GRANT ACCESS TO AN IMAGE IN THE VCL

Overview

Once you have created a new image, there are a few things you have to do to allow other people to use it. If you don’t have access to do any of the following steps, you will need to get a VCL administrator to do them for you.

When you create a new image, it is only available to you, and it is only allowed to be run on a few computers that have been set aside for the testing of new images.

Image Mapping

Images are mapped to be run on a set of computers. Images are also added to image groups so that other users can access them. For your new image to be able to be used by others, you need to add it to an image group. There are a few steps to this process:

1. You need to make your image a member of an image group

   • Select Manage Images->Edit Image Grouping
   • Select your image from the drop down box and click Get Groups
   • Choose one or more image groups to which you would like to add the image from the box on the right
   • Click <-Add to make the image a member of the group(s)
   • Make sure that (vmware) images are only mapped to a (vmware) image group, otherwise reservations for the image will fail.

NOTE: If you would like to have an image group created so that you can restrict access to your image to a limited set of users, send a request to research@unc.edu.

User Groups

Users or user groups are given access to certain image groups, so that when you map your image to an image group, the corresponding users have access to that image.

By default, you can map your images to allUsers (for Full Blade images) or allUsers (vmware) (for vmware images), which allows all users on the VCL access to your image.

If you request an image group be created for your image, a corresponding user group will also be created. You will be able to add and remove users from this group.

NOTE: There are also department-based groups that the VCL creates automatically from the University directory. You can request that your image only be accessible to one or more departments. Again, just send a request to research@unc.edu to have this setup for you.

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