We need to set Request Info on Catalog Item everytime a VMWare template changes

[eggoide]

Hi all,

I would like to kindly ask you for an advice.
We have a Windows Server flow in Manage IQ with a specific VM template set within Request Info configuration on our Win server catalog item. There are also other configuration set i.e. Environment, Network etc.
When there is an update on the VM template in VMWare (new version with the same name), we lose all the Request Info configuration and need to set it again from the scratch.
Is there any way to avoid this behaviour made on the side of ManageIQ?

Is there any way to i.e. set some dummy template and then dynamically change it to the real one during the provisioning flow of the windows server in ManageIQ.

Thank you very much for your help!

[Fryguy]

@agrare Any thoughts here?

[agrare]

Hey @eggoide so when you say

When there is an update on the VM template in VMWare (new version with the same name), we lose all the Request Info configuration and need to set it again from the scratch.

I'm assuming that means that this is a new template that replaces the old one? In that case yes MIQ will see this as a new template just like VMware does (different unique reference).

Instead of creating an all new request could you just update the existing one to point to the new template id?

[eggoide]

Hi @agrare and thank you for your reply. The problem is that when you have a Catalog Item linked to a template and request info is configured, when the template changes, you lose the request configuration as well.
So yes, we can update the existing template but the request configuration is already lost and needs to be set up again.
This is why we need to know how to handle template change without need of setting the request again.

[agrare]

I'm not too familiar with Catlog Items but that does sound like a problem. I can't say if that is by design or if it could be fixed @Fryguy do you know perhaps?

This isn't ideal, but a workaround would be to take the new template's ems_ref and uid_ems, assign them to the old template, and delete the new template record manually. This would maintain the same ID but point to the new template.

[Fryguy]

This is sort of a known issue with the catalog and it's a hard problem to solve. Right now catalog items can get orphaned for a number of reasons; deleting a template being the most obvious. It's also part of the reason it's hard to do export/import of catalogs.

I have some details about that in the import/export issue: #19588 (comment)