Provisioning is used to get a VM ready to start in a running state. The Orchestrate Server automatically looks for the best VM host machine to run the VM on, unless you have specifically designated another server to run the VM.
By default, you can simultaneously provision eight VMs on a VM host. If you want to provision additional VMs, you must proportionately increase the value of Max Hosted VMs for the VM host in the Orchestrate Development Client.
Provisioning VMs that have only an NPIV disk is not supported. You can provision a VM that has a hard disk and an NPIV disk (SAN repository). The OS image of the VM is stored on the local hard disk and the data resides on the SAN repository.
Provisioning adapters on the Orchestrate Server abstract the VM. These adapters are special provisioning jobs that perform operations for each integration with different VM technologies.
The Orchestrate Server uses provisioning adapters to perform life cycle functions for the VMs and allow the Orchestrate Server to control them. Provisioning adapters are programs that provision (start, stop, snapshot, migrate, or pause) a VM. They run just like regular jobs on the Orchestrate Server.
The system can discover SAN repositories for Xen and ESX.
The system can detect a local store on each VM host and detect if a local disk might contain VM images. The provisioner puts in a request for a VM host. However, before a VM is used, the system pre-reserves that VM for exclusive use. That reservation prevents a VM from being “stolen” by any other job waiting for a resource that might match this particular VM.
The constraints specified to find a suitable host evaluate machine architectures, CPU, bit width, available virtual memory, or other administrator-configured constraints, such as the number of virtual machine slots. This process provides heterogeneous virtual machine management.
For procedures and more information on provisioning VMs, see Section 2.2, Managing a Virtual Machine in Runtime.