Clone the VMware Identity Manager virtual appliance to create multiple virtual appliances of the same type to distribute traffic and reduce potential downtime.

Using multiple VMware Identity Manager virtual appliances improves availability, load balances requests to the service, and decreases response times to the end user.

Prerequisites

  • The VMware Identity Manager virtual appliance must be configured behind a load balancer. Make sure that the load balancer port is 443. Do not use 8443 as this port number is the administrative port and is unique to each virtual appliance.
  • An external database is configured as described in Create the VMware Identity Manager Service Database.
  • Ensure that you complete directory configuration in VMware Identity Manager.
  • Log in to the virtual appliance console as root and delete the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file, if it exists. If you do not delete this file before cloning, networking is not configured correctly on the cloned virtual appliance.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client and navigate to the VMware Identity Manager virtual appliance.
  2. Right-click the virtual appliance and select Clone.
  3. Enter the name for the cloned virtual appliance and click Next.
    The name must be unique within the VM folder.
  4. Select the host or cluster on which to run the cloned virtual appliance and click Next.
  5. Select the resource pool in which to run the virtual appliance and click Next.
  6. For the virtual disk format, select Same format as source.
  7. Select the data store location where you want to store the virtual appliance files and click Next.
  8. Select Do not customize as the guest operating system option.
  9. Review the options and click Finish.

Results

The cloned virtual appliance is deployed. You cannot use or edit the virtual appliance until the cloning is complete.

What to do next

Assign an IP address to the cloned virtual appliance before you power it on and add it to the load balancer.