Demo: Create vCenter 6.7 content libraries - vSphere Tutorial

- [Rick] In this video I'll demonstrate how to create a content library in vSphere 6.7. And you can see here, I'm at the home screen of my vSphere HTML5 client, and I'm just going to click on the Content Libraries icon, and click on the plus button, and create a new content library. So, the content library is a great place to store things like ISO images, virtual appliances, virtual machine templates, and all sorts of good stuff like that. So, I'm going to call this RickDemoContentLibrary, and it's going to be available on this particular vCenter server. And I'll hit NEXT, and then I'll choose, do I want to simply create a local content library, or do I want to publish it externally? So, the beauty of publishing this externally is I can make the content library, and everything stored within it, accessible to other vCenter instances. And so, I'm going to go ahead and select Enable authentication, and I'm just going to put a password on this content library. That way, if any other vCenter instances want to subscribe to it, they have to know the password in order to do so. And I'll hit NEXT. And then I'll simply pick a datastore where everything that I put in this content library will be housed. So, I've got this datastore called LocalDatastore. That's where everything in my content library is going to be stored. And I'll hit FINISH. So, now I've got this handy content library that I've just created, and it's basically exactly what it sounds like. It's a library for things like virtual machine templates, ISO images, and things along those lines. So, I'm just going to click here on the name of the content library. And you can see here what's currently stored in the content library. I have nothing yet, no templates, other types of files. There's nothing in this content library at the moment. So, what I can do, is simply click on Import item, and let's say that I want to drag my Windows Server 2016 ISO image into this content library, by doing so, I can make that file available across this vCenter instance, and across other vCenter instances as well. So, I'll click on Import item, and in this case I'm going to choose a local file to upload that ISO image from. And here's my Windows Server 2016 ISO image. Or I could put in my ESXi ISO image, or something like that. And actually, I'm going to choose my ESXi ISO image, because it's much smaller, so it will upload faster. I'll hit Open here, and then I'll just go ahead and click on IMPORT. And so, now I'm in the process of uploading an ISO image to this content library. And if we click on Recent Tasks here, we can see the progress of that upload. And it just completed, so let's minimize Recent Tasks. And now you can see, I have one of my ISO images stored into this content library. So, this is a great way for me to house all my ISO images in a predictable location that's accessible to this vCenter instance. So, now I've moved back to the home screen of the vSphere client, and I want to click on Hosts and Clusters. And what I want to do, is I have an existing virtual machine here, I want to create a template based on that virtual machine, and store it in my content library. But in my lab I'm running vSphere 6.7. I'm not on vSphere 6.7 Update 1. So, I point that out, because if I right-click this virtual machine, I have the ability to clone it as a template. And we saw that in our templates video. And I also have the ability to clone it as a template into my content library. So, under Template type, I'm going to select OVF. Now, I would normally want to select VM Template. I just want to create a template, so I'm going to call this CL-Template, and try it as a VM Template, and see what happens. And notice, none of my content libraries show up. That's because this function was not supported in vSphere 6.7 until Update 1. So, the only what that I can clone this is to clone it to an OVF, unless I want to use the vSphere Web Client, which I'll demonstrate in just a moment. But what I'm doing here is I'm creating an Open Virtualization Format virtual appliance, based on this virtual machine, and I'm putting it into my content library. So, if I hit NEXT here, I can use my content library. And what happens now, when I click FINISH, is a copy of this virtual machine is actually being cloned into my content library. So, let's take a look at the content library one more time. And let's see if it already finished. There we go, I have an OVF template, based on that virtual machine that has been placed into this content library. So, an OVF template is basically the same thing as a virtual machine template, except for, I can export it, and easily download it, and migrate it, and move it around a little bit more easily. I'm actually going to right-click this OVF template, and hit Delete, and purge it from my content library. And I'm going to switch over to the vSphere Web Client, and I'm going to click the same virtual machine, right-click it, and I'm going to try to clone it to a template in my content library using the vSphere Web Client. And notice, I don't have to set it up as an OVF with the vSphere Web Client. So, this function is completely supported in the vSphere Web Client, no problem. So, I can now create a template in my content library from the vSphere Web Client. So, here you can see the process to deploy this as a template into the content library is running, and it's going to take a little time, because this template has to be transferred over to the content library, so I'll pause my recording until this is complete. All right, so now we can see that my cloned content library was complete, and I now have this template that's present in my content library. So, I'm going to go back to the home screen of my vSphere client, and browse to Hosts and Clusters, and I'm just going to right-click a host, and do New Virtual Machine, New VM from Library. And now I can deploy a new virtual machine from this template that is stored in my content library. And so, this makes it really easy for me to deploy a new virtual machine from an existing template that is stored in the content library. And that content library can be synchronized across multiple vCenter instances, so let's take a look at how to do that. So, here's my content library, and you'll notice here I've got this little link for a content library Subscription URL. So, if I went to another vCenter instance, and launched the vSphere client there, I could potentially create a subscribed content library. And that content library will have the identical contents of the content library that I've create here. So, I'm just going to call this content library Subscribed. And you can see here I've got the option to pull in the content from that URL that I just showed you. And I can put in the password that I established on my content library. And then all of the content can be either downloaded immediately, or as those objects in the content library are needed, they can be downloaded at that time. So, that's a great way for me to create one content library, and then create subscribed content libraries on other vCenter servers, so that I can have one content library that is consistent across a group of vCenter instances.