No hardware? Use VirtualBox to simulate a device for balenaCloud!

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The deployed image is not pulled by a device installed on top of NUC Intel (VM Virtual Box) VM.
I have prepared a golden image (converted) according to instructions and flashed it to the VM.
Next I removed one storage (the same as if unplugged USB) and executed the commands:

balena push fleet_2
balena deploy fleet_2
But I see no effect! The release version is created in balenaCloud dashboard.
But device is not pulling a new image with configured containerized application.
Any ideas why?

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Hi Sergei,

There could be a number of reasons why the application is not being pulled down. I just followed the tutorial and got the application pulled down and running. At first I made a mistake of not adding the 2nd drive to the VM, which caused the entire process to fail.

So far I see two possible reasons: 1. your device is showing offline, so it could be a networking issue, or 2. there is some kind of error applying a boot config, which could indicate something wrong with the storage that you selected.

Here are the steps that I followed, which worked:

  1. Create a new fleet (or select existing), I created a fleet testnuc
  2. Add device, download the image (the file was balena-cloud-testnuc-intel-nuc-2.98.33-v13.1.11.img.zip
  3. unzip the image
  4. convert it to VM disk: VBoxManage convertdd balena-cloud-testnuc-intel-nuc-2.98.33-v13.1.11.img testnuc.vmdk --format VMDK
  5. Create new machine w/4gb ram WITHOUT a disk
  6. in Settings, ensure VM System config is correct (as per tutorial):
    6.1 Disable I/O APIC (default setting can result in a boot crash)
    6.2 Enable EFI (the NUC image is set up for UEFI boot)
  7. In Settings > Storage, add new SATA controller
  8. Create new VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and add it to the controller (i set 8gb)
  9. Add the converted disk to the same controller (at this point you should see the contoller with port count as 2 and have 2 disks, with your 8gb one being first)
  10. in Settings > Network select NAT
  11. Run the VM, wait until it shows up in dashboard and settles with Online status
  12. On the local machine, clone a Masterclass CLI repo: git clone https://github.com/balena-io/balena-cli-masterclass
  13. deploy it to the fleet: cd balena-cli-masterclass && balena push builder555/testnuc (you’ll need to replace the last part with your own username/fleet)

After a few seconds, in the logs it showed “Hello world”

Please try these steps and see if you get the same result