In last post of this series, we performed the initial configuration of the default tenant (vsphere.local) and integrated directory service for centralized authentication. In this post we will learn about configuring endpoints.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

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

Lets discuss little bit about endpoints before configuring them,

Endpoints are infrastructure sources that are consumed by vRealize Automation. These endpoints are used by vRA to provision virtual machines,networks etc. vRealize Automation 7.3 supports following endpoints:

• Cloud: Amazon EC2,Openstack,vCloud Director,vCloud Air
• Management: vROPS
• Network and Security: NSX
• Orchestration: vRO
• Storage: NetApp ONTAP
• Virtual: vSphere (vCentetr), Hyper-v, Citrix Xen server

You need to have IaaS Admin role assigned to a user for configuring endpoints. To assign roles to a user, login to vRA appliance using tenant admin credential

Navigate to Administration > Users & Groups> Directory Users & Groups and search for the user by typing the name in the search box. Select the user from list.

Assign appropriate roles to the user. For keeping things simple in my lab, I assigned all roles to my IaaS admin user i.e vrainf.admin user. In production environment this is not recommended as you have different teams/admins, taking care of specific configuration item.

Logout the tenant admin user and log back in via the IaaS admin user.

To define credentials, navigate to Infrastructure > Endpoints > Endpoints and clcik on + button to add a new endpoint.

Adding vCenter Endpoint

Lets start with adding the vSphere endpoint. Select Virtual > vSphere from the list.

Provide following details:

Name: Use the same name which you used during vRA appliance deployment else test connection will fail.

Address: Address of vcenter in format: https://VC-FQDN/sdk

Credentials: Username/Password of user via which vRA will communicate with vCenter server. This user should have proper rights on vCenter. In my lab I added my vRA service account to administrators group.

Hit test connection after filling up all the details. If the supplied info is correct, you will see a test connection successful message. Hit OK to save this endpoint.

Adding NSX Manager Endpoint

Next endpoint we are going to add is NSX. Select Network & Security > NSX from the list.

Provide the details as shown in below screenshot. The username which you are entring here should have enterprise admin rights on NSX manager. 

Again click on test connectiona and you should see a connection successful message. Hit OK to save NSX manager endpoint.

Adding vRO Endpoint

1: Log into the vRA appliance via SSH and run the following command to start the vco-configurator.

2: Type https://vRA-FQDN  and click on vRealize Orchestrator Control Center (second last option from bottom)

You will be redirected to https://mgmt-vrva01.alex.local:8283/vco-controlcenter and you will be seeing this page

Note: vRA can use its embedded vRO service or an external vRO appliance needs to integrate with vRA to execute workflows for automating stuffs. For lab purpose embedded vRO is sufficient for carrying out workflows.

To configure embedded vRO, navigate to Administration > vRO Configuration > Server Configuration and select “Use the default Orchestrator server” and click on Test connection. You will see “successfully updated the server configuration” message. Hit OK 

4: Return to the endpoints tab and select Orchestrator > vRealize Orchestrator.

Provide a name for the endpoint. I used vRO (embedded) for simplicity.

Address: https://vRA-FQDN/vco

Credentials: I Used vRO SSO admin i.e administrator@vsphere.local.

Hit OK to save this endpoint

At this moment we have 3 endpoints added to our vRA applaince. 

Select the vRO endpoint and from Actions tab, click on Data Collection. Data collection is the process where vRA reaches out to its infrastructure source endpoints and their compute resources to collect information.

Click on start to initiate data collection process. 

And that’s it for this post.

In next post of this series we will look into creating fabric and business groups etc.

I hope you find this post informational. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing. Be sociable 🙂