Deploying new virtual machines from a template

Deploying a new virtual machine from a template is surprisingly easy. This is a task that you will perform often. Although there are some template specific cmdlets, these have to do with making changes to templates after they are converted. To deploy a VM, you come back to New-VM cmdlet.

Getting Started

To get started, you should open a new PowerCLI window and connect to the vCenter server where you defined our template VM.

How to do it…

1. To begin this recipe, you will need to assemble a New-VM cmdlet. The first step is to specify the template that is to be cloned from using the -Template cmdlet. As of vSphere 5.5, the -Template parameter can accept pipeline input, but this is deprecated, so it is better to specify the template by a parameter:

   New-VM -Template "WinTemplate"
   

2. The next step is to add the name for the VM and the host or the ResourcePool that the VM is going to deploy into:

   New-VM -Template "WinTemplate" -Name "NewWinVM" -ResourcePool...