Overview
Templates are defined virtual images and are the basis from which new servers are build. Templates should adhere to the following best practices.
Blueprints are a saved and repeatable workflow that bundles components like Templates, Packages and other Blueprints together. Blueprints should adhere to the following best practices for increased maintainability and a consistent user deployment experience.
Additional References
See also the KB articles on:
- Blueprint Best Practices
- Packages Best Practices
- Differentiating the Template, Package and Blueprint components
- Best Practices and Preparation for a Virtual Machine/OVF/OVA Import
Using Templates versus Integrating with Blueprints
Templates appear easier for a successful integration but in actual experience many caveats surface making Blueprints the preferred mechanism for defining server/application end-state.
Templates
- If designed according to a minimum supported feature set will be compatible across multiple Private/Public cloud platforms.
- Consistent day 0 deployment but less consistency with ongoing run state if patches or other changes are required on the underlying server or software components.
- Importing Templates from outside of the cloud process is a non-zero time commitment to cover both a large data transfer and the engineering required for successful deployment.
- Importing Templates is considered a billable service task, whereas Blueprints are not.
Blueprints
- Configuration driven design moves us away from the legacy "golden image" mindset.
- Supports flexible underlying operating system versioning (multiple versions of Windows or multiple versions/distributions of Linux) for easy customer deployment.
- Changes to underlying OS (including patching) and foundational hardware can be accomplished without rebuilding the entire solution workflow (e.g., replace just a patch or just a configuration step without disrupting the rest of the workflow).
- Requires some engineering expertise to correctly define and package the desired end state.