vSphere 6.7 - To sync VM templates using Content Library

Most of us have stored VMware content such as ISO images, OVF VMs, OVA VMs and valuable scripts on a local or remote data store to build out Windows Virtual Machines (VMs), ESXi hosts or Linux VMs. The content is accessible to anyone with admin rights to the vCenter environment on which the content is hosted. So anyone with access to the vCenter and its datastore can initiate an unauthorized VM build with unprotected VMware content.

Syncing of native VM templates (vmtx) between Content Libraries is available when vCenter Server is configured for Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM). Published libraries are now subscriber aware allowing newly published items to replicate to other subscribed Content Libraries.

Option	Description
Local content library	A the local content library is accessible only in the vCenter Server instance where you create it by default.
Subscribed content library	A subscribed content library originates from a published content library. Use this option to take advantage of already existing content libraries. You can sync the subscribed library with the published library to see up-to-date content, but you cannot add or remove content from the subscribed library. Only an administrator of the published library can add, modify, and remove contents from the published library.

• Using the content library to Publish (Sync) a native VM Template (vmtx) to Subscriber Libraries in vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.

 

•  List of Content Libraries accessible to the vCenter Server. Click on the Local Library named "OnPrem-Publisher".

• Select image temp - We have 3 templates displayed, two OVF, and one VMTX. To Publish (Sync) the VMTX template to subscriber libraries, select the VMTX template named "Win2012-tmp".

•  The details of the VMTX Template is displayed. Click Actions to continue.  

• Once the Subscriber Library is selected, clicking Publish will sync the VMTX template from the Local Content Library over to the Subscriber Library.

• Click Publish to sync this VMTX template from the local Content Library over to the Subscriber Library.

• Alternatively, we can also publish VMTX templates directly from the Local Library view versus the template details page. Click the radio button checkbox to select the Subscriber Library to publish to.

• This is intended to notify that only VMTX templates will be published to the Subscriber Library. Click Publish to continue. 

• We can also verify that the template made it over to the Content Library by clicking on the Subscriber Library named "VC-026 Lib"

 

• Review the current templates in the Subscriber Library. Here we can see that our VMTX (VM Template) has synchronized to the Subscriber Content Library (VC-026 Lib) from the local Content Library.

• Once synchronization completes, all templates can be seen from this view. If there are other files in Content Library that you need to review, click Other Types to see them.

• Other file types include items such as ISOs, text files, etc.

I hope this has been informative and thank you for reading!