Service Teplates vs Virtual Machine Templates vs Cloning

I need to find the method with the best performance for creating new virtual machines when a customer joins our private cloud.

The use case is as follows.

Our customers will submit their application settings via our customer portal

Then our software creates a new virtual machine for the customer.  This machine will have windows Server 2012 R2 with IIS and SQL Server 2014.  It will also contain our desktop application with the settings the customer submitted.

After the virtual machine is created, the customer will be able to immediately access the application without any interaction with our staff.

Thanks,

Eric

January 16th, 2015 12:20am

Specifically for your case you have two options out of the box:

The Azure Pack Gallery Image (roll your own) or the SCVMM Service Template.

Both of these already have a UI, PowerShell support (therefore workflow), and allow the collection an injection of variables to customize the deployment.

I built this for a scaled out XenApp installation and found Service Templates to be the most mature today.  Especially if you are supporting scale-out.

If it is only one self contained machine and you drink the Azure Pack cool-aid - then that fits better.

In the end, someone has to build all of the automation.

I don't subscribe to using SMA or workflows because you would need to open some backdoor to the machine in order to make it all happen.  With Service templates and gallery images all the scripting executes within the VM and in the end, I as the owner of the physical infrastructure have no login for that machine.  The customer knows the local admin password and any other custom user accounts - and I have zero access to the machine.

An external workflow engine driving the deployment and customization cannot always claim this, as they must control the machine after customization happens to handle the applications after the OS is deployed.

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January 16th, 2015 1:00am

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