Allow blank networkID

[MFiederlein]

Resolves #316 by allowing a blank network name. This occurs when cloning a template to another cluster where the distributed port group on the template does not exist.

[bill-rich]

This looks like a good solution. The only thing I'd like to confirm is what the network is showing up as in the vSphere client? Is it blank, or does it still show the network from the original cluster?

[MFiederlein]

Yes, in this scenario, the network name is blank in vSphere client. After this change, the provider comes along and happily sets the network properly after clone instead of erroring out.

[bill-rich]

Looks good! Thanks for getting this fix in!

[chuanran]

@bill-rich @MFiederlein as far as I understand, this is just a workaround to make sure clone can work for cross-cluster, however, it cannot finish the post-clone actions like network configuration, etc, and it is not helpful from automation perspective.

Basically we need terraform to support cross-cluster vms' cloning and post-clone actions . Thoughts and any plans to make sure terraform has this ability?

[chuanran]

thoughts on above comments pls? @bill-rich @MFiederlein

[MFiederlein]

@chuanran cross-cluster template cloning and post-clone actions (setting network config etc) seem to be working OK for me after this merge. e.g. I can configure a network, and it is set properly post-clone.
My specific issue was down to the fact that the host I was provisioning on did not have the network available that was configured in the template, therefore would produce an error and fail. This PR caters for that scenario by allowing a blank network name (I believe that's what vSphere will do in that scenario anyway when cloning to a host that does not have a template's network). After it's cloned, the provider changes the network properly.

[chuanran]

@MFiederlein I got what you meant now. when you clone a vm in vsphere/vcsa manually, you can assign the network adapter name, and finally the vm can be cloned to the target cluster right? but terraform vsphere plugin cannot work well for this scenario. you can assign it as empty for the networkID,but it could not configure the network adapter and ip address, netmask, gateway etc. those network config successfully and automatically.

[chuanran]

cc @bill-rich

[DmitryZakharov]

Can somebody point an example how it is supposed to work ? Where do you specify blank network name ?

[ghost]

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