Configuring MYVMware Account in vRSLCM via API

One of the method of installing vRealize products via vRSLCM is to configure myvmw repository first and then pulling available product binaries via internet. In this post I will walk through steps of configuring the same via API.

1:  Add myvmw credentials to password Store

2:  Fetch vmid associated with alias created in step-1: When a new password is added to locker store, vRSLCM assigns a unique vmid to that password and all future references to this password is made via assigned vmid. 

Sample Output

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vRLI Distributed Install/Upgrade via vRSLCM API

In my last Post I demonstrated how to install and upgrade a distributed vROPs via vRSLCM API. In this post I will walk through how to perform install/upgrade a distributed vRLI environment.

Steps for deploying/upgrading any vRealize product via vRSLCM API are pretty much same, only the json payload varies. 

vRLI Deployment Procedure

Step 1: Pre-Validate Environment Creation

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vROPs Distributed Install/Upgrade via vRSLCM API

vRSLCM is such a great tool that it lifts all the complexity of deploying vRealize suite in just few clicks. Whether you are looking for standalone deployment or a distributed one, you are shielded from all the complexity that goes behind in setting up an environment.

Recently while working on my new project, I was tasked to find out a way where all the UI operations related to vRSLCM can be automated. In my last post I listed all the API’s that are needed to perform end to end vRSLCM configuration. We need to fetch few details before starting install/upgrade of any vRealize product.

This post is extension to my last post and I will be demonstrating how to deploy/upgrade various vRealize products using vRSLCM API. The first in this list will be vROPs. So lets get started.

At this point, I assume you have already fetched details about:

  • Certificate Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • Default Password Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • License Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • Infra details (DNS, NTP, Datacenter name, cluster name etc)
  • Local Repo configured and all product install/upgrade binaries uploaded there.
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Automating vRSLCM 8.x End to End Configuration via API

In this post we will learn how to leverage vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager (vRSLCM) API to automated deployment & configuration. 

With release of vRSLCM 8.x, VMware introduced simple installer (similar to vCSA) for deployment of vRSLCM. Below is screenshot of how the simple installer looks like. 

As of now we don’t have any API which can be leveraged to automate appliance deployment, so we will perform this task via ovftool.

Deploying vRSLCM via ovftool

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Getting Started With vROPs Tenant App For vCloud Director 10.x

In this post, I will walk through step by step installation for the vRealize Operations Manager Tenant App for vCloud Director. But before I jump into the lab, I want to take a moment to explain what this solution is all about and what it looks like from an architectural point of view.

What is vROPs Tenant App for vCloud Director?

vROPs Tenant App is a solution that helps in exposing vRops performance metrics to tenants in a vCD environment. Each tenant can only see metrics data relevant to their organization.

From a service provider point of view, this is an awesome solution as Tenant App enables tenants to have complete visibility of performance metrics of their environment. If an environment is not performing as per expectations, tenants can leverage this solution to root cause analysis of performance issues and they can perform L1-L2 level of maintenance/troubleshooting tasks themselves without raising service tickets with service providers. Read More

How To Update/Patch Multi Cell vCD 10.x Environment

In this post we will learn how to patch/update a Multi cell vCD 10.x environment.

Note: Above steps are for updating vCD from one build to another (patch release) within same version. Please do not confuse this with upgrading a vCD deployment where we jump from one major version to another.

I will breakup this post in 4 sections:

  • Pre Update Checks.
  • vCD Update Process.
  • Post Update Checks.
  • Post Update Tasks.

Pre Update Checks

There are number of checks which must be performed before attempting to update a vCD environment.

1: vCD Health Check & Primary Node identification: Before updating multi cell vCD environment, please ensure all vCD cells in server group are healthy and functioning correctly.

Also we need to identify vCD primary node as we will be needing this info later when we will be taking backup of the embedded database. To fetch this info we can make use of vCD Appliance API as shown below:

Method: GET

URL: https://<vcd-fqdn>:5480/api/1.0.0/nodes

Headers: x-vcloud-authorization: auth-token

Response Output:

From the above output we can infer that all 3 vCD nodes are healthy here, cluster health is also healthy and node “vcd1” is the current primary node.Read More