About service templates

A service is one or more virtual machines or physical machines that are provisioned and managed as a unit. Services can include OS storage, networking, and extra storage.

A service template is simply a service with pre-defined parameters and settings that Viewpoint users can use when they request a service. The Viewpoint Catalog Management page is a user interface method of creating and managing service templates (comprised of VMs, PMs, virtual containers, and storage) and submitting them for use.

Service templates must be a container type in order for users to request them. If you want to make a template of another service type (VM, PM, or storage) accessible to users, place it – and any other service templates to be included – inside a separate container template (for details, see Creating a container template).

Example scenario

Let's say you want to create a LAMP stack service that includes a virtual machine with storage to hold a web server, and a physical machine with storage to hold the corresponding database. In this case, you would want to create the following templates:

A VM template
A storage template (for the web server)
A PM template
Another storage template (for the corresponding database)
A container template for the VM template and the web server storage template
A container for the PM template and the database storage template
A container to contain the two container templates.

6.1 About service templates