Hey guys,
We are on VRA/VRO 7.3.
I'm wondering if anyone has ever tried deploying from a pool of VMs already created, for new requests.
Today (in a nutshell), it basically takes about 40 minutes or so to clone a VM because of the workflows it runs through in VRO. This is exacerbated by the software components it runs after this. We have an idea to basically pull a pre-made VM, and just run whatever software component on top of it. This way, we basically bypass the ~40 minutes it takes to clone, and run the workflows. If there are no workflows, then the idea is then the app owners then have their machines in a couple mins, at the quickest, and really the contention of time, is based on the software component they run. This also ensures us the VM is already set up and ready to go, as opposed to it failing somewhere in the workflow pipeline, and ultimately failing the build in it's entirety.
Basically, our customers (like I'm sure, many of yours), want their VMs... NOW!! Even if we didn't have a set of workflows to run, the clone process in itself, takes us about 15 mins. Also, because of the abundance of complex workflows we run, we also increase the risk, of workflow failures. By having the pool we provision from, would bypass any failures that the customer would experience themselves.
Does what I say make sense?
I'd also be interested to hear what other have done to expedite the processes to providing VMs in VRA.