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Benefits of VM Templates (VMTX) in vSphere Content Library

05.16.2023 by William Lam // 13 Comments

A commonly miss-understood capability of the vSphere Content Library is managing and distributing Virtual Machine Templates (VMTX), which was introduced in vSphere 6.7 Update 2.

When vSphere Content Library was first released in vSphere 5.0, content was distributed by using a pull-based replication where the subscriber vCenter Server would setup initiate the content subscription to the publisher vCenter Server and then content would then be downloaded to the subscriber vCenter Server as shown in the diagram below.


This initial architecture of vSphere Content Library made it extremely easy for any vCenter Server, regardless of their vCenter Single Sign-On domain, to create a subscription and download content (ISO, OVF/OVA and other files) from the vSphere Content Library of the publisher vCenter Server.

The creation of the vSphere Content Library subscription was managed completely by the individual subscribing vCenter Server as long as it knew the subscription URL and any credentials that may have been configured and of course connectivity to the publisher vCenter Server. While this made it easy for anyone to subscribe content from a vSphere Content Library, it also meant for larger organizations with many vCenter Server(s), an additional task was required to configure each subscribing vCenter Server.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, vSphere 7.0, vSphere 8.0 Tags // content library, vmtx

Automating VM Template management using Content Library in VMC

07.17.2018 by William Lam // 11 Comments

Today, the vSphere Content Library only supports a single deployable VM type using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. Although customers are familiar with both OVF and OVA (archive of OVF and VMDKs), support for vCenter VM Template is still one of the most highly requested feature for Content Library. This should come as no surprise since many of our customers have built operational procedures and automation workflows for managing VM deployments over the years and simply switching to another format has a significant impact to their existing workflows.

UPDATE (10/18/18) - The VMTX feature is now available in vSphere 6.7 Update 1

I know the Content Library team has been heads down working on a number of enhancements to Content Library and it looks like one of these improvements has recently made its way out onto VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) which I had just noticed while working in my SDDC.


In VMC, when you right click on a VM and select "Clone as Template to Library", there will be a new option to capture a VM as a VM Template (VMTX) within a Content Library!

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, VMware Cloud on AWS Tags // content library, VM Template, VMC, vmtx, VMware Cloud on AWS

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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