Hello everyone,
A few years back we had the boom of the “Private Cloud” rush, where everyone started to implement virtualization technologies to make a better use of it Infrastructure resources and improve high availability, scalability and innovation! Now to simplify any migration to the Cloud (VM2Cloud) initiatives we can make use of this fantastic technology called “Oracle Ravello”. This product allow us to migrate virtual machines to the Cloud without complications and giving us a level of flexibility never seen before! You can read more about Oracle Ravello and try it for free here: https://cloud.oracle.com/ravello ,also you access Ravello documentation at https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/iaas/ravello-cloud/ravsg/getting-started-ravello.html .
The next step would be to click on “Library” and then “VMs” on the mail left bar menu.
The next page shows us all available VM templates available for us. Let’s try to import one of my own Oracle VM virtual machine at ova format to Oracle Ravello by clicking at the “Import Machine” option as shown bellow.
After clicking on “Import VM” Ravello would show us the VM Import Tool page. Here we will tell Ravello about the OS we are using on our Desktop/Laptop and choose to download the GUI (Graphic User Interface) VM Import tool or the CLI (Command Line Interface) Import tool.
If choosing the GUI tool it would then ask you to enter your credentials again to validate it. For this scenario, I will skip the use of the GUI tool and will only concentrate on using the CLI tool as the example.
After downloading the CLI tool and unziping it, please run the following command:
$./ravelo import -u info@clouddb.com.au "ova file with it location path" , and click enter. it would prompt you to enter the password of your Ravello user account.
(Note: info@clouddb.com.au is the Ravello username account, please change it for your own Ravello username account)
You can now see the progress of the upload at your Desktop/Laptop OS or at the Ravello Web Console as shown bellow.
After the import is completed, we need to Edit and Verify the imported VM as shown in the image bellow.
Confirm the Name of the VM, add a description and confirm the hostname for the VM, then click “Next”.
Next, confirm the number of CPUs this VM will use, Memory size (Keep the Platform and Display as per default) and click “Next”.
The following screen will show us all disks used by our VM, please confirm all details and click “Next”.
Now is time to very our Network details and please verify and change any static IP if used and click “Next”.
The last screen will allow us to enter any extra service required (such as Telnet, SSH, etc). We will work on it later so please click “Finish”.
You can now see that the Imported VM is fully available to be used.
Now click at “Applications” at the main left bar menu and click on “Create Application”. This would allow us to create a deployment application that could contain one or more VMs (As per example, applications and database servers).
At the Create Application popup please enter a name for this deployment application and click “Create”.
Now as shown at the image bellow, please select the VM we want to use (in this case the VM we just imported) by clicking on it and moving it to the main screen (1)(the one with little squares),then as next step we will review the VM deployment properties (2)
On the services tab, please click on “Add”and select “Add Supplied Service” option.
We will now create 2 new services, one using the port 8001 for administration purposes and port 22 for SSH connections.
Now please click at “Publish” and as a result, the “Publish Application” popup will appear. Here you will be able to review the main details of the VM that would be deployed at Oracle Cloud plus:
- Select the VM optimization of your preference: “Optimized for Cost” or “Optimized for Performance”
- Select an automation stop if necessary. For this exaple we will choose to stop the VM after 2 hours being online.
- Check the box to start all VMs in the deployment application automatically
- Click on Detailed price to check the hourly cost of this VM after deployed at Oracle Cloud.
And finally, click “Publish”.
You can now see at your right lower section of your screen that the VM is now starting.
When the VM is started you would be able to see all details of it, such as DNS, IP, and ports in use details.
Now we can connect to the deployed VM by issuing a ssh command as per example:
$ssh user@DNS (as seen on the previous screen) -p 22
As you can see, it was very simple and easy to import our existing VM to Ravello and to deploy it to Oracle Cloud. Now let explore the Ravelo console a little more. At the applications menu, we can review the Network topology used by clicking on the “Network” top tab.
We can also check all logs by clicking on the option “Log” at the top tab menu.
Also, we can fully review all details of the application deployment by clicking on the top tab menu “Settings” option. Here you will be able to:
- Check pricing details
- Review and change Application Scheduling
- Add/Modify a Cost Alert
- Add/Modify a VM Start Order
- Add/Modify Ephemeral Access (Tokens)
We can also check all available public blueprints (VM templates) at the Ravello Repository by clicking on the “Ravello Repo” option on the top right menu.
Hope you enjoyed this short overview of using Oracle Ravello. I really recommend you to try this tool for free today.
Kind Regards,
Francisco Munoz Alvarez
Oracle ACE Director