When creating a new virtual machine, you need to configure the initial settings such as the hostname, IP address, and SSH keys. When creating virtual machines in batches, manually configuring these settings for each virtual machine can be laborious and time-consuming. To improve efficiency, you can install Arcfra VM Initialization Tool, which automates the initial configuration for virtual machines on their first boot.
Arcfra VM Initialization Tool simplifies compatibility management, reduces configuration complexity, and avoids redundancy after initialization by enhancing the functionality of the third-party tool. The tool includes cloud-init for initializing Linux virtual machines and cloudbase-init for initializing Windows virtual machines.
cloud-init automates a series of system initialization configurations for Linux virtual machines. As a non-persistent service, it runs only during the VM boot process, exits immediately after execution, does not listen on any ports, and automatically disables itself to avoid affecting the virtual machine's subsequent normal operations.
Arcfra Virtualization Engine (AVE) supports cloud-init by allowing you to create virtual machines from templates pre-configured with cloud-init. New virtual machines created from these templates contain the initialization data and will automatically complete initial configurations on their first boot.
The supported configurations using cloud-init on AVE are listed below:
Hostname
Default user password
The default user configured by cloud-init is root.
SSH public key for remote login
DNS server
IP address
You can acquire the IP address dynamically through DHCP, or configure the static IP address.
Custom user data
You can automate more configurations by setting the scripts.
Refer to the official cloud-init documentation for more details on cloud-init.
cloudbase-init automates a series of system initialization configurations for Windows virtual machines. As a non-persistent service, it runs only during the VM boot process, exits immediately after execution, does not listen on any ports.
AVE supports cloudbase-init by allowing you to create virtual machines from templates pre-configured with cloudbase-init. New virtual machines created from the templates contain the initialization data and will automatically complete initial configurations on their first boot.
The supported configurations using cloudbase-init on AVE are listed below:
Hostname
Default user password
The default user is Admin.
SSH public key for remote login
DNS server
IP address
You can acquire an IP address dynamically through DHCP, or configure a static IP address.
Custom user data
You can automate more configurations by setting the scripts.
Refer to the official cloudbase-init documentation for more details on cloudbase-init.
