Docker as a Service in vCAC Part 1

First off you will need to have a blueprint setup in vCAC that is mapped to a Linux template in vCenter that already has the the vCAC Linux Guest Agent for vCAC. For testing I also recommend to set this up as a linked clone. (Way faster!)

If you have not already done so you will need to setup the repo mount script so we can call shell scripts from an NFS server. This makes it very easy to modify this integration for other use cases without having to update the template.

Now make the file executable then shutdown your template VM.

Once shutdown, create a snapshot.

NOTE: if you are planning to use linked clone in vCAC or if this was mapped to a blueprint in vCAC already you will need to run inventory and update the blueprint.

Now we are going to create the install script on the NFS server that we will mount an NFS share from and execute a docker install script. In an exported NFS directory create a dockerinstall.sh file by typing vi dockerinstall.sh

Now enter the following lines (Copy and paste text below)

yum -y install epel-release
yum -y install docker-io
service docker start
chkconfig docker on

Press the ESC key, then Hold down Shift and press ZZ on the keyboard to save the file.

Now make the file executable

chmod 777 dockerinstall.sh

Now we need to create a build profile for the blueprint to install and configure docker with the script we created on the NFS share. Login to vCAC as an Administrator and create the following new build profile. Copy and paste below.

repo.path /scripts
repo.server 192.168.140.134
VirtualMachine.Admin.UseGuestAgent true
VirtualMachine.Customize.WaitComplete true
VirtualMachine.Software0.Name repomount.sh
VirtualMachine.Software0.ScriptPath /repomount.sh {repo.server} {repo.path}
VirtualMachine.Software1.Name dockerinstall.sh
VirtualMachine.Software1.ScriptPath /repo/dockerinstall.sh
VMware.VirtualCenter.OperatingSystem rhel6_64Guest

Now add this to the CentOS blueprint we configured earlier

Fire off a new request

Open your new Docker Node from the Items Tab and connect to an SSH session and login. See my guide to setup SSH in Firefox.

Type Docker at the command line and let the magic begin!!!

In Part 2 we will take this a step further and allow the requester to specify the docker image they want to deploy for even further automation.