7.1

Table Of Contents
Scenario: Prepare Your Reference Machine for Guest Agent Customizations and
Software Components
So that your template can support software components, you install the software bootstrap agent and its
prerequisite, the guest agent, on your reference machine. The agents ensure that vRealize Automation
architects who use your template can include software components in their blueprints.
To simplify the process, you download and run a vRealize Automation script that installs both agents,
instead of downloading and installing separate packages.
The script also connects to the Manager Service instance and downloads the SSL certicate, which
establishes trust between the Manager Service and machines deployed from the template. Note that having
the script download the certicate is less secure than manually obtaining the Manager Service SSL certicate
and installing it on your reference machine in /usr/share/gugent/cert.pem.
Procedure
1 In your Web browser, open the following URL.
hps://vrealize-automation-appliance-FQDN/software/index.html
2 Save the prepare_vra_template.sh script to your reference machine.
3 On the reference machine, make prepare_vra_template.sh executable.
chmod +x prepare_vra_template.sh
4 Run prepare_vra_template.sh.
./prepare_vra_template.sh
5 Follow the prompts.
If you need non-interactive information about options and values, enter ./prepare_vra_template.sh --
help.
A conrmation message appears when installation nishes. If error messages and logs appear, correct the
issues and rerun the script.
Scenario: Convert Your CentOS Reference Machine into a Template
After you install the guest agent and software bootstrap agent onto your reference machine, you turn your
reference machine into a template that vRealize Automation architects can use to create clone machine
blueprints.
After you convert your reference machine to a template, you cannot edit or power on the template unless
you convert it back to a virtual machine.
Procedure
1 Log in to your reference machine as the root user and prepare the machine for conversion.
a Remove udev persistence rules.
/bin/rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70*
b Enable machines cloned from this template to have their own unique identiers.
/bin/sed -i '/^\(HWADDR\|UUID\)=/d'
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
Configuring vRealize Automation
68 VMware, Inc.