Creating vSphere Template VMs

This guide describes how to create templates VMs for vSphere to be used with Terraform, machine-controller, and KubeOne and KKP. This is an umbrella document — we have a basic guides that should server useful for every operating system, plus guides that go into more detail for specific OS.

Guides for other operating systems will be added in the future.

Best Practice: Add Multiple PV-SCSI Controllers

To improve disk performance and optimize CSI volume placement, configure your template VM with multiple Paravirtual SCSI controllers before converting it to a template.

  • Add 3 additional PV-SCSI controllers (total: 4).
  • Set all controllers to Paravirtual mode.
  • Boot disk should remain on the first controller; additional CSI volumes will automatically use the others.

This configuration helps distribute I/O load across multiple controllers, which is especially beneficial for workloads with high disk activity.

References

The template VM in this guide refers to a regular vSphere VM and not VM Templates according to the vSphere terminology. The difference is quite subtle, but VM Templates are not supported yet by machine-controller.