Deploying a VM from a Content Library OVF/OVA template

Following on from my series of posts on uploading OVA files to Content Library, and searching content library, the final step of all of this would be to deploy a VM using one of these templates

Inputs Required

The list of inputs that we need is as follows

Name	Type	Description
datastore	VC:Datastore	The datastore to deploy to
endpoint	VAPI:VAPIEndpoint	The VAPI endpoint to use
folder	VC:VmFolder	The folder to deploy to
host	VC:HostSystem	The target host for deployment
hostname	string	Name of the new VM
ovfLibraryItemId	string	id of the content library item
respool	VC:ResourcePool	Resource pool to deploy to

Setup

Similar to previous steps, the first thing you need to do is make a connection to the VAPI endpoint
var client = endpoint.client();

Next, we need to create a model for the deployment target – where are we deploying the VM to? We use the deployment target object for this:
var deploymentTarget = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item_deployment__target();
deploymentTarget.folder_id = folder.id;
deploymentTarget.host_id = host.id;
deploymentTarget.resource_pool_id = pool.id;

The final step before we deploy the VM is to create a resource pool deployment spec, this include the name, and the datastore to use:
var resourcePoolDeploymentSpec = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item_resource__pool__deployment__spec();
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.accept_all_EULA = true;
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.name = hostname;
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.default_datastore_id = datastore.id;

Quite why the datastore is in that one rather than the deployment target is a mystery to me. The only thing I can think of is that the deployment spec includes the storage provisioning profile.

Deploying the VM

To deploy the new VM, we use the com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item call, and pass the ovfLibraryItemId, with the deployment target and deployment specs that we created above
var ovfSvc = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item(client);
var result = ovfSvc.deploy(null, ovfLibraryItemId, deploymentTarget, resourcePoolDeploymentSpec);

Returning the vmObject

The deploy method above returns a structure that includes the id of the VM which we can use to find the vmObject, which is an output item of type VC:VirtualMachine
vmObject = VcPlugin.getAllVirtualMachines(null, "xpath:matches(id, '" + result.resource_id.id + "')")[0];
The search returns an array, so I’m using the [0] to strip the object out of the array – searching on an id, there can only be one VM with a particular id unless you’re using linked mode .
Finally we close the connection to the endpoint
client.close();

Full code listing

// Set the VAPI endpoint to the first endpoint returned

if (endpoint == null) {  
  throw "Unable to locate a VAPI endpoint";
}
var client = endpoint.client();  

// create a DeploymentTarget  
var deploymentTarget = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item_deployment__target();

deploymentTarget.folder_id = folder.id;
deploymentTarget.host_id = host.id;
deploymentTarget.resource_pool_id = pool.id;

// create a ResourcePoolDeploymentSpec  
var resourcePoolDeploymentSpec = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item_resource__pool__deployment__spec();
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.accept_all_EULA = true;
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.name = hostname;
resourcePoolDeploymentSpec.default_datastore_id = datastore.id;
  
// deploy the ovf  
var ovfSvc = new com_vmware_vcenter_ovf_library__item(client);
var result = ovfSvc.deploy(null, ovfLibraryItemId, deploymentTarget, resourcePoolDeploymentSpec); 

// return the vmObject
vmObject = VcPlugin.getAllVirtualMachines(null, "xpath:matches(id, '" + result.resource_id.id + "')")[0];
client.close();