I got a request internally for a simple step-by-step of how to deploy a vApp or VM from vCloud Director because the IT group has no experience with vCloud. I toiled on putting this blog article up because the simplicity is just, well, simple. Thanks to a few twitterati (@P2Vme, @angeloluciani, @jmichelmetz, and @mtellin) for making me do it anyway. here we go
Before you begin, you need to know where to go. vCloud has a few different portals but there is going to be one defined for your particular organization. For instance, my vCloud Director instance rests at https://vcloud.kendrickcoleman.c0m/cloud/. This webaddress is for administrator access. When you create a new Organization inside vCloud Director such as Developer, you can create a new logon portal that can be accessed at https://vcloud.kendrickcoleman.c0m/cloud/org/Developer.
Login to your cloud portal
After you login you will be presented with a home screen that looks like this if you aren't the cloud admin.
Before you get to this point, the cloud admin has to add VMs or media to the public catalog. To start deploying a VM or vApp, there are two places. You can do it from the home screen or by going to the My Cloud tab. You can build a new vApp with the Build a New vApp button or Add a vApp From Catalog button, which will only configure a single VM.
In this example we are going to "Add a new vApp from Catalog"
Select a VM from the catalog and click next to deploy a new vApp
Give the vApp a unique name and click next. Shown below is a default name. You can also set the lease times for when the vApp will expire if it's not used.
On the next screen we need to change a few thing. First you will notice that there is a "Select Virtual Datacenter" section that may or may not have multiple options in the drop down. This is your provider virtual datacenter and you can choose the level of service that has been granted to your organization. Next, You will want to change the Full Name because that is the name you will see tied to the VM inside of vCenter. The Computer Name is the actual name that will be assigned to the VM after sysprep does its thing. Depending on what this VM is destined to do, you need to assign an appropriate network. The type of organization network will be configured by the Cloud Admin or the Organization Admin. You can also choose the type of IP Assignment, but Static IP Pool by default is always a good choice.
Choose networking options if necessary. Read up on Fencing and more if you plan to utilize these features.
Click finish and let the VM / vApp start to build. You will be taken back to the home screen and you can watch the process of the VM being created
Another option is to build a vApp from catalog so you can add multiple VMs to a single vApp
As I said previously, this will allow you to bring in multiple VMs into a single vApp. Click on the VMs available in the catalog and click the "Add" down arrow. You can also click on the "+ New Virtual Machine" button to create a VM from scratch with an ISO.
From here on out, it's just like before. Choose your provider virtual datacenter, change some names, and choose networking.
After you click finish, your home screen will now be populated with all the vApps you have created within your self-service portal.
