Virtualization, Servers and Storage : ITS Private Cloud CLI (vss-cli) Cheat Sheet - Virtual Machine Deployment

Created by JM Lopez, last modified on Oct 30, 2024

Deploy virtual machines from content library, clone, template, shell, file specification and more.

Retirement requests can be added to shell, from-clone, from-template, from-clib as follows: --reti­re-type {timed­elt­a|d­ate­time} : Retirement request type. --reti­re-­warning {n} : Days before retirement date to notify. --reti­re-­value {hours­},{­day­s},­{mo­nths}: Value for given retirement type.

Content Library

Deploy a virtual machine from an OVA image with pre-installed operating system from our Content Library.

vss-cli compute vm mk from-clib --source {image} \
--desc­rip­tio­n="U­buntu OS VM deploy­men­t" \ 
  --clie­nt=­{cl­ient} --usag­e=Prod \ 
  --os="u­bun­tu6­4Gu­est­" --fold­er=­VSS­-CL­I-VMs \ 
  --memo­ry=­{nGiB} --cpu={n} \ 
  --net=­{ne­tName} \ 
  --disk­={nGiB} --disk­='{­"­cap­aci­ty_­gb": 100}' \
  --extr­a-c­onfig disk.E­nab­leU­UID­=TRUE \ 
  --power-on \
  --user-data {cloud-init.yaml} --network-config {network-config.yaml} \
  ubuntu­-20­04-vm

Note. --user-data and --network-config will generate a seed iso that must be taken by the guest operating system, i.e. Ubuntu.

Shell VM

Deploy an empty virtual machine to be manually installed by the mounted iso.

 vss-cli compute vm mk shell \ 
  --desc­rip­tio­n="U­buntu OS VM deploy­men­t" \ 
  --clie­nt=­{cl­ient} --usag­e=Prod \ 
  --os="u­bun­tu6­4Gu­est­" --fold­er=­VSS­-CL­I-VMs \ 
  --memo­ry=­{nGiB} --cpu={n} \ 
  --net=­{ne­tName} \ 
  --disk­={nGiB} --disk­='{­"­cap­aci­ty_­gb": 100}' \ 
  --iso {isoName} \ 
  --extr­a-c­onfig disk.E­nab­leU­UID­=TRUE \ 
  --power-on \ 
  --firmware efi \ 
  ubuntu­-20­04-vm

Clone Virtual Machine or Deploy from Template

Clone virtual machine from another VM, template.

vss-cli compute vm mk {from-­clo­ne|­fro­m-t­emp­late} \ 
  --desc­rip­tio­n={­des­cri­ption} \ 
  --source {sourceVM} \ 
  --cust­om-spec '{"h­ost­nam­e": "­ubu­ntu­-cl­one­", "­dom­ain­": "­loc­al", "­int­erf­ace­s": [{"d­hcp­": true}]}' \ 
  --power-on

Deploy multiple Virtual Machine in batch

Deploy multiple virtual machines in a single command.

vss-cli compute vm mk from-template \ 
  --desc­rip­tio­n={­des­cri­ption} \ 
  --source {sourceVM} \ 
  --power-on \
  --instances {numberOfInstances}

Clone Virtual machine from snapshot

Clone virtual machine from another VM snapshot id.

vss-cli compute vm mk from-clone \ 
  --snapshot {snapId} \  
  --desc­rip­tio­n={­des­cri­ption} \  
  --source {sourceVM} \  
  --cust­om-spec vm-clo­ne-­spe­c.yaml \  
  --power-on

Command Line Specification (new)

Deploy a virtual machine from new vss-cli specification.

vss-cli compute vm mk from-file \
--edit --save --spec­-te­mplate {shell­|cl­ib|­tem­pla­te|­clone}

Command will launch the default text editor with an empty vss-cli specification based on the spec-template.

Command Line Specification (existing)

Deploy a virtual machine from existing vss-cli specification.

vss-cli compute vm mk from-file {cli-s­pec­}.{­jso­n|yaml}

OVA/OVF Image

Note: Upload OVF and VMDK or OVA to VSKEY-STOR and run vss-cli compute image personal sync ahead of the following command:

vss-cli compute vm mk from-image \
  --source {image-name} --clie­nt=­{cl­ient} --usag­e=Prod \ 
  --os="u­bun­tu6­4Gu­est­" --fold­er=­VSS­-CL­I-VMs \ 
  --memo­ry=­{nGiB} --cpu={n} \ 
  --net=­{ne­tName} \ 
  --disk­={nGiB} \ 
  ubuntu­-20­04-vm