Proxmox VE Full Course: Class 6 - Creating Virtual Machine Templates

Proxmox Virtual Environment is an awesome virtualization solution for your business or home lab, and in this series, you'll learn everything you need to know in order to fully utilize it. In this class, we take a look at creating virtual machine templates.

# Other episodes:
Class 06 - Setting up Virtual Machine Templates: This video
Class 10 - Backups and Snapshots: Coming soon!
Class 11 - Integrated Firewall: Coming soon

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[weirbm]

Hi again Jay,

Apologies for all of the comments regarding my issue with cloud-init and SSH, but I have SOLVED the issue after troubleshooting, and watching your "Intro to Cloud-init" video - it was very helpful. As I'm sure other users may encounter the same error that I did while following along, I wanted to include the [simple] solution:

Once all of the steps have been completed in the VM that is destined to become the template (but before you power it down!), ensure that you run "sudo cloud-init clean" - this will ensure that cloud-init knows that - the next time this machine boots, whether from this VM instance or a clone from it becoming a template - it will see that boot as the first boot, and apply the necessary changes to the SSH host keys.

When I followed along with your tutorial verbatim for the third time, I simply issued the "sudo cloud-init clean" command before powering down and everything worked beautifully! :)

Hopefully this comment helps other users out who are following along. If it doesn't, please feel free to remove it! I am now able to proceed to the next video on containers! Can't wait!

Thanks again, Jay! All the best!

[PersonalMusicChanel]

Attention for those following this tutorial: A newer video labeled "Bonus video 3 - Proxmox VE - How to build an Ubuntu 22.04 Template (Updated Method)" has been added to the course video list which is more up to date. With that said are already trying to go trough this tutorial below are the steps I had to add to make it work for me.

If you've encountered issues getting SSH to function after following the steps in the video, try running the command 'sudo cloud-init clean.' This fix should be done around the 8-minute mark in the tutorial, before stoping the VM after the clean up. Fix was originally suggested by @weirdbm in the comments.

Additionally, @ossamaboughaba7926 suggested using 'ssh-keygen -A' in one of the comments to regenerate the SSH key if you hadn't executed 'sudo cloud-init clean' before creating the template. Although I haven't personally tested it, this might resolve the issue.

In case your VM starts without an assigned IP address, it might be expecting a static IP and needs to be set to acquire one via DHCP. Access the 'cloud init' configuration of your VM, edit the 'IP config' option, and enable DHCP for IP4.

By implementing these updates, I managed to progress through the tutorial successfully till the end.

[barrymeehan]

Jay: I'm really enjoying the content for this class! I'll be rolling out a ProxMox deployment for a client later this week. PLEASE release the rest of the classes for this course ASAP!!! I can hardly wait to see what you have in store. Keep up the great work. Thanks!

[wekiwa]

Watching each new Proxmox video repeatedly! Templates will help immensely!

[craftsmanshopswoodworking]

Hi Jay great tutorial congrats on your next season in life. Just so everyone knows they may have to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server first in the Proxmox VNC terminal. This will rebuild the SSH keys. Thanks again keep up the good work.

[IvanRosaT]

I can comfirm my imagination took me over to do all of this on the Desktop Gnome GUI, and works!

This is just the Video I was looking for!
I went trough like 5 Videos and they made reference of Cloud Init but it was super confusing and 10 mins of not going straing to the point, you defenately nailed! 💗

[hidaya]

For those who may get the spinned off VMs are not assigned IPs, ensure you update IP Config while setting up Cloud-Init. I found out setting to DHCP makes it work out of the box.

[srihariravikumar]

Thanks Jay for this awesome course of Proxmox😊

[danbrown]

Between this and your video on cloud-init, I'm a little confused and hoping you can clarify, perhaps in a future video. I completely understand wanting to replace the SSH host keys, and that's something that would need to be done in each clone of the template, so you'd want to have cloud-init do that. But it seems that most of what cloud-init would otherwise do *in a Proxmox environment* (or at least in this context--one where you're creating a VM, configuring it in some way, and then turning it into a template) could be done just as well (if not better) by making those configuration decisions in the VM itself before turning it into a template. Installing extra packages, setting up (or changing) a default user, adding a SSH public key for that user, configuring SSH to accept user certificates from a specified CA, setting time zone, etc., seem that they could all be handled at least as well directly in the VM. But I say that having never used cloud-init, so it's entirely possible (indeed, likely) that I'm missing something. Some discussion of when it makes more sense to use cloud-init, vs. when it makes more sense to just preconfigure the VM before creating the template, would be helpful.

[PrapotnikDusan]

Jay, thank you for the nice explanation
instructions🤓👏💪

[g]

This was very helpful, Thank you very much!

[magicmanj]

Great Video, as a new linux user, you explain yourself very well, keep up the good work

[Chris.]

Thanks Jay! I am working with Terraform and using it to deploy proxmox vms based on templates I have created following the steps in this tutorial. Its working great with one exception.. For some reason netplan dhcp4: true is taking precedence over the cloud-init IP. In proxmox you can see the cloud-init drive is active and the IP is set, but the VM is stuck with DHCP without manual intervention. I could use a playbook from Ansible to fix this, but I wanted to check with you to see if there is something I'm missing in the template preparation. Thanks for all that you do! I point all my fellow tech friends and colleagues to your channel.

[ovaisvaid]

Jay, thank you for the Proxmox course. I am following it and learning a lot. I have one issue when I created a webserver using template it breaks the ability to SSH into the server. But if I create a normal VM SSH works.

[MatthewCrofut]

Good stuff Jay. I knew nothing about cloudinit before or how to wipe ssh info so each clone had its own.

[Anonymous-qpzf]

Before converting to template, do in source VM:
"sudo cloud-init clean"

[d]

very very helpful, you are amazing ! high support from me

[mithubopensourcelab]

Please please consider Open VSwitch lesson, installing pFsense as vm & using inbuilt Proxmox Firewall in your ongoing Proxmox series.

[dvreal]

How long do you think until the rest of the series comes out? I'm thinking about wiping my proxmox server and starting fresh but have been waiting to learn more about the topics in the remaining videos first.

[javbaes]

Great video - question, why did you remove the attachment to the iso for the virtual disk? (in the CD\DVD). is it because you were going to use cloud init? would you have removed the virtual disk if you were not planning on using cloud init? thank you and keep up the good work.