Create a VMware vSphere template for Ubuntu Server 18.04

This article provides guidance for creating an Ubuntu Server 18.04 VMware vSphere virtual machine template.

Prerequisites

Note

This guide assumes that you have some VMware vSphere familiarity. It's not designed to review either VMware or Ubuntu best practices.

• Download the latest Ubuntu Server 18.04 ISO file

• VMware vSphere 6.5 and above

• Although it can be used locally, for faster deployment, upload the file to a vSphere datastore or to vCenter content library.

Creating Ubuntu 18.04 VM template

Deploying and installing Ubuntu

• Deploy new virtual machine

  

  

  

  

  

  

• Make sure to select Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) as the guest OS.

  

• Point to the Ubuntu server ISO file location.

  

  

• Power on the VM and start the Ubuntu installation. No specific instructions here but:

  • Consider using a static IP address

  • Install OpenSSH server

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

Post-installation

Before converting the VM to a template, several actions are needed.

• Update your OS packages:

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade -y
  

• Prevent cloudconfig from preserving the original hostname and reset the hostname:

  sudo sed -i 's/preserve_hostname: false/preserve_hostname: true/g' /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
  sudo truncate -s0 /etc/hostname
  sudo hostnamectl set-hostname localhost
  

• Remove the current network configuration:

  sudo rm /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml
  

• Clean shell history and shutdown the VM:

  cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c
  sudo shutdown now
  

Convert to template

Reduce the VM CPU count and memory resources to the minimum and convert the VM to template, switch the CD/DVD drive to client device as well disconnect it and convert the VM to template.