In last 3 posts of this series, we learnt how to setup environment and integrate NSX with vSphere etc. There are lot of pre-works which needs to in place before going ahead with vrealize Automation deployment and I tried to cover few of them in earlier posts. Few will be covered in upcoming posts of this series.
If you have landed directly on this page then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:
1: Lab Setup
2: Installing and Configuring NSX
3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB
Lets jump into vRA deployment now. Make sure you have read VMware documentation and all installation pre-requisites are met before starting deployment.
Deploying vRA is straight forward task and steps can be viewed from below slideshow.
Once the ovf is deployed and appliance is booted, you can login to appliance VAMI. Details of VAMI can be viewed by launching console of the appliance, which is nothing but https://VRA-FQDN:5480
The moment you login to VAMI, vRealize Automation installation wizard will automatically launched. If you have ensured that you have met every single pre-requisites for installing vRA, you can go ahead with installation wizard.
Important: Please don’t cancel the wizard because if you do so, you have to go through hassle of doing all the configuration manually. If you cancelled the wizard by mistake and don’t wanna do the manual configuration, then you can force vRA to launch the installation wizard by firing below command via ssh session
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/usr/sbin/vcac-vami installation-wizard activate |
You can also edit the /etc/vcac/vami.ini and set start_wizard = true and then restart vami-lighttp service.
Once the wizard is launched, hit next to continue.
Accept Eula and hit Next.
Select the deployment model here. For this post I will be demonstrating simple installation only. But later I have plans for migrating to distributed setup as well.
If you are planning to include IaaS alongwith vRA then make sure Install Infrastructure as a Service box is selected.
When you reach to installation prerequisites page, don’t hit next. We need to grab the Iaas management agent from this page and install it on our IaaS host so that installation wizard can auto discover the registered host.
Right click on the vCAC-IaaSManagemntAgent-Setup.msi and copy the hyperlink.
RDP into your IaaS node (mgmt-iaas01 node in my case) and paste the hyperlink in the browser. Click on download managemnt Agent installer to start downloading it.
Installation is pretty much straightforward. Make sure to use a dedicated service account for managemnt agent account configuration.
Now return back to the vRA installation wizard and you will see that your IaaS host is auto discovered via the management agent which you just installed on iaas host.
Click on run button so that the instllation wizard can find for all the prerequistes are in place or not. The Prerequisite Check actually invokes the vRA Management Agent to analyze each IaaS node to determine prerequisite status.
Once the checks are complete, you are going to see few items missing. Since we have not configured anything on IaaS host yet, you are definitely going to see message “some prerequisites are not met”.
Clicking on show details tells you what configuration stuffs are missing.
But don’t loose heart. You don’t have to manually fix the missing items as opposed to v6.X version of vRA. VMware has significantly improved the vRA over years and now almost everything is being taken care by installer itself. Just hit the fix button to push the missing configurations on IaaS host.
Once the installation wizard has pushed all the updates to each IaaS node, the checks will be run once again automatically. At this point you will see the status as OK. Hit next to continue.
For vRA host, click on Resolve automatically or enter the fqdn manually.
Enter the password for SSO admin (administrator@vsphere.local)
Enter the fqdn for IaaS Web Services and select the node on which IaaS components will be installed. I have only one IaaS node in my lab so I selected the same node for web service and iaas components.
Enter a passphrase that will be used to encrypt the SQL database.
Enter the details of the node where SQL server is installed. In last post of this series I mentioned that the database can reside on same server where IaaS components will be sitting or this server can be external to IaaS node.
In my lab my MSSQL server is external to IaaS host.
Select the Create new databse” box and provide a name for the DB. Also enter the credentials via which installer will login to the sql server to do the database createion/configuration.
Enter the DEM Instance Name and enter the Username and Password for each of the DEM instances. As a best practice this should be the same dedicated vRA service account.
The installation wizard installs and configures the initial agents…typically for vSphere/vCenter endpoints. Additional agents (for other platforms) can be installed separately.
Enter the [vCenter] Agent details
- Agent Name:
- Endpoint: vCenter server fqdn
- Agent Type: vSphere
- Username
- Password
Validate the settings by clicking on validate button and if everything is fine, hit Next to continue.
For vRA certs, you can keep the default certs or select Generate certificate and enter your Organization details etc and a new self-signed cert will be installed on vRA host.
I repeated the same step for Web Certificate as well.
Now we are almost through the vRA configuration part. Click on validate button to make sure everything configured so far is proper and we are good to go. The validation process takes some time.
Note: If validation is failed for any component, do not proceed further until that issue is addressed. Details will be provided for anything that fails. Fix the issue then come back to the wizard and try validation again.
Once the validation is completed and all checks are successful, hit next to continue.
At this point installer will remind you to take snapshot of the nodes (vRA, IaaS host, IaaS DB etc) involved in this deployment. Make sure to snapshot all the target nodes before continuing.
Once you are done with snapshotting all nodes, hit install to start installation.
Sit tight and let the installar do the magic. You will be present with summary of all the tasks that installer is going to perform.
Hit next once the installation is completed.
Supply your license key and hit next.
If you wish you can join the CEIP.
Post installation is completed you can go with request initial content. This option configures the initial Tenant content where a configuration admin is created and XaaS service is installed which will walk you through setting up initial tenant logic.
Supply password for configurationadmin user and hit next.
An initial catalog item will be created in default tenant.
You can pat your back now as you have successfully completed the vRA installation. Clicking on finish will close the installation wizard.
From services tab you can verify each service has been registered.
Login to vRA aplliance by typing https://VRA-FQDN/vcac and you will be redirected to Workspace One page.
Login with administrator user and password set during deployment.
and voila..your brand new vRA is ready at your service.
In next post of this series we will learn how to configure blueprint, catalogs, approval policies etc.
And that’s it for this post. I hope you find this post informational. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing. Be sociable 🙂