VCD

Storage Migrate a vCloud Director VM using Rest API

Manish Jha

If you are using vCloud Director in your environment and if you have ever tried doing a Storage vMotion of a VM from vSphere directly, you will notice a warning saying that its not recommended to modify the entity since its managed by VCD.

sv-1

This is because of the the fact that with VCD, the management layer lies with itself and not with vSphere. All changes to the entities should be made via vCD and not vSphere.

Although doing a storage migration will not break anything but as a best practice we should avoid that.

So what to do if one of your backend LUN is full and you need to evacuate that by migrating some vm’s to another datastore which have enough free space. The answer is by using “Rest API”.

About the VMware vCloud API

The VMware vCloud API provides support for developers who are building interactive clients of VMware vCloud Director using a RESTful application development style.… Read More

Delete Stale Org Networks and Edge Gateway from vCloud Director

Manish Jha

Today while working in production, I came across an issue where the edge VM’s backing the edge gateway were not present in vCenter (no idea how they got deleted).

Due to this I was not able to delete the Org network from vCD. Any attempt to delete the Org network was failing with error

… Read More

Install vCloud Director 8 with High Availability

Manish Jha

vCloud Director 8.0 is the latest version available for service providers and can be downloaded from here.

It’s been quite sometime that I am dealing with vCloud Director in our production environment and as well as my test lab. In past I have written a post on how to install vCloud Director 5.5. You can also read the entire vCloud Director post series from Here

Since v8 is out there in market for sometime, I decided to try my hands on it and implement that in my homelab.

There are various posts available on internet about what is vCloud Director and what it does. So I will not talk much about it and jump directly into action.

In this post we will be going to learn how to deploy vCloud Director with high availability.

Pre-requisites before installing vCloud Director:

1: Two server (for 2 vcd cells) with Redhat as guest operating system installed and configured.… Read More

Unable to start vApp-Invalid vApp properties:Invalid property value size

Manish Jha

I recently deployed vSphere replication appliance in vCloud Director and while powering it on I was facing one error

“Unable to start vAPP- Invalid vApp properties:Invalid property value size“

Due to this power on operation on vApp was failing time and again.

I checked the vCD logs and did not found any error messages for my vApp. All I got was few debug messages:

… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 14-Migrating VM from vSphere Infrastructure to private Cloud using vCloud Connector

Manish Jha

In our last post  of this series we have learnt what is vCloud connector and what it does.

Now its time to see vCloud Connector in action. In this post we will learn how to migrate a VM from existing vSphere Infrastructure to a private cloud running on vCloud Director.

vCloud Connector has server/node type architecture where there will be one server and one node for each type of cloud. Also we require a node to be deployed for vSphere Infrastructure.

In my last post Installing/Configuring vCloud Connector I have deployed a server and also a node for my vSphere infrastructure. After that we have to deploy a new node for the private cloud (running on vCloud director)

I have already deployed the same and in below screenshot you can see one node by the name “vCC-Node-Pri Cloud”

vcc-p1

Also I have registered this node with my vCloud Director instance

vcc-p2

On vCloud Connector Server I have added the newly added node which is registered with vCloud Director

vcc-p3

I can see both my node (for vSphere and vCloud director) listed here

vcc-p4

Now login to vCenter Server using VI client and from home page click on vCloud Connector to launch below page.… Read More

Troubleshooting Datastore Cluster Disappearance Issue in vCloud Director

Manish Jha

Today I was facing a weird issue in my vCloud Lab. All my datastores have disappeared from vCloud Director and the storage policy was not showing any datastore. I have included a few snapshots from my lab here:

1: Storage Policies was not listing any datastore

ste-1

2: Selecting Datastore and Datastore Cluster was not listing any datastore either

ste-2

3: Due to this my Provider vDC was not able to see any datastores

ste-3

4: And since Provider vDC had no visibility to any datastore, my Organization vDC was throwing this alert

ste-4

This was strange as till last night everything was all right in my lab.

I started googling and got a cool VMware KB 2075366 which helped me in resolving my issue.

This is what I done to resolve the issue:

1: SSH to my vCloud Director Server and navigated to directory /opt/vmware/vcloud/bin and fired the following commands:

[root@vcd bin]# ./cell-management-tool -u svcvcloud -p MYPassword cell –quiesce true
[root@vcd bin]# service vmware-vcd stop

2: Login to SQL Server Management Studio and selected my vCloud Database and ran the following SQL query

Note: Before running the below query make sure you have taken backup of your database

delete from dbo.cluster_compute_resource_inv;… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 13-Installing and Configuring vCloud Connector

Manish Jha

In this post we will see how to deploy vCloud Connector and use it to facilitate a hybrid cloud architecture. Before going into installation and configuration part first lets see what is vcloud connector

What is vCloud connector?

The VMware vCloud Connector is a tool that facilitates hybrid cloud computing for organizations. The vCloud Connector essentially helps to orchestrate and administer the migration of VM’s across different data centers and clouds.

VMware vCloud Connector links your internal private cloud with public clouds, so you can manage them as a single hybrid environment and transfer workloads back and forth.

vCloud Connector also provides the following key features.

  • Content Sync lets you set up a Content Library to distribute and synchronize templates across clouds.
  • Datacenter Extension (Stretch Deploy) lets you extend your private data center to a public vCloud.
  • Offline Data Transfer enables you to transfer large amounts of data from your private data center to VMware vCloud® Air™.
… Read More

Importing vApp into vCloud Director catalog from vSphere

Manish Jha

In this post I am going to cover how to import a vApp running on vSphere to a catalog in vCloud director.

I have a VM “server2k3” in my vSphere environment which I will be exporting as vApp in my public catalog in vcloud director.

I have selected my organization which have rights to publish catalogs to other organizations in my vCloud director environment. From Catalogs tab I selected option import from vSphere.

From vCenter server list select your vCenter and then select the VM which will be imported. Give a name and description for the imported VM.

In copy or move option I selected “move” otherwise I will have 2 instance of my server 2k3 VM on vCenter server. One appearing as normal VM and one as vApp  under resource pool corresponding to my public organization. Also I have made this vm as gold master.

Hit ok after you are done with selections.… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 12-Deploying vApps from Catalogs

Manish Jha

In our last post Creating and Publishing Catalogs we have seen how to create a public catalog and share it with organizations present in your cloud infrastructure. Also I have populated the public catalog with one server 2003 vApp.

In this post we will see how an organization named “developers” deploy a new vApp from the public catalog that is shared with it. So Lets begin

Login to vcd web interface and go to Manage and Monitor tab and select organizations. In right hand side of the window double click on developers to open it.

orgc-1

Go to catalogs tab and verify public catalogs is listed there.

orgc-2

Now go to home tab and click on “Add vApp from catalog”

orgc-3

From Look In tab select “Public Catalogs” as we have not defined any organization catalog for organization developers.

orgc-4

I have imported a server-2k3 vApp in public catalog. Select the vApp and hit next.… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 11-Creating and Publishing Catalogs

Manish Jha

In our last post of this series we have seen how to  Create and Configure org vDC. Now since Org vDC have been setup, next task is to create some vApps in the organization. But before creating vApps there must be catalogs defined.

What is catalog?

A catalog is a container for vApp templates and media files in an organization. Organization administrators and catalog authors can create catalogs in an organization. Catalog contents can be shared with other users in the organization and can also be published to all organizations in the vCloud Director installation.

There are 2 types of catalogs available within vCloud Director:

1: Public: Public catalogs are created for sharing with many/all organizations within a vCloud infrastructure. Organization administrators from any organization in the vCloud Director can view the vApp templates and media files in a public catalog and copy those files to a catalog in their organization for use by their members.… Read More