Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)

In this article we are going to be creating a vSphere Clone Blueprint. To do this we need to have a few things in place before we begin. Within the blueprint configuration there is a template picker that will allow you to pick form the available templates in your environment. In order for templates to show up in the template picker there are some items that need to be configured in the vCAC environment. You will need to have the following already configured:

1. vSphere Credential
2. vSphere EndPoint
3. Fabric Group (with the vSphere resources assigned)
4. vSphere Reservation

Once all these items are configured in the environment we can create a vSphere Clone blueprint by performing the following steps:

Creating a vSphere Clone Blueprint

1. Start by going to Infrastructure -> Blueprints -> Blueprints and selecting “New Blueprint” -> Virtual -> vSphere(vCenter)



2. On the New Blueprint – Blueprint Information page give your blueprint a name, select the appropriate Machine Prefix, and set the desired archive days and then click the “Build Information” tab.



3. On the Build Information page set the “Blueprint type” to “Server”, the “Action” to “Clone” and then click the selection box next to “Clone From”.



4. Next a dialog box appears showing the available templates within your environment. These templates are the ones available on the resources you added to the Fabric Group. If you have templates that are not on managed resources they will not show up in this list. Select the “Template” you could like to use and click ok.



5. Next optionally type in the name of the “Customization Specification” you would like to use and if you are creating a blueprint with a range of resources set the maximums you would like your consumers to be able to request up to and then click on the properties tab.



6. On the “Properties” tab we need to attach one property to tell vCenter what the operating system on the machine being provisioned is. You can add the property directly to the blueprint or you can select a pre-created “Build Profile” that contains the property. The needed property is “VMware.VirtualCenter.OperatingSystem”. The value will depend on the OS you are deploying. For more information on this property see the Operating System Property article. Once you have added the property click on the “Actions”.
   

7. On the actions tab select the actions you want to make available for machines provisioned form this blueprint. I recommend selecting them all because you can control who has access to perform them as part of the entitlement process. Once completed click ok to save the blueprint.



8. Once back to the Blueprints list hover over the blueprint you just created and select “Publish”



9. Finally click on OK to publish the blueprint

Once you publish the blueprint you will need to entitle it for use. Please refer to the following articles for information on entitlemets:

• Creating Services
• Enabling Catalog Items
• Entitlements