HP Insight Orchestration 6.3 User Guide

• If a Storage Volume Name is specified in the Insight Orchestration template, all disks for all
VMs in the server group will be allocated to the datastore that matches the Storage Volume
Name.
• If there are no shared disks, no Storage Volume Names, and no linked clones, then each VM
in the server group and its disks may be allocated to different hosts on different datastores,
or to the same host and different datastores, based on free space.
Excluding disks on a VM host from the storage pool
To exclude disks on a VM host from being considered as a datastore for a virtual machine, do the
following:
1. Log into the CMS.
2. Navigate to the ..\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\conf\
hpio.properties file.
3. In the hpio.properties file, locate the following section:
##################### VOLUMES TO EXCLUDE #####################
# A semicolon separated list of volumes to be excluded for the
# list possible for allocation. They can be either VMware or
# HyperV style volumes:
# e.g. /vmfs/volumes/privateStorage; /vmfs/volumes/NotHere
# or C:;Y:;Z:
# An entry may contain one or more "*" characters which
# represent a wildcard and will match any character.
# comparison are case-insensitive.
# For example, if you had two volumes with Ids of
# "/vmfs/volumes/storage1" and "/vmfs/volumes/storage2" –
# you could exclude them both with an entry of
# "/vmfs/volumes/storage*".
# Note:
# This exclusion list applies to all hosts. So any host that
# is found to have a volume that matches an entry on the
# exclusion list - the volume will be removed and not reported
# as available to that host.
volume.exclusion.list =
4. To configure a Hyper-V VM host, add the drive letters you want to exclude (for example,
“C:;Y:;Z:”) to the property volume.exclusion.list.
5. To configure a VMware VM host, add the datastore path that you want to exclude (for example,
/vmfs/volumes/privateStorage) to the property volume.exclusion.list.
6. Save the file.
7. Restart the Windows Service: HP Insight Orchestration.
Using sysprep to customize Windows systems
Insight Orchestration relies on sysprep to enable customization of Windows systems. Customization
includes operations such as changing the hostname, applying the Windows license key on first
boot, and setting the IP address.
To automate Windows system deployments and apply the Windows license key automatically,
you must edit the sysprep.inf file. This edit enables Insight Orchestration to provision new
Windows systems with no manual interaction. Without this edit, a newly provisioned system will
halt during first boot, waiting for a key. For more information on sysprep functions, see http://
support.microsoft.com/kb/928386/.
Insight Orchestration customizes the Windows operating system for each Windows virtual machine
it provisions. Windows virtual machine customization is supported by combining two sources of
information and passing them to VMM. VMM passes the information to ESX and Hyper-V for
customization. This information includes:
• Specific attributes from the service template, such as hostname.
Configuring an environment for virtual provisioning 29