How to Deploy Virtual Machines from a Subscribed Content Library in vCenter

So you’ve got your vCenter environment humming along, and now you’re looking at subscribed content libraries thinking, “There’s got to be an easier way to deploy VMs than what I’ve been doing.” You’re absolutely right. Let me walk you through exactly how to leverage subscribed content libraries to streamline your virtual machine deployments.

I’ve been working with vCenter for years now, and honestly, once you get the hang of content libraries—especially subscribed ones—you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them. The ability to pull pre-configured templates and deploy them across your infrastructure? That’s a game-changer for any VMware admin.

What Are Subscribed Content Libraries Anyway?

Before we dive into the deployment process, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what we’re actually working with here.

A subscribed content library in vCenter is essentially a read-only library that pulls content from a published library somewhere else. Think of it like subscribing to a streaming service—you don’t own the content, but you can access and use it whenever you need it. The publisher maintains the source templates and ISOs, and your subscribed library automatically pulls updates when they’re available.

This setup is incredibly useful for organizations that want to maintain standardized VM templates across multiple vCenter instances or even different data centers. Corporate IT can publish golden images, and regional offices can subscribe to them without having to manually transfer files around.

Prerequisites You’ll Need

Let’s talk about what you need to have in place before we start deploying VMs. I learned this the hard way early on—skipping the prep work just means doubling back later.

Infrastructure Requirements:

• vCenter Server 6.7 or later (though I’d recommend 7.0+ for the best experience)
• Sufficient storage on your datastore for VM deployment
• Network connectivity between your vCenter and the published library source
• Proper permissions on your vCenter account

Access and Permissions: You’ll need these privileges at minimum:

• Content library: View content library
• Virtual machine: Deploy from template
• Resource allocation: Assign virtual machine to resource pool
• Datastore: Allocate space

If you’re not sure whether you have these permissions, check with your vCenter administrator. Trust me, there’s nothing more frustrating than getting halfway through a deployment only to hit a permissions wall.

Setting Up Your Subscribed Content Library

Alright, first things first—we need to create and configure the subscribed library if you haven’t done that already.

Creating the Subscribed Library

1. Log into vSphere Client and navigate to Menu → Content Libraries. You’ll find this in the main navigation menu.
2. Click the “+” icon to create a new content library. The wizard that pops up is pretty straightforward, but let’s walk through it.
3. Select “Subscribed content library” as your library type. This is where you tell vCenter that you want to pull content from an external source rather than hosting it locally.
4. Enter your subscription details:
   • Subscription URL: This is the URL provided by whoever’s publishing the library. It usually looks something like https://publisher-vcenter.domain.com/cls/vcsp/lib/abc-123-def/lib.json
   • SSL Certificate: If you’re connecting to an HTTPS source (and you should be), you’ll need to either accept the certificate or import a trusted one
   • Authentication: If the published library requires it, enter the username and password
5. Enable automatic synchronization if you want the library to stay current. I always recommend this—there’s no point in subscribing to a library if you’re not going to get updates. You can set the download interval, but the default (immediate download when updates are available) works well for most scenarios.
6. Choose “Download content immediately” or “Download only when needed.” Here’s my take on this: if you have the storage space, download immediately. You don’t want to be waiting for a multi-gigabyte template to download when you’re in the middle of deploying a critical VM.
7. Select your storage location for the library. Pick a datastore with plenty of room—VM templates can be hefty, especially if they include Windows Server images.
8. Review and complete the wizard. Give your library a descriptive name—something like “Corporate-Templates-Sub” so you remember it’s a subscribed library six months from now.

Verifying the Synchronization

Once you’ve created the library, vCenter starts syncing content in the background. You can monitor this process:

• Navigate to your newly created content library
• Click on the “Templates” or “Other Types” tab
• Check the sync status in the lower pane

The initial sync can take a while depending on the size of the library and your network bandwidth. I’ve seen small libraries sync in minutes and massive ones take hours. Patience is key here.

Deploying a Virtual Machine from the Subscribed Library

Now we’re getting to the good stuff—actually deploying a VM from your subscribed content library. This process is remarkably similar to deploying from a regular template, with a few key differences.

Step-by-Step Deployment Process

1. Navigate to your content library by going to Menu → Content Libraries, then select your subscribed library from the list.
2. Browse the available templates. You’ll see all the VM templates and OVF packages that have synchronized from the published library. Take a moment to review what’s available—publishers often organize templates by OS type or function.
3. Select the template you want to deploy. Right-click on it and choose “New VM from This Template.” Alternatively, you can click the “Actions” menu and select the same option.
4. Name your virtual machine. The wizard opens with the first page asking for a VM name and inventory location:
   • Give your VM a meaningful name. I use a naming convention like APP-PROD-WEB01 or whatever makes sense for your environment
   • Select the folder where you want the VM to appear in inventory
   • Click Next
5. Select a compute resource. This is where you choose which host, cluster, or resource pool will run your VM:
   • If you have DRS enabled, you can select a cluster and let DRS place the VM automatically
   • Check the compatibility status—vCenter will tell you if there are any issues
   • Click Next when you’re ready
6. Review details. vCenter shows you all the template details:
   • OS type and version
   • Virtual hardware version
   • Storage requirements
   • Network adapters
   This is a good time to make sure you’re deploying what you think you’re deploying. I once deployed 20 copies of the wrong template because I didn’t check this page carefully enough.
7. Select storage. This page is important:
   • Choose your datastore (or datastore cluster if you’re using Storage DRS)
   • Select a VM storage policy if you have them configured
   • Choose your disk format:
     • Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed: Allocates full space but zeros it later
     • Thick Provision Eager Zeroed: Allocates and zeros immediately (slower but better for production)
     • Thin Provision: Allocates space as needed (great for dev/test)
   For production VMs, I typically use Thick Provision Eager Zeroed. For development environments, Thin Provision saves a ton of space.
8. Select networks. Map the template’s network adapters to your actual networks:
   • Each network adapter from the template needs to be mapped to a port group
   • Make sure you’re connecting to the right VLAN for your VM’s purpose
   • You can change adapter types here if needed, though the defaults from the template usually work fine
9. Customize guest OS (optional but recommended). This is where you can use customization specifications to:
   • Set the computer name
   • Configure IP settings (DHCP or static)
   • Join a domain
   • Run post-deployment scripts
   If your template has VMware Tools installed (and it should), this customization process makes deployment much smoother. Without a customization spec, you’ll need to manually configure the OS after deployment.
10. Review and finish. The final page shows you everything you’ve configured:
    • Double-check your selections
    • Tick “Power on virtual machine after creation” if you want it started automatically
    • Click Finish

The deployment process begins, and you can monitor progress in the Recent Tasks pane at the bottom of vSphere Client. Depending on the template size and your storage speed, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour.

Customization Specifications: The Secret Sauce

Let me tell you, customization specs are where subscribed content libraries really shine. You can deploy the same template dozens of times with different configurations without ever logging into the guest OS manually.

Creating a Customization Specification

1. Navigate to Menu → Policies and Profiles → Customization Specifications.
2. Click the “+” icon to create a new spec. You’ll choose between Windows and Linux—the process differs slightly.
3. For Windows specifications:
   • Name and target OS: Give it a descriptive name like “Windows-Production-Static-IP”
   • Computer name: You can use a fixed name or generate one using a naming scheme
   • Windows license: Enter your product key if needed
   • Owner information: Set the registered organization and owner name
   • Time zone: Critical for logging timestamps correctly
   • Run once: Add any commands you want to execute on first boot
   • Network settings: Configure static IPs or DHCP
   • Domain/Workgroup: Join a domain or workgroup during deployment
   • SID generation: Always select “Generate new SID” for Windows VMs
4. For Linux specifications:
   • Computer name and domain: Set the hostname and domain name
   • Time zone: Pick the correct zone for your location
   • Network settings: Static or DHCP configuration
   • DNS settings: Primary and secondary DNS servers
   • Script: You can add a post-deployment script to run as root
5. Save the specification and it’s ready to use during VM deployment.

The beauty of this system is that you can create multiple specs for different scenarios—production servers with static IPs, test servers with DHCP, domain-joined machines versus workgroup servers, and so on.

Keep track of who’s deploying what and when. vCenter events and logs are your friends here.

Advanced Deployment Scenarios

Once you’re comfortable with basic deployments, you can start tackling more complex scenarios.

Automated Deployment with PowerCLI

If you’re deploying lots of VMs with similar configurations, PowerCLI scripts can save you enormous amounts of time:

powershell

# Connect to vCenter
Connect-VIServer -Server vcenter.domain.com

# Get the content library item (template)
$template = Get-ContentLibraryItem -Name "Windows-2022-Template"

# Define deployment parameters
$vmName = "WEB-PROD-01"
$vmHost = Get-VMHost -Name "esxi01.domain.com"
$datastore = Get-Datastore -Name "Datastore01"
$resourcePool = Get-ResourcePool -Name "Production"
$networkName = "VLAN-100-Production"

# Deploy the VM
New-VM -Name $vmName -ContentLibraryItem $template -VMHost $vmHost `
    -Datastore $datastore -ResourcePool $resourcePool
    
# Configure network
Get-VM -Name $vmName | Get-NetworkAdapter | Set-NetworkAdapter `
    -NetworkName $networkName -Confirm:$false

# Apply customization spec
$customSpec = Get-OSCustomizationSpec -Name "Windows-Production-Static"
Set-VM -VM $vmName -OSCustomizationSpec $customSpec -Confirm:$false

# Power on the VM
Start-VM -VM $vmName

This is a simple example, but you can expand it to deploy entire environments, read configuration from CSV files, or integrate with other automation tools.

Deploying with vRealize Automation

If you have vRealize Automation in your environment, you can expose subscribed library templates through the service catalog. This lets users self-service provision VMs without needing access to vCenter directly. The templates from your subscribed library become blueprint components, and vRA handles all the deployment complexity.

Multi-Site Deployments

For organizations with multiple sites, subscribed content libraries are invaluable. Set up a single published library at your headquarters and have each site subscribe to it. When you update the master template, all sites receive the update automatically (based on their sync schedule). It’s centralized management without centralized storage.

Wrapping Up

Deploying virtual machines from subscribed content libraries really does streamline your infrastructure management. You get consistency, you get automation capabilities, and you get the peace of mind that comes from using vetted, standardized templates.

The initial setup takes some time—configuring the subscribed library, creating customization specs, and working through the first few deployments. But once you’ve got it dialed in, you’ll deploy VMs faster and with fewer errors than ever before.

Need more vSphere content?

• Read also: Set Up Content Library in vCenter
• Read also: VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager Explained