Populate a Content Library with VM Images for Stand-Alone VMs in vSphere with Tanzu

As a vSphere administrator, populate a content library with VM templates in OVA or OVF format. Your DevOps engineers can use the templates to provision new stand-alone virtual machines in the vSphere with Tanzu environment.

After you create a content library, you can populate it with items in several ways. This topic describes how to add items to a local content library by importing files from your local machine or from a Web server. For other ways to populate the content library, see Populating Libraries with Content .

Prerequisites

Create a content library for VM provisioning. Create a Content Library for Stand-Alone VMs in vSphere with Tanzu.
Use only compatible VM images that appear on VMware Cloud Marketplace as OVFs. To find compatible images, search for VM Service image on the VMware Cloud Marketplace web site. See an example of the VM Service image for CentOS at VM Service Image for CentOS.
If your library is protected by a security policy, make sure that all library items are complaint. If a protected library includes a mix of compliant and non-compliant items, the kubectl get virtualmachineimages fails to present VM images to the DevOps engineers.
Required privilege: Content library.Add library item and Content library.Update files on the library.

Procedure

From the vSphere Client home menu, select Content Libraries.
Right-click a local content library and select Import Item.
The Import Library Item dialog box opens.

In the Source section, select the source of the item.

Option	Description
URL	Enter the path to the Web server where the item is. Note: You can import either an .ovf or .ova file. The resulting content library item is of the OVF Template type.
Local File	Click Upload File to navigate to the file that you want to import from your local system. You can use the drop-down menu to filter files in your local system. Note: You can import either an .ovf or .ova file. When you import an OVF template, first select the OVF descriptor file ( .ovf). Next, you are prompted to select the other files in the OVF template, for example the .vmdk file. The resulting content library item is of the OVF Template type.

Option

Description

URL

Enter the path to the Web server where the item is.

Note: You can import either an .ovf or .ova file. The resulting content library item is of the OVF Template type.

Local File

Click Upload File to navigate to the file that you want to import from your local system. You can use the drop-down menu to filter files in your local system.

Note: You can import either an .ovf or .ova file. When you import an OVF template, first select the OVF descriptor file ( .ovf). Next, you are prompted to select the other files in the OVF template, for example the .vmdk file. The resulting content library item is of the OVF Template type.

vCenter Server reads and validates the manifest and certificate files in the OVF package during importing. A warning is displayed in the Import Library Item wizard, if certificate issues exist, for example if vCenter Server detects an expired certificate.

Note: vCenter Server does not read signed content, if the OVF package is imported from an .ovf file from your local machine.

In the Destination section, enter a name and a description for the item.
Click Import.

Results

The item appears on the Templates tab or on the Other Types tab.

What to do next

After you create the content library and populate it with VM templates, add the library to the namespace to give your DevOps users access to the content library. See Associate a VM Content Library with a Namespace in vSphere with Tanzu.