vRealize Automation- Deploying and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

In our last post we have installed and configured Identity Appliance which will serve as SSO for rest of the components of vCAC (vRA). In this post we will learn how to install and configure vRealize Automation Appliance (formerly vCAC).

Before diving into installation lets have a basic understanding of what is vRA and what it do.

Overview of vRA

The vRA appliance provides cloud management & a self-service portal for cloud services as well as authoring, administration, and governance. vRA can be deployed as a single instance or we can deploy multiple instances of it behind a load balancer to achieve high availability.

Installation Prerequisites

1: DNS (forward / reverse) entry created for vRA appliance.

2: Network Time Protocol (NTP) server configured.

3: SSO (Identity Appliance or vCenter 5.5 U1 SSO) installed and configured.

4: 2 vCPU / 8 GB of RAM / 30 GB of storage.

Database Consideration

The vRA appliance have an embedded Postgres database but we have also following choice for database selection:

a: Use the embedded vPostgres database available with vRA appliance.

b: Install Postgres on a separate server.

c: Install Postgres on several servers to achieve HA.

vRA can be downloaded from VMware vRealize Automation Suite Page

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then I would recommend reading them first before going ahead. You can access the earlier posts from below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

Lets walk through the deployment and configuration of the appliance now.

1: Log in the vSphere Client and select Deploy OVF Template from file menu.

2: Select Source location by browsing to the Identity Appliance file with either an extension of “.OVA “or “.OVF “and click Open and hit Next.

3: Verify the OVF details and hit next.

4: Accept the license agreement and hit next.

5: Provide the identity appliance VM a name and location for deployment such as a datacenter or folder and click Next..

6: Select an inventory object such as cluster, host or resource pool.

7: Select the disk format, VM storage policy (if configured) and datastore for deployment and hit Next.

8: Select the appropriate portgroup for the virtual machine and hit next.

9: Customize template by providing the properties values under the Application & Network Properties sections and hit Next.

10: On Ready to Complete page review your settings and select “Power on after deployment” and hit Finish.

11: The virtual machine deployment will start. Wait for it to finish.

12: Once the VM deployment is completed and VM is booted, launch web-browser and enter https://vra-fqdn:5480 and login with user root and password supplied during ovf deployment

13: Navigate to Network tab and review your settings such as hostname, gateay and dns information. You can change the settings if anything is missing here. Click on Save Settings once you are done with modifications.

14: Go To System tab and select Time Zone and set system Time Zone according to your country.

15: Navigate to vRA Settings tab and Select Host Settings. Under Host Configuration chose the option Resolve Automatically

Under SSL Configuration fill up the following fields to generate a new Self signed SSL certificate for your vRA appliance:

Common Name = the FQDN of the VMware vCAC Server for the Common Name.
Organization = Company
Organizational Unit = Department / Location
Two Letter Country Code

Click on Save Settings button.

You will get a message in green ” Host and SSL Certficate have been successfully configured”

16: Select SSO tab under vRA Settings. A message will be displayed in red color “SSO server is not connected”. Dont loose heart. We have to configure SSO server information here. Provide the following info:

SSO Host: FQDN of your Identity Appliance (or if using vCenter SSO then FQDN of your vCenter Server)

SSO Port: Default is 7444. Don’t change it unless and untill if you are using some other port for SSO in your environment.

SSO Default Tenant: Default is vsphere.local. Don’t change it unless and untill if you have configured some other name on your identity appliance.

SSO Admin User: Change this to administrator@vsphere.local

SSO Admin Password: Use the same password which you have configured on your Identity Appliance while configuring SSO there.

Once you are done with settings click on Save Settings button. Wait for 2-3 minutes as SSO initialization takes a bit of time.

17: Once the SSO registration is completed you will get a message is green “SSO configuration has been updated successfully”. Also SSO info will show SSO status as connected along with Build and Version number.

18: Navigate to Licensing tab and apply your license key and click on Submit key.

19: If you are planning to use external postgres database server for your vRA deployment then navigate to Database tab under vRA settings and provide the required info. If you are using embedded database then you will see Connection Status as CONNECTED here. For how to configure external database for vRA I will recommend reading this article

I am using embedded database for my lab so I have not configured anything here.

20: Go to Services tab. Here you will see the services which are running on vRA appliance. Typically the number reflects as 27. If you see any service down or not configured here, troubleshoot it before proceeding further.

Note: Services tab will list the services after 10-15 minutes of vRA appliance deployment. Patience is virtue here.

21: If services tab shows all service status as Registered then its time to move ahead. Open a web browser and type https://VRAFQDN/vcac. Login with administrator@vsphere.local as username and password which you configured in SSO settings.