Recently I got chance to work on setting up vCloud Availability 3.x version in my test environment and it was a great learning curve. I will share my experience through series of blog posts so that it can help wider audience to understand every nuance’s of this wonderful product. 

I am not going to write any introduction post on what is vCAV and its architecture. Its very well documented Here

If you have worked on previous version of vCAV (2.0 & 1.5), you might remember it was a pain setting up various appliances. With vCAV 3.0, installation & configuration has been simplified drastically. No more hanky panky command line stuff. Now you just need 2 ova files for setting up cloud and on-prem infrastructure.

In this post I will cover cloud (service provider) side deployment & configuration steps.

Below screenshot shows steps of vCAV appliance deployment. 

Note: For lab deployment/POC we can use combined appliance deployment topology.

Once the appliance is deployed and boots up, you will get a login URL to run the configuration workflow.

To perform vCloud Availability end to end configuration, we need to configure following:

• vCloud Availability Replication Manager
• vCloud Availability vApp Replication Manager
• vCloud Availability Replicator and
• vCloud Availability Tunnel

Configure Replication Manager

Login to https://<vcav-fqdn:8441>/ui/admin

Login via root user and password set during deployment. You will be prompted to change password on first login.

First we have to configure lookup service address under Configuration. 

Select “Lookup service address” option and click on edit. 

Enter lookup service address and hit Apply. 

Accept the SSL certificate of the vCenter Server Lookup service.

Verify that the Lookup service connectivity is operational and looks green.

Configure vApp Replication Manager

Connect to vApp Replication Manager by typing https://<vcav-fqdn>/ui/admin and login via root user.

Click on “Run initial setup wizard”

Enter a Site name and Public API endpoint tunnel address and click Next.

Enter Lookup service address and vCenter SSO credentials. 

Accept vCenter SSL certificate.

Specify vCloud Director details and hit Next.

Note: Append @system in the vCD admin user name.

Accept vCD SSL certificate. 

Enter vCloud Availability license key and click Next.

CEIP configuration is optional. You can chose to opt out if you wish.

Review settings and make sure things looks good before clicking Finish.

You can find the configuration settings under Home > Configuration

Configure vCloud Availability Replicator

Connect to vCAV Replicator service management interface by typing https://<vcav-fqdn:8440>/ui/admin and login via root user.

Click on “Configure Lookup Service”

Enter vCenter Lookup service address and click on Apply.

Accept SSL certificate of the vCenter Server Lookup service.

Verify Lookup Service connectivity status is showing green. Service status is available under Home > System Monitoring > System Health. 

Register vCloud Replicator with Replication Manager

Log in to the vCAV Replication Manager service management interface by connecting to https://<vcav-fqdn:8441>/ui/admin

Since Replication Manager is registered with vCenter lookup service, you will be able to login to appliance using vCenter SSO credentials.

Under Home > Replicators, click on New to add a new replicator instance. 

Enter following details:

• Site: Select site where Replicator instance will be deployed.
• API URL: The vCAV Replicator instance API endpoint address.
• Appliance Password: The root user password for the vCAV Replicator appliance.
• SSO Admin Credentials: vCenter SSO credentials.

Accept vCloud Availability Replicator SSL certificate.

Make sure the newly deployed Replicator instance status shows green.

Verify that the vCloud Availability Replicator status is OK by navigating to Home > System Monitoring > Local replicators.

Configure vCloud Availability Tunnel Instance

vCloud Availability Tunnel service management interface https://<vcav-fqdn:8442>/ui/admin and login via root user.

Configure Lookup service address under configuration tab by clicking on Edit.

Enter lookup service details and click on Apply. 

Accept lookup service ssl certificate. 

Under System Monitoring, verify lookup service connectivity status is operational.

Enable vCloud Availability Tunnel Service

Login to vApp Replication Manager service management interface by connecting to https://<vcav-fqdn>/ui/admin and login via SSO credentials.

Edit Tunnel address under Configuration page.

Select “Enable tunneling” box and enter tunnel address and vCAV root user credentials and click on Apply button.

Accept vCloud Availability Tunnel SSL certificate.

Note: If you are using vCAV 3.0, you need to restart vCloud Availability Tunnel service.

Under Home > System Monitoring, verify that the vCloud Availability Tunnel connectivity is operational and status looks green.

Restart the vCloud Availability Services

In vCAV 3.0,we need to restart all vCloud Availability services once tunnel configuration is completed. This can be done by clicking on Restart Service button under System Monitoring page.

Under system health, make sure all services are operational and are in OK state.

And that’s it for this post. In next post of this series, we will create Replication Policies.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing 🙂