Monthly Archives: March 2019

Managing HCX Migration via Powershell

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HCX supports 3 methods for migrating VMs to the cloud:

  • Cold Migration
  • HCX Cross-Cloud vMotion
  • HCX Bulk Migration

To know more about these migration methods, please read this post to know more about the migration methods. 

HCX migrations can be scheduled from the HCX UI using the vSphere Client or automated using the HCX API. In the last post of this series, I demonstrated a few PowerCli commands that we can use for the HCX system. 

API/PowerCli is an obvious choice when you think of automation. Using automation not only helps in reducing the amount of user input required in the UI but also reduces the chances of human errors.

In this post, I will show the use of HCX PowerCLI cmdlets, which you can use to automate HCX migration.

The cmdlet New-HCXMigration creates an HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension) migration request. 

Step 1: First, we have to identify the parameters that we need to pass with the cmdlet.… Read More

Getting Started With HCX PowerCli Module

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With the release of PowerCli 11.2, support for many new VMware products was introduced, including VMware HCX. The PowerCli module name for HCX is “VMware.VimAutomation.HCX” and it currently has 20 cmdlets to manage HCX.

You can use Windows Power Shell to install/upgrade your PowerCLI to v11.2 using the below commands:

1: Once the necessary module is installed, we can use the Get-Command to examine the cmdlets that are available for HCX.

2: Authenticate with HCX: To connect to the HCX Manager, we need to use the Connect-HCXServer cmdlet.

… Read More

Exploring HCX API

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VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a powerful product for data center migration, replacement, and disaster recovery. VMware HCX supports 3 major clouds at the moment: VMware Cloud on AWS, OVH Cloud, and IBM Cloud.

Although the HCX interface for workload migration is very simple and even first-time users can migrate workloads without much difficulty, it is always good to know about the API offerings of any product so that you can automate it via scripting.

The HCX API allows customers to automate all aspects of HCX, including the HCX VAMI UI for initial configuration as well as consuming the HCX services that are exposed in the vSphere UI.

HCX has its own API explorer (similar to the vSphere swagger interface). You can use additional tools like Postman or Curl to explore the capabilities of the HCX API.

Method 1: Using HCX API Interface

The HCX API interface can be accessed by typing https://<hcx-manager–fqdn>/hybridity/docs/index.html,… Read More

Upgrading Clustered vRLI Deployment

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In this post I will walk through steps of upgrading a clustered vRLI deployment. Before preparing for upgrade, make sure to read VMware documentation for the supported upgrade path.

One very important consideration before you start upgrading vRLI:

Upgrading vRealize Log Insight must be done from the master node’s FQDN. Upgrading using the Integrated Load Balancer IP address is not supported.

To start vRLI upgrade, login to the web interface of master node and navigate to Administration > Cluster and click on Upgrade Cluster button.

Note: In my lab I am upgrading vRLI from 4.5 to 4.6. Upgrade bundle for this version is available here

Hit Upgrade button to start upgrade.

Note: Make sure you have taken snapshots of the master/worker nodes before starting the upgrade.

Upload the .pak upgrade bundle file. 

On accepting EULA, upgrade process starts. 

Wait for 5-7 minutes for upgrade to complete. 

Upgrade is performed in a rolling fashion.… Read More

Configuring AD Authentication in vRealize Log Insight

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vRealize Log Insight supports 3 Authentication methods:

  • Local authentication.
  • VMware Identity Manager authentication.
  • Active Directory authentication.

You can use more than one method in the same deployment and users then select the type of authentication to use at log in.

To AD authentication to vRLI, login to web interface and navigate to Administration > Authentication page

Switch to Active Directory tab and toggle the “Enable Active Directory support” button.

Specify your domain related details and hit Test Connection button to test whether vRLI is able to talk to AD or not. Hit Save button if test is successful. 

Now we need to specify the users/groups who should have access to vRLI. To do so navigate to Access Control tab and select “Users and Groups” and click on New User to add an AD account.

Select AD as authentication method and specify the domain name and the user who should have access to vRLI.… Read More

Scaling Up Standalone vRealize Log Insight Deployment

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vRealize log insight can be deployed as a standalone or as a clustered solution. In a clustered deployment the first node is the master node and the remaining nodes are termed as worker nodes. The process of scaling up is pretty straight forward and in this post I will walk through the steps of doing so.

Few things which you should consider before expanding a vRealize Log Insight deployment are:

  • vRealize Log Insight does not support WAN clustering (also called geo-clustering or remote clustering). All nodes in the cluster should be deployed in the same Layer 2 LAN. 
  • Configure a minimum of three nodes in a vRealize Log Insight cluster. 2 node cluster is not supported.
  • Verify that the versions of the vRealize Log Insight master and worker nodes are same. Do not add an older version vRealize Log Insight worker to a newer version vRealize Log Insight master node.
  • External load balancers are not supported for vRealize Log Insight clusters.
… Read More