In last post of this series we learn how to add various endpoints to vRA so that the endpoints can be consumed by the users. The resources presented by endpoints first needs to be aggregated in fabric groups so that they can be assigned to users. In this post we will learn about fabric groups and business groups and will walk-through how to create them
If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I urge you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:
2: Installing and Configuring NSX
3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB
4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance
5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration
So what is a Fabric Group?
The Fabric groups are what enable you to provide access to resources from your physical infrastructure. Fabric includes all the computing resources that are discovered from the added endpoint data collection.
Fabric is organized into fabric groups and there can be multiple fabric groups with different purposes, such as you may assign clusters to different business groups within the enterprise to ensure performance.
Within a fabric group we add users or groups that are responsible for managing infrastructure resources and add the resources they are responsible for. For example we may select clusters that are managed from vCenter and assign the user/groups that are responsible for managing those resources.
Who manages the fabric groups?
Fabric groups are managed by fabric administrators. They are responsible for creating reservations on the compute resources within their groups to allocate fabric to specific business groups. Fabric groups are created in a specific tenant, but their resources can be made available to users who belong to business groups in all tenants.
Lets dive into lab and see how to create fabric groups
To create a fabric group, login to vRA using the IaaS admin user and navigate to Infrastructure > Endpoints > Fabric Groups.
Click on + sign to add a new fabric group.
Provide a name and description for the group.
Select a user who will be responsible for administering this fabric group.
Select the compute resources that you want to add to this fabric group and hit OK.
Note: If you have several clusters in your environment, you can assign those clusters to different fabric groups based on the requirements.
For keeping things simple in my lab, I have only created one fabric group.
Machine Prefixes
Before jumping into creation of business groups, I want to discuss a little bit about machine prefixes.
Machine prefixes are used to generate names of provisioned machines and are shared across all tenants. The prefix consists of a base name followed by a counter. The counter can start at a number other than 1 and be of a specified length.
Example: If a machine prefix is vRA-Cloud, the number of digits is 3, and the next number is 1, the machines that will be provisioned will have names: vRA-Cloud001, vRA-Cloud002, and so on.
Fabric Administrators have rights to create Machine prefixes. To create Machine Prefix logout the IaaS admin user and login as Fabric Admin user which we just created.
Navigate to Infrastructure > Administration > Machine Prefixes. Click on + button to start adding the prefixes.
Enter Name, Number of Digits and Next number and click on green button to save them.
Business Groups
A Business group associates a set of services and resources to a set of users, such as a line of business, department, or other organizational unit. A business group is created within a tenant by the tenant administrator.
A business group can have access to catalog items specific to that group and to catalog items that are shared between business groups in the same tenant. Each business group has one or more reservations that determine on which compute resources, virtual machines that this group has requested can be provisioned.
To request catalog items, a user must belong to at least one business group. A user can be a member of more than one business group, and can have different roles in different groups.
To create a business group, logout the fabric admin user and log back in via IaaS admin and navigate to Administration > Users and Groups > Business Groups.
Click on + button to add a new business group.
Provide a name and a meaningful description for the group.
Select the user to whom emails will be sent when an approval is needed for deploying VM’s by end users that belongs to this business group.
Leave the AD policy as blank as we have not defined any policy yet. Hit Next.
Specify following:
a) Group Manager Role: A business group manager have rights to create services,entitlements and approval for the groups. You can add an individual user or a group for this role
b) Support Role : Users who can request resources on behalf of the other users in this group.
c) User Role: All users who will be consuming the resources assigned to this business group.
Hit next to continue
Select a machine prefix from the list. Machine prefix will determine what will be the name of the VM’s that will be deployed by users of this group. Leave AD container as blank for now. Hit finish to complete the business group creation wizard.
Thats it for this post. In next post of this series we will discuss about reservations and network profiles.
I hope you find this post informational. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing. Be sociable 🙂