I am not sure if this question belongs here in SO or over at ServerFault (or maybe even Programmers)...
I am testing out the features of TFS Lab Automation and its integration with System Center. In particular, and as a end-point goal, how the Isolated Network functionality that the Test Agents provide and whether that functionality can be utilized without TFS and Lab Automation. (Our ultimate goal is to use virtual machines in a classroom environment where we created an identical environment (one or more systems) for each student.
At this point in time, I am just trying to get the basic system to work. I have Hyper-V and System Center 2012 R2 working with no issues. I have TFS 2013 set up on a development system. I also have VS 2013 Ultimate and Test Manager installed on another dev system. All the components seem to be communicating with no issues.
My problem is creating a new environment using an existing template. According to the one piece of documentation I found regarding the use of templates (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee702479.aspx) I can only create the template by taking an existing virtual machine and (after cloning/copy it), convert it to a template. However, the way I typically create new templates is by pointing to an existing disk in the Library.
The issue ultimately seems to point to what information is stored in the image. Test Manager seems to want to have an image with a "blank" identity (no host name, no admin password, etc.). And this makes sense if a template will be re-used over and over again in different environments with each instance getting a different name.
However, the documentation I read on Isolated Networks (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh329474.aspx) talks about how the systems already need to be set up with a given names (among other properties) because each instance will have the same name and the Test Agent (with the Isolation functionality) will...well..isolate each instance.
Does anybody have insight that will clear this up? A lot of this (what can/cannot be done with System Center and Lab Automation, independent of each other) is new to me. Am I mixing up and confusing the larger set of System Center functionality with the limits imposed by TFS integration?
The UI in MTM is designed for non infrastructure folks like testers to be able to easily operate. The sort of things that you are talking about are more administrator issues and are thus a little more hidden. You can follow the MSDN instructions for Importing an existing template.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ee518914.aspx
Once the templates are in there then the reference that you have above comes into effect.