Create a published content library (so that resources are accessible remotely) on VMware vSphere 6.7

3. Create a subscribed content library

To access content in a published content library, you must create a subscribed content library on your local VMware vCenter Server.
To do this, go to the "Content Libraries" page of your VMware vCenter Server and click on the "+" icon.

Specify a name for this subscribed content library.
In our case: RemoteContentLibrary.

To create a subscribed library, you must select "Subscribed content library".

To obtain the subscription link for the content library you wish to subscribe to, go to the content library page and copy the "Subscription URL" link by clicking "Copy link".

To obtain the subscription link for a published content library, you can also go to its page, then click: Actions -> Change settings.

The "Subscription URL" link will appear again with a "COPY LINK" button.

Copy/paste the subscription link for your published content library into the New Content Library wizard.
If this published content library is password protected, check the "Enable authentication" box and provide the required password.

Then, choose if you want :

• immediately: immediately upload content from the published library to your future subscribed content library
• when needed: download only the desired items when necessary

Downloading the content of the published library immediately allows you to avoid waiting each time you need a new element (OVF template, ISO file, ...) from the published content library.
But, that also means you'll probably also download things you might not need.

Download items only when needed will allow you to manually download each item you want by manually syncing it or attempting to use it.
This will cause the relevant element to sync in the background. However, there will therefore be a longer or shorter delay depending on the size of the item to download before you can use it.

Ignore the warning if you use the self-signed certificate installed by default on the remote VMware vCenter Server.

Select the datastore where you want to store the content of this subscribed content library.
That is, when you sync an item from the subscribed content library to download it from the published content library, it will be stored in a subfolder of a "contentlib-..." folder.
In our case, the "HDD2" datastore of our 1st ESXi host linked to our 1st VMware vCenter Server (vcsa.informatiweb.lan).

Note: in this case, these datastores are located on our hosts "esxi1" and "esxi2".

A summary of setting up your new subscribed content library.

The new "Subscribed" type content library appears in your list of content libraries.

As you can see in the recent tasks, a "Sync Library" task was run.

However, if you go to this content library's page, you will see that its size is 0 bytes despite containing 2 elements.

If you take a closer look by going to the "Templates" tab, you will see that VMware vCenter Server has downloaded only the metadata for each item.
VMware vCenter Server therefore only displays the name, type, ... of each element, but their content is empty. Hence the fact that the size of each element is 0 bytes.

The same goes for the elements present in the "Other Types" tab.