I’m about to build quite a few SLES 11 SP3 servers as virtual machines. These servers will ultimately have OES on them as well but the primary install is SLES. When I last did this I created a VMware template from the install at an appropriate point and then used that to subsequently minimise the install time of further servers. However SLES11SP3 requires server specific information at a very early stage of the install (server name and some other unique information) and so that prevents me using the “rough and ready” method I used before where I created the template at the point where unique information was required to continue the install.
I mention the OES install as well for full disclosure but it has no impact at this phase of the install.
I understand that the autoyast xml file can be used to customise other parts of the process but that doesn’t appear appropriate in this case. If that is incorrect and there is a simple way of running up a fresh install then I’m happy to be proved wrong, although my understanding is that would not use the benefits of our VMware or storage environment as well as creating new servers from template.
What is the correct method for creating a template in VMware for SLES11SP3?
I’m sure others will chime in, what I do is run thru the partitioning and software selection and stop there at the mini reboot so that the template starts up at the root password prompt, I’m pretty sure you can rig autoyast to take you all the way to the end of the install, but we do it so rarely it wasn’t worth the effort. I would not attempt to autoyast the OES install, leave that as an addin product , if you are using the unified DVD, leave all of the OES bits out of it.
how about doing a full (SLES) install, cleaning out the unwanted bits (i.e. hostname, individual network settings/devices and /etc/zypp/credentials.d) and using that for new installs? You’d then only have to customize your parts (hostname, IP), register and pull the latest updates that are not yet included in the image.
What I did previously was what you’ve suggested. The OES install has to be custom every time, I’d never consider autoyast for that part. I’ll run it through again and see what problem I encountered that made me think there was a problem - have been sidelined with another project so have only just got back to this.
how about doing a full (SLES) install, cleaning out the unwanted bits (i.e. hostname, individual network settings/devices and /etc/zypp/credentials.d) and using that for new installs? You’d then only have to customize your parts (hostname, IP), register and pull the latest updates that are not yet included in the image.
Regards,
Jens[/QUOTE]
Hi Jens,
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll take a look at this for my next installs. Is there a definitive list of the bits that need to be changed when changing hostname/IP/etc? I’m concerned that some of that stuff may be written out to more than one place.