vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 5: Tenant and users Initial Configuration

04-01-2018 Manish Jha

In last post of this series, I walked through the vRA appliance deployment and configuration. We verified that deployment was successful and we were able to login to vRA appliance using the SSO user.

In this post we will learn about default tenant initial configuration and how to associate directory services with vRA.

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: Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

Lets start configuring the default tenant.

Login to vRA appliance by typing https://VRA-FQDN/vcac and use administrator as username and password set during deployment.

If this is your production deployment, then you might want to use your company branding i.e setting up logo etc.

Once you are done with branding your vRA instance, navigate to Administration -> Tenants.… Read More

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 4:Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

01-01-2018 Manish Jha

In last 3 posts of this series, we learnt how to setup environment and integrate NSX with vSphere etc. There are lot of pre-works which needs to in place before going ahead with vrealize Automation deployment and I tried to cover few of them in earlier posts. Few will be covered in upcoming posts of this series.

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

1: Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

Lets jump into vRA deployment now. Make sure you have read VMware documentation and all installation pre-requisites are met before starting deployment.

Deploying vRA is straight forward task and steps can be viewed from below slideshow.

Once the ovf is deployed and appliance is booted, you can login to appliance VAMI. Details of VAMI can be viewed by launching console of the appliance, which is nothing but https://VRA-FQDN:5480

The moment you login to VAMI, vRealize Automation installation wizard will automatically launched.… Read More

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 3: Installing IaaS DB

31-12-2017 Manish Jha

One of the requirement for installing vRA is to have a database server for IaaS components. This DB server can reside on same host where IaaS role will be configured or can be external to IaaS host.

To see list of supported database that can be used for IaaS DB, please see vRealize Automation Support Matrix document from VMware.

Below table shows list of database that is suported with vRA 6.x/7.x

Note: Express versions of MSSQL are not supported. If you don’t have MSSQL enterprise edition for lab setup and you want to use express edition in your lab then please see this article by Rob Bastiaansen.

Hardware Requirements for database server:

CPU: 2 vCPU
RAM: 2 GB
Disk: 40 GB

MSSQL Installation

Launch the MSSQL installer and click on “New SQL server stand-alone installation”

If you are using licensed version of MSSQL, then enter the product key.

Accept Eula and hit Next.… Read More

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 2: NSX Deployment and Configuration

31-12-2017 Manish Jha

In last post of this series I discussed about my lab setup. In this post we will learn how to deploy and configure NSX.

Last year I did a complete lab on NSX and posted few blog articles on installation and configuration stuffs. So in this post I will not go into much details on NSX stuffs. If you are new to NSX then make sure you read VMware documentation on NSX deployment.

Also you can view below articles from my blogs on NSX.

1: Installing and Configuring NSX

2: Deploying NSX Controllers

3: Preparing Esxi Hosts and Cluster

4: Configure VXLAN on the ESXi Hosts

Lets first start with deploying NSX.

Nothing fancy here. NSX deployment involves same steps as deploying any other virtual appliance. Here is a slideshow for deployment steps.

Once deployment completes and NSX manager boots up, login to the appliance by typing https://NSX-fqdn/. Credentials are admin/pwd set during deployment.… Read More

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 1: Lab Setup

31-12-2017 Manish Jha

One of the first goal for 2018 is to pass my VCP7-CMA exam and thus I decided to set up a home lab on latest version of vRealize Automation i.e 7.3 and this post is all about my lab setup.

1: In my lab I am using vSphere 6.0 U3 and I have deployed 4 hosts and each host have 4 vCPU and 32 GB RAM.

2: Deployed vCSA 6.0 U3 (vCenter with Embedded PSC)

3: Purely using vDS (v6.0) in my lab and I have created port groups for separation of traffic. Each Esxi host have 4 NIC’s :

vmnic0 for Management network : 192.168.109.X/24
vmnic1 for vMotion network: : 192.168.108.X/24
vmnic2 and vmnic3 for iSCSI storage connectivity: 192.168.106.X/24

4: Deployed openfiler and created 2 volumes. Both mapped to single target and servicing all 4 Esxi host that are in mgmt cluster. Thus each esxi host is mounting 2 luns from openfiler appliance. … Read More

Troubleshooting vRealize IaaS SSL Certificate Registration Issue

06-11-2015 Manish Jha

Today I was working on replacing SSL certificates on my vRealize IaaS server so as to complete the SSL certificate replacement on all vRealize components that I have deployed in my lab.

I am not going to cover here the steps needed to generate signed SSL certificates as I have covered them in my earlier blog posts. If you are looking for Step by Step demonstration of the same please have a look on this Article Grant Orchard.

After replacing the IaaS SSL certificates, IaaS Server needs to re-register the new certificates to the vRA Appliance. The commands used to achieve this is as follows:

# cd C:Program Files (x86)VMwarevCACServerModel Manager DataCafe

# vcac-config RegisterEndpoint --EndpointAddress https://vra1.alex.local/vcac --Endpoint ui -v

# vcac-config RegisterEndpoint --EndpointAddress https://vra1.alex.local/vcac/Repository --Endpoint repo -v

# vcac-config RegisterEndpoint --EndpointAddress https://vra1.alex.local/vcac/WAPI --Endpoint wapi -v

# vcac-config RegisterEndpoint --EndpointAddress https://vra1.alex.local/vcac/WAPI/api/status --Endpoint status -v

# cd C:Program Files (x86)VMwarevCACServerModel Manager DataCafe

# vcac-config RegisterEndpoint --EndpointAddress https://vra1.alex.local/vcac

Setup SSL Certificate For vSphere Lab-Part-5-Creating and Replacing vRealize SSL Certificates

30-10-2015 Manish Jha

In last post of this series we learnt how to replace SSL certificates for different vSphere Components like SSO, Inventory Service, vCenter Server and Web-Client. In this post I am going one step further and will demonstrate how to replace vRealize SSL Certificates.

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

1: Installing and Configuring CA Server

2: Creating Certificate Templates

3: Creating SSL Web Certificates Template for VMware

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites must be met before jumping into action:

1: Microsoft Enterprise CA server deployed along with IIS installed.
2: Web-Certificate Template created for vSphere components.
3: Download and install Win32 OpenSSL from Here

I have downloaded and installed Win32 Open SSL software on the same server where my vCenter Server is installed and I have added the path up to bin directory in my environment variables so that I can run openssl command from anywhere.… Read More

vRealize Automation- Deploying Virtual Machines from self-Service Portal

21-09-2015 Manish Jha

Finally we came to last post of this series where an end user will request a virtual machine for himself from the services he is entitled to.

In our last post Creating Entitlements we have created an entitlement for windows server 2003 and granted access to users manish@alex.local and alexhunt@alex.local. Lets see if these 2 users can request for a new virtual machine for themselves from the self-service portal and whether or not this request is completed.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

10: Creating Service

11: Creating Entitlements

Now we will see how an end user will request for a new virtual machine for him.… Read More

vRealize Automation- Creating Entitlements

19-09-2015 Manish Jha

Entitlements allows you to grant users and groups access to Services and/or Blueprints as well as determine what actions they can perform with them. Entitlements offer a significant amount of flexibility in how you provide access to services through the catalog, who can access those services, what actions they can perform, and what is any approvals are required.

Entitlements are made up of three components. Services, Catalog Items, and Actions. You can choose to entitle complete Services which encompass all Items within the service or just select catalog Items. You can also determine what actions the users that belong to the entitle can perform against all the catalog items that are a part of the entitlement.

Within entitlements you also have the ability to assign approvals to Services, Catalog Items, and actions.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

10: Creating Service

Now we will see how to create entitlements.… Read More

vRealize Automation- Creating a Service

18-09-2015 Manish Jha

Self-Service catalog is a new way of managing Catalog Items. Service categories organizes catalog items into related offerings to enable end users to browse catalog items they needed in an easier and convenient way.

In vRA Blueprints are published which enables them to be assigned to users and groups through the catalog management components of the vRA Service Catalog. In earlier version of vCAC Blueprints were assigned to groups within the Blueprint itself.

To enable blueprints to be available in the catalog we first need a service that we can publish them to. Services are the containers that hold the actual catalog items that can be requested.

We must have at least one service in the environment to enable our catalog items against.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

2: Installing and Configuring vRA Identity Appliance

3: Installing and Configuring vRA Appliance

4: Installing and configuring IaaS Components

5: Creating Tenants

6: Adding vSphere Endpoints

7: Creating and Configuring Fabric Groups

8: Creating Business Groups and Reservation

9: Creating and Publishing Blueprints

In this post we will create a new service for the catalogs.… Read More