In last post of this series, I talked about high level overview of vRA distributed installation. In this post I will be discussing about my lab setup.

Management Cluster

In my management cluster I have vSphere 6.5 installed and vCenter is deployed with embedded psc. I have total of 5 hosts in my management cluster.

Host Details:

VM/Appliance Details:

• 2x vRealize Automation 7.4 Appliances
• 2x Windows Servers for IaaS Web
• 2x Windows Servers for the Management Service (Active / Passive)
• 2x Windows Servers for the DEMs/Agents

Windows Template Specifications

I deployed each of the windows vm using a template which was configured as per below:

1: Static IP set and windows domain joined. 

2: JRE 1.8 installed (you don’t need the full JDK).

3: vRA service account created and added to local administrator group. 

4: vRA service account granted Log on as service rights.

Path: Administrative Tools → Local Security Policy → Expand ‘Local Policy’ → Click on ‘User Rights Assignment’ → Right-click ‘Log on as a service’ → Properties → Click on the ‘Add User or Group’

5: MSTDC configured as shown below

Path: Start → Administrative Tools → Component Services → Computers → My Computer → Distributed Transaction Coordinator → Local DTC → Right Click → Properties → Security

Note: Few articles/video which I followed, recommends to use “No Authentication Required” option selected, but in my case vRA prerequisite check was failing because of this and setup recommended to use “Mutual Authentication“option.… Read More

vRA 7.x brought a lot of enhancements with it and one of the major enhancement was the simplicity of deploying the setup which was very complex till version 6.x. 

The second major enhancement was to cut the overall footprint of vRA. For VRA 6.x implementation, we needed at least 8 VA’s to form the core services (excluding the IaaS components). This limitation is no more with 7.x implementation.

Now a single pair of VRA VA’s forms the core services. In a distributed install, the load balanced VA’s delivers vRA’s framework services, Identity Manager, Database, vRO, and RabbitMQ. All these services are clustered and sits behind a single load balance VIP and a single SSL cert.

Last year I did a VRA 7.3 simple install in my lab and blogged about it. Did not got chance to play around the distributed install, so this time I decided to complete this unfinished business.… Read More

In last post of this series we learnt how to create and design blueprints. This post will be focussed on catalog management. Once you have created blueprint items, next thing is to associate them with a service and defining the entitlements so that end-user can start requesting items from catalog to which they are entitled for.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

8: Creating Network Profiles & Reservations

9: Configuring Blueprints

We will start the discussion with service and then proceed to entitlements.

What is service?

Services are used to organize catalog items into related offerings to make it easier for end users to browse catalog items they needed in an easier and convenient way.… Read More

In last post of this series we learnt about Network profiles and Reservations. In this post we will be focussing on how to create blueprints. Blueprints in one thing with which you will be spending a lot of time day in day out. 

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

8: Creating Network Profiles & Reservations

Lets start the discussion with blueprints.

What is Blueprint?

Blueprints define the resources and attributes associated with the provisioning of a virtual, physical, or cloud machine. vRA supports several type of platforms as endpoint such as vSphere, vCloud, Hyper-V, XEN, Physical, Amazon etc so a unique Blueprint is needed per platform.… Read More

In last post of this series we covered creation of Fabric groups and Business groups. In this post we will learn about Network Profiles and Reservations.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

Lets start the discussion with Network profiles and its significance.

Network profiles

Network profile is needed to configure the network settings of a virtual machine deployed by users of a business group. Creating a network profile provides an administrator capabilities similar to IPAM. vRA have an inbuilt IPAM solution baked with it, but you can also use external IPAM solution such as infoblox.… Read More

In last post of this series we learn how to add various endpoints to vRA so that the endpoints can be consumed by the users. The resources presented by endpoints first needs to be aggregated in fabric groups so that they can be assigned to users. In this post we will learn about fabric groups and business groups and will walk-through how to create them

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I urge you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

So what is a Fabric Group?

The Fabric groups are what enable you to provide access to resources from your physical infrastructure. Fabric includes all the computing resources that are discovered from the added endpoint data collection.… Read More

In last post of this series, we performed the initial configuration of the default tenant (vsphere.local) and integrated directory service for centralized authentication. In this post we will learn about configuring endpoints.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

Lets discuss little bit about endpoints before configuring them,

Endpoints are infrastructure sources that are consumed by vRealize Automation. These endpoints are used by vRA to provision virtual machines,networks etc. vRealize Automation 7.3 supports following endpoints:

• Cloud: Amazon EC2,Openstack,vCloud Director,vCloud Air
• Management: vROPS
• Network and Security: NSX
• Orchestration: vRO
• Storage: NetApp ONTAP
• Virtual: vSphere (vCentetr), Hyper-v, Citrix Xen server

You need to have IaaS Admin role assigned to a user for configuring endpoints.… Read More