VCD

vCloud Extender-Part 2: Service Provider Setup

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, I discussed vCloud Extender architecture and its capabilities. In this post, I will walk through the steps of configuring vCloud Extender on the cloud provider side.

vCloud Extender is deployed as an OVA, and deployment steps are straightforward, as shown in the slideshow below. Select the deployment type as “cx-cloud-service” on the template customization page.

Once the appliance is deployed and boots up, it will show the browser link to access the appliance for further configuration.

Connect to the appliance by typing https://appliance-fqdn/ui/mgmt and login with the administrator credentials.

Click on Setup Wizard to start configuring the CX Cloud Service appliance.

Register the appliance with your management vCenter. If your environment has PSC external to VC, use the PSC IP/FQDN for the lookup service URL.

Register the CX Cloud appliance with the vCloud Director. Enter your vCD details and administrator credentials.

Accept the vCD SSL certificate. … Read the rest

vCloud Extender-Part 1:Introduction

Manish Jha

What is VMware vCloud Extender?

VMware vCloud Director Extender creates a hybrid cloud environment between an end-user on-premise data center and a multi-tenant vCloud Director environment. vCloud Extender is a replacement for vCloud Connector, and this product was released soon after vCloud Director 9.0 was announced. 

What does vCloud Extender offer?

vCloud Extender allows customers to migrate workloads from an on-prem vSphere environment to a vCloud Director public cloud. The two migration methods available with vCloud Extender are cold and warm migration, and I will discuss these methods in detail in the upcoming post of this series.

Another exciting feature that vCloud Extender offers is to stretch an on-prem Layer 2 network to the cloud. This feature helps customer to achieve their “Cloud Migration” objective without much hassle, as you no longer need to re-IP workloads that are migrating to the cloud. 

You do not need to have an on-prem deployment of NSX to stretch a layer 2 network to the cloud, but without on-prem NSX, you are limited to extending only VLANs to VXLAN on the cloud side.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 4: Testing DR Operations

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, we paired the two vCloud based cloud instances. Now it’s time to test the DR capabilities offered by vCAV-C2C.

If you are not following along with this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from the links below:

1: Introduction to vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR

2: vCAV-C2C-POC Deployment

3: Site Pairing

To start testing DR operations, connect to https://VCAV-FQDN:8443 and login with tenant credentials (uname@orgname) and navigate to Paired Clouds.

By default, your Site-B will show as unauthenticated. Click on the gear button to enter credentials.

Enter the org name of Site-B and the org user credentials. Click on Authenticate.

Now both sites will show as authenticated.

Perform the same operation by connecting to the VCAV appliance of Site-B, adding the Org/User details of Site-B, and making sure both sites are showing as authenticated.

Once both sites are authenticated, navigate to the DR-Workloads tab and click on Discovery

Select the source site from where replication will be initiated.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 3: Site Pairing

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, we configured the vCAV-C2C appliance for both Site A & B.

In this post, we will learn how to perform site pairing so that tenants start replicating workloads between 2 cloud instances.

If you are not following along with this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from the links below:

1: Introduction to vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR

2: vCAV-C2C-POC Deployment

To perform site pairing, login to the vCAV-C2C appliance of Site A by connecting to https://VCAV-FQDN:8046 and navigating to Sites > New Site, and enter the IP/FQDN of the VCAV appliance of Site B.

Accept the SSL certificate.

If your configuration is correct, you will see a successful site pairing message.

Under Sites > Show all sites, you see the pairing information.

On the diagnostics page, you can verify the health of Site A & B

And that’s it for this post.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 2: POC Deployment

Manish Jha

As discussed in the last post, we can configure all roles present in vCAV-C2C in a single appliance for Lab/POC deployment. In my lab, I am starting with a small deployment to have a general understanding of this product before doing a distributed deployment.

In my lab, I have 2 sites, and each site is configured with the following components:

  1. vSphere/vCenter Server 6.5 U2
  2. vCloud Director 9.0
  3. VMware NSX 6.3.6

vSphere and vCD are fully configured, and Org/Org vDCs are in place at both sites with external networks, etc., configured. 

Let’s start the deployment with Site-A.

Deployment of the VCAV-C2C appliance is straightforward, and the steps are shown below.

Once appliance deployment is complete and it boots up, it will give you information on how to connect to the appliance for further configuration.

Configure vCloud Availability Replicator

To configure the vCloud Availability Replicator role, connect to https://VCAV-FQDN:8043 and click on the link under Additional Resources

Login with root credentials set during deployment.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 1:Introduction

Manish Jha

VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR is the most recent addition to the VMware Cloud Provider Platform portfolio. It was originally introduced in May 2018, and it delighted service providers who have long desired a VMware native cloud-to-cloud DR solution for vCloud Director-based clouds.

What is vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR (vCAV-C2C)?

VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud is a solution for disaster recovery between two instances of vCloud Director. The concept of cloud-to-cloud DR is not new; however, VMware did not have any solutions for vCloud-based clouds. vCAV-C2C bridges this gap and enables VMware Cloud Providers to use their current vCloud Director installations to deliver disaster recovery services, such as replication and failover capabilities for workloads at both the VM and vApp levels.

The following are the main capabilities of the vCAV-C2C solution:

1: Replicate and recover vApps/VMs between two vCD instances for migration, DR, and planned migration use cases.

2: A unified HTML5 portal that tenants can use for managing replication, migration, and failover for vApps and VMs. … Read the rest

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 10: Integrating VCAV With Deployed Components

Manish Jha

Now we have deployed all components needed to form the VCAV stack. It’s time to integrate all of them with VCAV. Let’s start.

At this point of time, I am assuming that you have already declared the following variables as per your environment

… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 9-Create vCloud Availability Portal Host

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, we deployed the VRCS and VR appliances. In this post, we will deploy the VCAV Portal.

If you are not following along with this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from links below:

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

4: Install Cloud Proxy for vCD

5: Deploy Cassandra Cluster

6: RabbitMQ Cluster Deployment and vCD Integration

7: Deploy VRMS Appliance

8: Deploy vRCS and VR Server

What is vCloud Availability Portal?

The vCloud Availability Portal provides a graphic user interface for the management of vCloud Availability operations. The vCloud Availability Portal back end scales horizontally, and we can deploy more than one portal host for HA and load balancing.

VCAV portal host size varies from small to medium to large, depending on the number of concurrent sessions that the portal host will be handling.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 6: Install and Configure RabbitMQ Cluster

Manish Jha

In the last post of this series, we deployed a Cassandra node and configured ssl security for Cassandra. In this post, we will be installing RabbitMQ for vCD.

If you are not following along this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from the links below:

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

4: Install Cloud Proxy for vCD

5: Deploy Cassandra Cluster

What is RabbitMQ (RMQ)?

RabbitMQ is an open source message-queuing software that helps facilitate message exchange between two or more applications. The exchange of messages is done via a queue, defined by the administrator. An application can publish a message to the queue, which can be retrieved or consumed by a different application.

A message can include any kind of information, for example, it could have information about a process/task that should start on another application may be on another server, or it could be just a simple text message.… Read the rest

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 5: Deploy and Configure Cassandra Cluster

Manish Jha

In the second post of this series, we discussed the components needed to form a VCAV solution stack, and we saw that Cassandra is an integral part of this solution. In this post, we will learn how to deploy a Cassandra Cluster.

If you are not following along with this series, then I recommend reading earlier posts of this series from the links below:

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

4: Install Cloud Proxy for vCD

 Before installing Cassandra software, we need to meet the following requirements:

1: Verify that routing, NTP, forward, and reverse DNS resolutions are working correctly.

2: Make sure that SELinux and your firewall are disabled. If they are enabled, then open appropriate ports in the firewall.

I have disabled SELinux and the firewall service in my lab. 

3: Install Python: Make sure Python 2.7 is installed in your CentOS 7 system.… Read the rest