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Table Of Contents
Using vRealize Automation Guest Agent in Provisioning
You can install the guest agent on your templates for cloning to further customize a machine after
deployment. You can use the reserved guest agent custom properties to perform basic customizations
such as adding and formatting disks, or you can create your own custom scripts for the guest agent to run
within the guest operating system of a provisioned machine.
After the deployment is completed and the customization specification is run (if you provided one), the
guest agent creates an XML file that contains all of the deployed machine's custom properties
c:\VRMGuestAgent\site\workitem.xml, completes any tasks assigned to it with the guest agent
custom properties, and then deletes itself from the provisioned machine.
You can write your own custom scripts for the guest agent to run on deployed machines, and use custom
properties on the machine blueprint to specify the location of those scripts and the order in which to run
them. You can also use custom properties on the machine blueprint to pass custom property values to
your scripts as parameters.
For example, you could use the guest agent to make the following customizations on deployed machines:
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Change the IP address
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Add or format drives
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Run security scripts
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Initialize another agent, for example Puppet or Chef
Your custom scripts do not have to be locally installed on the machine. As long as the provisioned
machine has network access to the script location, the guest agent can access and run the scripts. This
lowers maintenance costs because you can update your scripts without having to rebuild all of your
templates .
If you choose to install the guest agent to run custom scripts on provisioned machines, your blueprints
must include the appropriate guest agent custom properties. For example, if you install the guest agent
on a template for cloning, create a custom script that changes the provisioned machine's IP address, and
place the script in a shared location, you need to include a number of custom properties in your blueprint.
IaaS Configuration for Virtual Platforms
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