Contextualization of Windows VMs

OpenNebula uses a method called contextualization to send information to the VM at boot time. Information is collected in the Template and is essential to configure the VM.

The VM template has a section called context where you can automate different configuration aspects.

Context section has 3 parts:

Configuration

This is the most basic context configuration, provided by OpenNebula, where you can:

• Enable SSH and Network contextualization
• Add SSH public keys. Keys will be added to USERNAME authorized_keys file or root in case USERNAME is not set.
• START_SCRIPT - Text of the script executed when the machine starts up. It can contain shebang in case it is not shell script. For example START_SCRIPT="yum upgrade".

Files

You can select files you want to include from the list and they will be automatically added in FILES_DS attribute. Also you can define a space-separated list of scripts that will run at boot, using INIT_SCRIPTS attribute.

Custom Vars

In this section you can setup a more advanced contextualization, the attributes available are:

• VARIABLE - Variables that store values related to this virtual machine or others . The name of the variable is arbitrary (in the example, we use hostname).

• SET_HOSTNAME - This parameter value will be the hostname of the VM.

• ETHx_MAC - Used to find the correct interface

• ETHx_IP - IPv4 address for the interface

• ETHx_NETWORK - Network address of the interface

• ETHx_MASK - Network mask

• ETHx_GATEWAY - Default IPv4 gateway for the interface

• ETHx_DNS - DNS for the network

• USERNAME - User to be created in the guest OS. If any password attribute is defined (see below) it will change this user (defaults to root).

• PASSWORD_BASE64 - Password encoded in base64. To be set for the user USERNAME.

• PASSWORD - Password to be set for the user USERNAME. This parameter is not recommended, use PASSWORD_BASE64 instead.