vApp: Managing Multi-Tiered Applications with vSphere vApp

• Resources:
  • vSphere 5 Docuemnt Center | Select ESXi and vCenter Server 5 Doc. | vSphere Vritual Machine Adminstration |
    Managing Multi-tiered Applications with vSphere vApp
• A vApp is a container, like a resource pool and can contain one or more virtual machines. A vApp also shares some functionality with virtual machines. A vApp can power on and power off, and can also be cloned.
• Create vApp in the vSphere Client (Our vSphere Web Client interface does not provide vApp creation feature yet.)
  • Choose Inventory | VMs and Template.
  • Right click on the folder where you would like to create a vApp. Select
    
  • Enter cs526_LVSvApp as vApp Name.
  • Choose CS5260 Resource Pool as the destination of this vApp.
  • Choose Low (instead of Normal or High) for both CPU resources and Memory Resources for the vApp. You can resever resource and set limit on the resources.
    
• Populate the vApp
  • Drag the drop an existing virtual machine to vApp.
  • E.g., Drag cs526_lvs, cs526_rs1, cs526_rs2A, cs526_rs3A to cs526_LVSvApp
  • Click cs526_LVSvApp icon and select Edit vApp settings. It showd the vm we just added to the vApp.
    
  • You can also click on the "virtual machines" tab to list the vms in this vApp.
• Power Off a vApp. Just click the "Power off vApp". You will see the four machines are powered off as a unit.

• Right click on the CS526_LVSvApp and select "Clone". Clone vApp Wizard will appear.
• Choose CS5260 resource pool as the destination for the clone of the vApp.
• Change vApp Name from the "clone of cs526LVSvapp" to "easguest_LVSvApp" (change easguest to your login name).
  
• Choose your login folder within CS5260 as the vApp Inventory Location
• Choose "Instruction" for the datastore, but make sure to check "Disable Storage DRS for Virtual Machine". Without checking this, the software bugs in Distribute Storage Cluster configuration result in "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error.
• 
• Choose "Thin provisioned" for the Disk Format to save disk space.
  
• Select the destination VM Network. Choose your designated VLAN specified on the top of hw3.html
  
• Click on the easguest_LVSvApp and virutal machien tab. You will see the virtual machines of CS526_vApp was cloned over one by one. May take 3-5 minutes depending on system load. Check on the stataus of the recent tasks on the bottom of the vsphere client window.
• Power On/Off/Suspend/Resume a vApp in the vSphere Web Client.
  • The VMs in a vApp can be power on/off as a group.
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  • Note that here all four vm are allocated to different hosts of eas cluster. It is ideal for our lvs cluster experiment. We may be lucky. Document what hosts are assigned to your vms.
• Edit vApp Annotation in the vSphere Web Client