotonVM function is the same as for the New-PhotonTemplate function. The configuration for the VMs is driven by a JSON file that is passed as an argument to the function.

Continue reading Deploy Photon 2.0 – Part 2

Deploy Photon 2.0 – Part 1

Photon 2.0 is definitely a guest OS that is useful in a VMware vSphere environment. It is light-weight, easy to manage, security hardened and comes with the Docker daemon. 
That last feature makes it an ideal environment to explore new applications, isolated from your live platforms. As an example, quite a few of us got to know PowerShell Core with VMware PowerCLI, while running it in a Docker container, well shielded from our other platforms.

There are numerous articles and blog posts that describe how set up a Photon 2.0 VM, but most of these use the ovftool or the vSphere Web Client to install it. Followed by quite of a bit of editing config files, to have your Photon 2.0 VM running the way you prefer it.
With the latest version of my Invoke-VMScriptPlus function, you can now automate this entire process, the SDDC way! 

 

Update August 21st 2018

  • Added “reboot” action
  • Added optional Environment variables for the customisation scripts
  • Added Folder field for template destination

Continue reading Deploy Photon 2.0 – Part 1