The VMware BDE template uses a snapshot to perform the cloning operation as it deploys a cluster. The ability to create a cloned VM from a snapshot is exposed in the vSphere API with the CloneVM_Task. As part of regular template maintenance, I run a yum update command to make sure the OS gets regular updates and security patches. It helps when installing packages like Docker to make sure I’m as close to the stable CentOS 7 branch as possible. However, if you were to simply power on the template and run an OS update those changes would not be realized in new cluster deployments.

If you look at your BDE template, the snapshot the Management server uses can be seen.

bde-template-2

By deleting the snapshot, any changes you have made to the template will be used during future cluster deployments. It is not necessary to do anything else. The next cluster deployment, if the template is missing, the BDE framework will create a new one and proceed to use it.

The ability to update the BDE template will assist you in the lifecycle management of your Hadoop, Apache Mesos and all other cluster deployments you are using the VMware Big Data Extensions framework for. Enjoy!