Troubleshooting Failed Org Network Creation in vCloud Director

Today while working in my lab, I observed that while creating a new VDC in vCD was failing because org network failed to create.

On navigating to Org VDC list and clicking on error, it read the error load and clear that org vdc network can’t be created.

vcd-1

On navigating to Org VDC Networks section and clicking on error, I was able to identify what has caused the network creation failure.

vcd-2

The error stack was reading as below:

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Troubleshooting Mysterious Catalog Item in vCloud Director

Few days back while working on one of the customer ticket, I came across an incident where customer was reporting that he is not able to see one of his template in his catalog. He sent the VM via ODT to vCloud Air to be imported in his catalog.

I verified that VM was missing from catalog but was present in vCenter. I tried to import the VM again in Catalog by selecting the option “Import from vSphere” but to my surprise the VM was showing up in the list for selection.

corpsql01 not listing

I have never seen such behaviour in VCD. Even if import of template is failed midway, the item is listed in catalog with a question mark against it and status of item reads as “failed to create

After scratching my head for 15-20 minutes and checking with my peer if he had seen any such issue in past, I decided to employ API calls for catalog query (GUI is a big fat lier sometimes) and to my surprise I was seeing 2 entries for catalog items.Read More

RabbitMQ Clustering

In the last post of this series, we learned how to install/configure RMQ for vCloud Director. This post is an extension of my last post where I will be adding one more node to my RMQ setup to form a cluster for high availability.

What data is replicated in an RMQ Cluster?

All data/state required for the operation of a RabbitMQ broker is replicated across all nodes. An exception to this is message queues, which by default reside on one node, though they are visible and reachable from all nodes. To replicate queues across nodes in a cluster, see the documentation on high-availability

Note: Before proceeding with cluster formation, please ensure the following:

1: Use the same version of Erlang and RMQ server rpm which is installed on the master node.

2: RMQ nodes address each other using domain names, either short or FQDNs. Therefore hostnames of all cluster members must be resolvable from all cluster nodes, as well as machines on which command line tools such as rabbitmqctl might be used.Read More

Installing RabbitMQ for vCloud Director

In this post, I will demonstrate how to install RMQ for vCloud Director. Before jumping into any lab activity, let’s learn first what is RabbitMQ and why we need it.

What is RabbitMQ?

RabbitMQ is an open-source message-queuing software that helps facilitate message exchange between 2 or more applications. The exchange of messages is done via a queue which is defined by the administrator. An application can publish a message to the queue which can be retrieved or consumed by a different application.

A message can include any kind of information for example, it could have information about a process/task that should start on another application may be on another server or it could be just a simple text message.

The queue-manager software stores the messages until a receiving application connects and takes a message off the queue. The receiving application then appropriately processes the message.

How does it work?

RabbitMQ works by offering an interface, that connects message senders (Publishers) with receivers (Consumers) through an exchange (Broker) which distributes the data to relevant lists (Message Queues).Read More