What’s New in VMware Cloud Director 10.1

Posted on 30-04-2020 by Manish Jha

With the release of v10.1 yesterday, vCloud Director has been rebranded to VMware Cloud Director. In this post I will cover what does Cloud Director brings to the table.

1: vCloud Director Rebranding: Upon logging into Cloud Director UI, you will no longer see the ‘v’ of vCloud Director. vCD has been rebranded to VMware Cloud Director.

2: RIP Flex UI: Flex UI is no longer available in Cloud Director. In vCD 10.0, flex UI was disabled by default and if needed, it can be enabled back with cell-management-tool utility.

Note: Although the same command works in 10.1 also as shown below

root@vcd1 [ ~ ]# /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool manage-config -n flex.ui.enabled -v true
New property being stored: Property "flex.ui.enabled" has value "true"

1 2	root@vcd1 [ ~ ]# /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool manage-config -n flex.ui.enabled -v true New property being stored: Property "flex.ui.enabled" has value "true"

But even after running this command, if you try to login to flash client, you will see a page not found error.… Read More

VMware Cloud Director-What’s New-NSX-T UI Enhancements

Posted on 11-04-2020 by Manish Jha

With the release of VMware Cloud Director (Previously vCloud Director), a lot of NSX-T related UI enhancements are added. In this post I will walk through some of them.

Dedicated External Networks

With Cloud Director 10.1, an edge gateway can be provisioned with a dedicated external network. In this configuration, there is a one-to-one relationship between the external network and the edge gateway, and no other edge gateways can connect to this external network.

Note: Provider creates a T0 gateway within NSX-T and add it to Cloud Director as an external network. Once T0 is added, provider could convert an existing org gateway (T1) to this new dedicated T0, or create a new org gateway with Dedicated External Network option selected.

BGP and Route Advertisement

BGP peering & Route Advertisement functionalities are added on Edge Gateway UI.

Route Advertisement

You can decide which of the network subnets that are attached to org gateway will be advertised to the dedicated external network.… Read More

Create vCAV Replication Policies via API

Posted on 06-04-2020 by Manish Jha

Few days back I wrote a post on how to create Replication policies in vCloud Availability via GUI. In this post I will walk through steps of creating the same via API.

Below are high level steps of API workflow.

1: Get Auth Token

Method: POST 
 
URL: https://<vcav-fqdn>/sessions
 
Auth: No Auth
 
Payload:
 
{
   "type":"localUser",
   "localUser":"root",
   "localPassword":"Password"
}

Method: POST

URL: https://<vcav-fqdn>/sessions

Auth: No Auth

Payload:

{

"type":"localUser",

"localUser":"root",

"localPassword":"Password"

}

2: Create a New Replication Policy

Method: POST

URL: https://<vcav-fqdn>/policies

Headers: X-VCAV-Auth : <Token Value>

Payload: 

{
   "allowIncoming":true,
   "allowOutgoing":true,
   "displayName":"DR-Default",
   "maxIncoming":-1,
   "maxInstances":24,
   "minRpo":15
}

Method: POST

URL: https://<vcav-fqdn>/policies

Headers: X-VCAV-Auth : <Token Value>

Payload:

{

"allowIncoming":true,

"allowOutgoing":true,

"displayName":"DR-Default",

"maxIncoming":-1,

"maxInstances":24,

"minRpo":15

}

Response Output: Make a note of the id of the policy from the response output.… Read More

How To Unregister vCAV 3.5 Plugin from vCenter

Posted on 01-04-2020 by Manish Jha

Recently while working in lab, I came across situation where I had to remove the vCloud Availability 3.5 plugin from vCenter. To remove plugins from vCenter, we usually employ mob for this task, but removing the vCAV plugin follow different path. In this post I will walk through steps of doing the same.

1: List vCAV plugin registrations in the vCenter Server Lookup service

# /usr/lib/vmidentity/tools/scripts/lstool.py list --ep-type com.vmware.vcav.endpoint --url http://localhost:7080/lookupservice/sdk 2>/dev/null

1	# /usr/lib/vmidentity/tools/scripts/lstool.py list --ep-type com.vmware.vcav.endpoint --url http://localhost:7080/lookupservice/sdk 2>/dev/null

Make a note of the Service ID from the output

2: Unregister vCAV plugin from the vCenter Lookup service, by providing the SSO credentials and using the Service Id fetched from previous command.

# /usr/lib/vmidentity/tools/scripts/lstool.py unregister --url http://localhost:7080/lookupservice/sdk --user 'administrator@sso-domain' --password 'SSO password' --id <service-id>

1	# /usr/lib/vmidentity/tools/scripts/lstool.py unregister --url http://localhost:7080/lookupservice/sdk --user 'administrator@sso-domain' --password 'SSO password' --id <service-id>

3: Re run command from step 1 to verify vCAV plugin has been unregistered from lookup service. … Read More

Upgrading vCloud Availability From 3.0 to 3.5

Posted on 28-03-2020 by Manish Jha

In this post I will walk through steps of upgrading vCloud Availability deployment upgrade from version 3.0 to 3.5.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series, I would recommend reading them from below links:

1: vCAV 3.0-Provider Setup

2: vCAV 3.0-Replication Policies

3: vCAV 3.0-Tenant Setup

vCloud Availability upgrade can be performed via various methods (CLI & UI). These methods are very well documented Here

Upgrading vCloud Availability in the Cloud

Before upgrading vCAV in service provider side, we need to ensure that environment is configured as per Pre-Upgrade requirement.

vCloud Availability Upgrade Sequence

For a multi site vCloud Availability deployment, upgrade the sites in the following order:

Upgrade all vCloud Availability appliances in the local cloud site.
Upgrade all vCloud Availability appliances in remote cloud sites.
Upgrade all vCloud Availability On-Premises Appliance nodes.

In a vCloud Availability cloud site, upgrade all the appliances in following sequence:

Upgrade the vCloud Availability Cloud Replication Management Appliance.

Configuring vCloud Availability 3.0-Part 3:Tenant Setup

Posted on 27-03-2020 by Manish Jha

In first Part of vCAV 3.0 series, we learnt about service provider side configuration and in last Post we discussed about Replication Policies in vCAV. In this post I will walk through steps of configuring on-prem environment with vCAV.

To configure on-prem environment to work with vCAV, you need to first download the vCAV 3.0 Appliance for Tenants which is located Here

Deployment of appliance is very straight forward like any other vmware product. Below slideshow shows the deployment steps.

Once the appliance boots up, make a note of the login url.

You will be prompted to change root password on first login.

Click Run initial setup wizard.

On first page of wizard, specify the site name. When you pair the on-prem appliance with Cloud Site, your environment will be identified using this site name.

Enter vCenter lookup service details and sso credentials and hit Next.… Read More

Configuring vCloud Availability 3.0-Part 2: Replication Policies

Posted on 27-03-2020 by Manish Jha

In last post we learnt how to perform vCloud Availability 3.0 end to end configuration. But before we can jump into performing tenant side configuration, we need to configure Replication Policies.

Replication policies are sets of rules that define and control the replication attributes on a vCD organization level. Typically a replication policy enforces following attributes:

Whether an organization can be used as a replication source.
Whether an organization can be used as a replication destination.
The minimum Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for an organization.
The maximum number of retained snapshots per single virtual machine replication for an organization.
The maximum number of virtual machine replications that can be created for an organization.

Note: A single replication policy can be assigned to multiple vCD organizations.

Create a Replication Policy

You can edit and use the default replication policy that comes with vCAV or you can create a new one based on your requirements. … Read More

Configuring vCloud Availability 3.0-Part 1:Provider Setup

Posted on 27-03-2020 by Manish Jha

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.… Read More

Automating vCloud Usage Meter Deployment & Configuration via API

Posted on 22-03-2020 by Manish Jha

In my last Post I covered manual steps of vCloud Usage Meter deployment & configuration. In this post I will show how we can leverage Usage Meter API’s to perform end to end configuration.

Usage Meter Deployment: There is no API for UM deployment and we have to stick to ovftool method for this step.

ovftool --name=Usage-Meter --X:injectOvfEnv --X:logFile=ovftool.log --allowExtraConfig --datastore=vsanDatastore --network=VM_MGMT --acceptAllEulas --noSSLVerify --diskMode=thin --powerOn --prop:varoot-password=VMware123! --prop:vausagemeter-password=VMware123! --prop:vami.gateway.vCloud_Usage_Meter=x.x.x.x --prop:vami.domain.vCloud_Usage_Meter=mgmt.vmw --prop:vami.searchpath.vCloud_Usage_Meter=mgmt.vmw --prop:vami.DNS.vCloud_Usage_Meter=x.x.x.x --prop:vami.ip0.vCloud_Usage_Meter=x.x.x.x --prop:vami.netmask0.vCloud_Usage_Meter=x.x.x.x C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\Usage_Meter_Agent-4.1.0.1-15426816_OVF10.ova vi://root@esxmb1.mgmt.vmw/

ovftool --name=Usage-Meter --X:injectOvfEnv --X:logFile=ovftool.log --allowExtraConfig --datastore=vsanDatastore --network=VM_MGMT --acceptAllEulas --noSSLVerify --diskMode=thin --powerOn --prop:varoot-password=VMware123! --prop:vausagemeter-password=VMware123! --prop:vami.gateway.vCloud_Usage_Meter=x.x.x.x --prop:vami.

Installing & Configuring vCloud Usage Meter

Posted on 22-03-2020 by Manish Jha

What is Usage Meter?

vCloud Usage Meter is an on-premises virtual appliance that is used to collect and generate reports for Cloud Provider Partners (VCPP) to send back to VMware for monthly billing of usage.

Usage Meter collects usage of most of the VMware products that are installed in cloud providers datacenter. Current version of Usage Meter (4.1) supports usage collection from following endpoints:

How Usage Meter collects and report monthly product consumption data, is explained Here

vCloud Usage Insight

vCloud Usage Insight is a VMware cloud service that aggregates and automates monthly and end user reporting from on-premise vCloud Usage Meter instances to the VMware Cloud Provider Commerce Portal. With vCloud Usage Insight, you retain full control over the usage report data in Commerce Portal before submission.

To learn more about vCloud Usage Meter & Usage Insight please check VMware official Documentation

Usage Meter Installation Requirements

I am not going to cover nitty-gritty of installation pre-requisites as everything is well documented Here

vCloud Usage Meter is distributed as virtual appliance (ova) and can be downloaded from Here

vCloud UM deployment is pretty straight forward like any other ova deployment.… Read More

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