The recipe is the plugin mechanism used for adding new functionalities to the cloud. Each recipe is a set of instructions that triggers events at certain stages during the execution of certain services/event in the cloud. Essentially, recipes allow inputting code into virtual servers. This enables administrators to use recipes for configuring the server or report on it, thus providing advanced customization options in a standard environment.

Recipes allow admins to perform the following operations:

  • Perform post script installation
  • Use post provision installation scripts for third party applications, agents, etc.
  • Disk reclaiming
  • Update/modify virtual servers and сompute zones with script injection
  • Allow host to spin up custom virtual servers without requiring custom templates
  • Download, run and report audit tools

The following requirements should be implemented before running recipes on vCloud virtual servers:

  • VMware Tools must be installed. Also VMware compute resources, used by vCloud installation, need to be accessible over HTTPS from OnApp CP's network.
  • Guest customization must be enabled. Admin password must be set in the guest customization.

Currently, OnApp CP works only with Unix-compatible recipes for VMware Cloud Director VSs.

View Virtual Server Recipes


  1. Go to your Control Panel > Cloud > Virtual Servers menu.
  2. Click the label of the server you're interested in.
  3. Click the Overview tab, then choose Recipes.
  4. The screen that follows shows details of all the recipes in the cloud:
  • The left pane shows the list of available recipes organized into recipe groups.
  • The right pane displays the list of events to which the recipes can be assigned to. Click the arrow button next to event to expand the list of recipes assigned to it.


Assign Recipe


  1. Go to your Control Panel > Cloud > Virtual Servers menu.
  2. Click the label of the server you're interested in.
  3. Click the Overview tab, then choose Recipes.
  4. The screen that follows shows details of all the recipes in the cloud.
  5. Click the arrow button in front of the required event to unfold it.
  6. Select the required recipe in the left pane and hold it down with the left mouse button.
  7. Drag the recipe up to the right pane and release the mouse button to drop the recipe and add it to the required event.

You can assign virtual server recipes to the following events:

  • VS provisioning - run the recipe during the virtual server provisioning
  • VS disk added - run the recipe while adding a disk to the virtual server
  • IP address allocated for VS - run the recipe when adding an IP address to the VS network interface
  • IP address revoked from VS - run the recipe when removing an IP address from the VS network interface
  • VS network interface added - run the recipe while adding a network interface to the virtual server
  • VS network interface removed - run the recipe while deleting a network interface from the virtual server
  • VS disk resized - run the recipe while resizing a virtual server disk
  • VS resize - run the recipe while resizing the virtual server
  • VS start - run the recipe while starting the virtual server
  • VS reboot - run the recipe while rebooting the virtual server


Remove Recipe


  1. Go to your Control Panel > Cloud > Virtual Servers menu.
  2. Click the label of the server you're interested in.
  3. Click the Overview tab, then choose Recipes.
  4. The screen that follows shows details of all the recipes in the cloud.
  5. Click the arrow button in front of the required event to view the list of recipes assigned to it.
  6. Click the Delete button next to the recipe you want to remove.

See also: