Cloning a virtual machine can come in pretty handy… Especially when you need to troubleshoot or tinker with an existing virtual machine you might just not know enough about or a previous admin didn’t document. All Admins ~ “Please DOCUMENT DOCUMENT DOCUMENT!”. For this article, I’m going to show you step by step on how to create a clone of a virtual machine and disable the virtual NIC.
Accessing The VMware vCenter
Open any browser of your choosing (IE11, Edge, Chrome, Firefox) and enter the vCenter DNS name of your system in the URL bar for the browser.
URL for vCenter
If you’ve enter all the above information correctly. You will be prompted with a Getting Started page. Click on Launch vSphere Client (HTML5). Next, you’ll want to enter the information to access the vCenter administrative console. This section, again, can vary depending on your setup. For my case, I have SSO enabled with a IT Security group. So, I’ll enter in my domain credentials and sign in.
Cloning Virtual Machine
This should be a given but confirm you have enough resources to clone the virtual machine of your choosing or the other hosts in the cluster do.
I chose the Development – SQL19 server I have running in my development vlan. By right clicking on that virtual machine I now have a slew of options, one being the clone option… click on clone. Click Clone to Virtual Machine. You’ll want to select
Select the datastore that best suites your needs or environment.
Check the following boxes: * Customize this virtual machine’s hardware * Power on virtual machine after creation
Disconnect the NIC from the vSwitch by click on the check box next to Network Adapter 1. If you have multiple NIC’s you’ll want to repeat the process.
Lastly, Clicking on the next button in the task above will start to process the cloning of the virtual machine. When the cloning is initiated you’ll see the process below in the Recent Tasks section of vCenter.
In this blog I will be showing you how to deploy a Linux – Ubuntu 18.04 LTS ISO through Azure. Since I need to deploy one anyways for a new internal service I will be using called – Ansible Tower. I thought “why not make a blog about this first” and then make another post about my findings regarding Ansible.
Signing Into The Portal
1. Paying for Azure Usage
Probably one of the most important first steps will be deciding how you are going to be paying for Azure. If you are new to Microsoft Azure ~ click here to read up on my blog post to get free Azure credits. If you already have an Azure account but don’t have credits to use you can also find out the cost to run the virtual machine through the Azure calculator. In most cases, the lower end B-Series VM’s run at most around $20-30 a month but don’t just go on my word. Again check the calculator to see what your estimate will be so that you can properly budget the costs out. If you know that you’ll be using this virtual machine for a period of 1 or 3 years you can opt for those locked in rates to get reduced pricing too.
After clicking on the Sign in box. You’ll want to either pick your last used account or sign into another account preferably the one that’s being used with Azure. Hopefully you’ll be using the one that has free credits. If it was already setup during the account creation, you should be prompted for a 2FA whether it be through e-mail, text, or an access token.
Deploying A Linux Machine
1. Creating And Choosing The Resource
After signing in to the Azure portal. You will be prompted with a pop up window to be given a tutorial of the console. If you’ve just started with Azure I’d recommend that you take the time to run through the guide to get at least an overview of what you are working with. If you decided to skip that for now. Click on the (+) Create a resource button.
After the above step is completed. In this new menu or catalogue you can choose to run over 300 services of your choice. That’s a lot! However, for this case we will be deploying the common Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS image.
2. The Basics
Couple things we’ll be doing in this section * Choosing the subscription that you want to use: This should only be one * Choose the resource group: You should be creating a new one. For me, I selected a pre-existing one that I have been using. * Give the virtual machine a name: remember to stay within the requirements (this can be found by clicking or hovering over the (i). * Choose the virtual machine region: This is pretty important for a few reasons. Choosing in a region that you are located reduces latency to the machine and can save on costs as some reasons are more expensive than another. * Choose the size of the machine: You don’t have to go with the few options that Microsoft provides when spinning up a virtual machine. You do have options to “see all” or more compute options. Generally speaking the B-series for development/testing or homelab environments are good.
Continue from the last portion * Choose the authentication type: SSH public key’s would be the most secure but you do need to go through extra steps to get that into a readable file for putty – This key is essentially your password. If you don’t want to you can always make a standard password but I would suggest either SSH over a VPN tunnel or isolate SSH to your external IP address. * Username: Setup a good username. Microsoft does cross check username’s with commonly used one’s so you don’t become compromised. * Key source and name: Generate a new key pair and either use the generic name or create your own unique standard name * Port rules: Depending on the existing setup or purpose of the virtual machine you can do a couple of things. For me, I will not be enabling inbound ports since this virtual machine will be traversing my IPSec tunnel. The image below depicts the typical setup.
3. Sizing The Disk(s)
Choosing your disk can very depending on your use case. For the amount of cost and use case I typically change the Disk from the standard Premium disk to Standard SSD which is basically fast enough for any of my needs. I also change the disk storage from 1TB to 64GB’s.
4. Networking The Virtual Machine
Create a virtual network: If you filled in the above sections you should be able to create a new virtual network under your subscription. You also have the ability to use an existing VNET. Subnet: Choose an existing or create a new subnet that the new virtual machine will reside under. This will be the network that is internal or private to your subscription. Public IP: Following the understanding from the previous sections the public IP can be used if you are just creating a new network and don’t have an IPSEC tunnel or you are just settings this up for testing purposes. Leave all the NIC NSG, Public inbound ports, and select inbound ports as is (under the NIC network security group you can restrict access to the WAN IP of your home or business internet connection).
5. Management
For the tenant I have I’ve let these settings as default but they can be changed depending on your circumstances. Enabling Azure Active Directory or AAD would be most beneficial if you have a directory or local directory sync. Enabling auto shutdown will save on your consumption costs too if you are trying to be cost conscious. Another important item to check would probably be the backup function. This can come in handy if you need to instant restore a VM for the last 2 days or restore files for the last 30 days or however long your retention is.
6. Advanced
For this article, I have skipped over all of the Advanced options but feel free to look at them and what those options do.
7. Tagging
8. Reviewing The Deployment
You made it! Congrats. Now all you have to do is just double check that all is correct with your deployment and create the VM.
I’m going to show you how to install Server 2019 on a VMware based platform. For most readers, you’ll probably be in a situation where either you are moving on from an earlier version or installing a fresh copy. For this guide, were going to go through and install a fresh copy.
System Requirements (Estimated)
Processor – 1.4 GHz 64-bit processor
RAM – 512 MB
Disk Space – 32 GB
Network – Gigabit (10/100/1000baseT) Ethernet NIC
Optical Storage – DVD drive (if installing the OS from DVD media)
Video – Super VGA (1024 x 768) or higher-resolution (optional)
Input Devices – Keyboard and mouse (optional)
Internet – Broadband access (optional)
Installation
We’ll want to download the evaluation ISO from the Microsoft website. You do have other options to download a VHD or setup an Azure instance, which, we’ll cover in another article. Windows Server 2019 Evaluation Download
Once you’ve selected the ISO evaluation you should expect a 4.9GB download to start. If you are on Windows the download will be located under your Downloads folder or C:\Users\User\Downloads. After the download is complete, for my case, we’ll open up the VMware console.
Choose the ESXi host – 192.168.4.13, right click, and select create a New Virtual Machine… See the slideshow below for details on how to setup the virtual machine before deploying the operating system.
Select “Create a new virtual machine”.
Create a name for the virtual machine – something that best fits your environment.
If you have more than one host – select the host that you want to install the operating system on.
Choose your storage. Again, this will be dependent on the environment you have in place. If you have shared storage you’ll want to select the correct datastore or direct storage.
For compatibility reasons, I’ve selected ESXi 6.5 and later…
Select the correct Guest OS information.
Lastly, customize the hardware appropriately. You’ll want to refer to the above Systems Requirements.
Deploying Windows Server 2019
Now we are in the deployment phase of the operating system. If you haven’t logged out of VMware vCenter or ESXi start the virtual machine by click on the sideways green triangle.
Next, select either the Launch Web Console or Launch Remote Console. Preferably in this case you’ll want to use the Remote Console to add the ISO unless your PXE booting. * If you select the Launch Remote Console option you can download this VMRC file to get started – Here
When you have the remote console open. Click on VMRC, Removable Devices, CD/DVD, and then browse to your ISO
After the ISO loads… select your settings. Mine are shown below in the image.
Click on Install Now
Select your version that you’d like to install. Mine is a little different since its a custom ISO for Vultr.
Accept the terms and conditions for the installation.
For this lab, select the Custom: Install Windows only (Advanced)
Choose the disk that you’ve assigned to the virtual machine or select the only one that is available.
Allow Windows to install on the disk until completed.
After the installation completes you should be prompted to create a password for the local account. As usual, choose a good password.
Geographically… We’ll be starting with my “Annville” location. A nice thing to note for a later upcoming blog is that the Annville and York sites are 55 miles from each other which is technically okay for a DR (Disaster Recovery) especially with it being in a mountainous area.
Annville:
Plex This is a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS virtual machine with Plex running as a dedicated service. I’ve added some other functions to this virtual machine to help in my automation task to create less repetitive work which is keeping the service up-to-date. I’ve also setup the server to connect via fstab to the YKGE server since that serves some folders connected to my Google GSuite account. To keep things a little more secure… all the data goes through the IPSec tunnel. It keeps the tunnels up so its worth it. I don’t permit external users on my server. BlueIris This is a local security system for my secondary remote server cabinet. I maintain cameras internally and externally for the house. All of the cameras used are Dahua rebrands of Amcrest. I’ve linked Blue Iris if you want to learn more about BlueIris
Seedbox I use this machine to host publicly available open-source software to hopefully put a small dent on the map for the non-profits that host them. Veeam I use this to backup… basically all of the virtual machines shown below. I’ll go into further detail in another blog post. I don’t backup virtual machines like VCSA, WordPress (Dev box), etc. For this application, I do use and renew every year under the NFR licensing that I am grateful for.
YKDC1 This virtual machine used to be on the 192.168.4.12 server but with how VMware shares resources I decided for best practice to move this virtual machine to the Annville location. This server hosts DC, DHCP, DNS, AD CS, IIS, and NPAS YKGE This only runs stablebit for GSuite and print services across my IPSec tunnels.
York
Host: 192.168.4.12 (R710) This physical server has been turned off at the time of writing to reduce consumption of power at my home.
Host:192.168.4.13 (R720) DMS(SeedDMS) A light-weight server that runs on a Ubuntu OS to host all scanned documents; I have decommissioned this for now as I evaluate others Bookstack I use this often to make up my own KB articles, a recipe section for my family, and many other articles Cacti This is used as an SNMP poller for all of my networking equipment… Primarily a mix of Ubiquiti and Cisco
Mayan EDMS Currently this is my document management system that runs through a turnkey system OpenVPN This is used to connect externally through a handheld device or laptop back into my environment. I only allow traffic to a certain subnet for security reasons UNMS This is a application provided by Ubiquiti to allow the management of its Edge product line. I do use this for my own purposes and to also manage a few external bridges that I’ve placed
WordPress I do not host this in a DMZ or externally. The WordPress VM is used for development reasons. VCSA VCSA is basically in short VMware vCenter which I use to communicate across all 3 of my physical hosts BlueIris Like before in Annville this system is used to record around the building both internally and externally RDS This is a terminal server that I use when I’m out and about. No outbound ports of course
SQL Since SQL is popular among Windows environments for ERP’s specifically… I’ve decided to run a Dev SQL environment to manage, maintain, and learn from. WSUS I use this to maintain Windows updates for all computers/servers while maintaining updates through scripts. YKDC2 The YKDC2 virtual server is a replica to YKDC1. It maintains default replication times. YKFS01 This is only a file server and serves both an S:\ (shared data) and H:\ (private data). YKGE19 Again this is another general server that hosts a lot of common items I don’t want on critical pieces like a file server, domain controller, or anything like that. Basically, to keep the risk and confusion away.
You may or may not know but “IT ” people are always curious as to what others are running inside their homelab and why… We all like to critique our skills and for most of us that happens at our homes an not at work. Whether it be hardware, networking, virtualization, or virtual machines. So, here’s what’s going on in my homelab for 2020.
