VCAP6-CMA (Beta) Objective 4.1 - Create multi-machine blueprints & Create lease policies - Part 03

This is the last part of Objective 4.1 and it covers the below objectives

Create lease policies
Create multi-machine blueprints

Create lease policies

VMware documentation

Tenant administrators or business group managers can use leases to place time limits on resource consumption.

Tenant administrators or business group managers can optionally define a lease duration when creating a blueprint.

- If a blueprint does not specify a lease period, machines are provisioned from that blueprint with no expiration date.

- If a blueprint specifies a single value for lease duration, machines are provisioned from that blueprint with the lease duration specified in the blueprint.

- If a blueprint specifies a range of possible lease durations, a user can select the desired lease duration when submitting the machine request. Machine requests can be subject to approval based on the requested lease duration.

The lease duration can be changed after a machine is provisioned. A typical use case is for a machine owner to extend the lease past its original expiration date. The following considerations apply to modifying the lease on a provisioned machine:

- Users must be entitled to the Change Lease action to modify a lease.

- The new expiration date is not subject to the constraints on lease duration specified in the blueprint.

- Tenant administrators or approval administrators can create approval policies of the type Service Catalog - Resource Action Request (Change Lease). The policy can be configured so that approval is always required for lease modifications, or approval can be conditional based on criteria such as the new lease duration or the cost of the machine.

Tenant administrators can also request that a machine owner releases a provisioned machine for reclamation, which might result in a shortened lease period.

To Create Lease 

1. Login to vRA and go to Infrastructure > Blueprints > Blueprints and select the Blueprint on which you wish to set the Lease 

2. Click on the Build Information tab and set the range for Lease and click on OK to save. 

3. Now if you request the VM from this Blueprint, you would see the option the set the Lease between the defined range.

4. Also, you can configure an approval form to allow the approvers to change the values of system properties for machine resource Lease setting.

Create Multi-Machine Blueprints 

(Objective 3.1 would cover the majority of Multi-Machine Blueprint with respective networking part)

VMware documentation

Machine blueprints determine a machine's attributes, the manner in which it is provisioned, and its policy and management settings. 

A tenant administrator or business group manager allows users to provision multi-machine services by creating one or more entitled multi-machine blueprints. Before you create a multi-machine blueprint, you must first create blueprints for each of the component machines to include in the multi-machine service. A multi-machine blueprint contains references to component blueprints. The component blueprints must be available to the same business groups as the multi-machine blueprint.

A multi-machine blueprint includes information that applies only to a multi-machine service as a whole. Configuration options, such as a reservation policy, apply only to component machines.

1. Login to vRA and go to Infrastructure > Blueprints > Blueprints. Click on New Blueprint and then Multi-Machine. Give a name, select the machine prefix and set the Archive in days.

maximum per user = the maximum number of multi-machine services per user. Unlimited if left blank.

2. Click on the Build Information tab, add the one or more Blueprints and set the Lease in days. 

After adding the blueprints you can set the startup and shutdown order and add network (NSX) like load balancer by clicking on the edit under Network.

 3. Select any Build Profile and Custom Properties under the Properties tab.

4. Select the action that the machine owner could perform from the Actions tab.

5. Click on OK to save the Multi-Machine Blueprint.