vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager

Configuring MYVMware Account in vRSLCM via API

manish_jha86

One of the method of installing vRealize products via vRSLCM is to configure myvmw repository first and then pulling available product binaries via internet. In this post I will walk through steps of configuring the same via API.

1:  Add myvmw credentials to password Store

2:  Fetch vmid associated with alias created in step-1: When a new password is added to locker store, vRSLCM assigns a unique vmid to that password and all future references to this password is made via assigned vmid.

Sample Output

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vRLI Distributed Install/Upgrade via vRSLCM API

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In my last Post I demonstrated how to install and upgrade a distributed vROPs via vRSLCM API. In this post I will walk through how to perform install/upgrade a distributed vRLI environment.

Steps for deploying/upgrading any vRealize product via vRSLCM API are pretty much same, only the json payload varies.

vRLI Deployment Procedure

Step 1: Pre-Validate Environment Creation

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vROPs Distributed Install/Upgrade via vRSLCM API

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vRSLCM is such a great tool that it lifts all the complexity of deploying vRealize suite in just few clicks. Whether you are looking for standalone deployment or a distributed one, you are shielded from all the complexity that goes behind in setting up an environment.

Recently while working on my new project, I was tasked to find out a way where all the UI operations related to vRSLCM can be automated. In my last post I listed all the API’s that are needed to perform end to end vRSLCM configuration. We need to fetch few details before starting install/upgrade of any vRealize product.

This post is extension to my last post and I will be demonstrating how to deploy/upgrade various vRealize products using vRSLCM API. The first in this list will be vROPs. So lets get started.

At this point, I assume you have already fetched details about:

  • Certificate Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • Default Password Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • License Name/UUID (From Locker)
  • Infra details (DNS, NTP, Datacenter name, cluster name etc)
  • Local Repo configured and all product install/upgrade binaries uploaded there.
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Automating vRSLCM 8.x End to End Configuration via API

manish_jha86

In this post we will learn how to leverage vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager (vRSLCM) API to automated deployment & configuration.

With release of vRSLCM 8.x, VMware introduced simple installer (similar to vCSA) for deployment of vRSLCM. Below is screenshot of how the simple installer looks like.

As of now we don’t have any API which can be leveraged to automate appliance deployment, so we will perform this task via ovftool.

Deploying vRSLCM via ovftool

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Distributed vRA Automated Upgrade via vRLCM

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In this post I will walk through steps of upgrading a distributed vRA 7.4 environment to v7.5. This is continuation of my earlier post where I deployed vRA 7.4 via vRLCM.

Upgrade Prerequisites

This post assumes that you have met all the prerequisites of vRA upgrade mentioned in this document

Important: If you are doing upgrade in a distributed environment, then make sure you have disabled the secondary members of pool and all monitors removed for the pool members during the upgrade process.

To upgrade a vRA deployment, login to vRLCM and navigate to Home > Environments and click on view details.

vra-up-2

Click on the 3 dotted lines and select Upgrade.

vra-up-3

Change the Repository type to “vRLCM Repository” and make sure to check mark the IaaS snapshot option to take snapshots of your backend vm’s. There is only one caveat here, vRLCM doesn’t snap the IaaS DB vm and you have to do this manually.… Read More

Cancelling Request in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager via API

manish_jha86

vRLCM is a great tool but the only shortcoming which is still there with v 2.0 is the ability to cancel any running task via GUI. I faced this situation when I was trying to add a remote collector node to an existing vROPS deployment and task kept running for more than 4 hours.

While searching on internet for how we can stop/cancel/delete a request in vRLCM, came across this thread on VMware Code website, where it was mentioned that it’s not possible from GUI and we need to use REST API.

Below steps shows how to use vRLCM API

1: Get Auth token: First of all we need to generate the auth token which we will be using in our next command.

To do so, type https://<vRLCM-FQDN>/api and make sure API v1 is selected as shown below.

Expand the /login section and click on “try it out” button. It will ask you to enter the credentials for admin account.… Read More

vRA Distributed Install using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manger

manish_jha86

In first post of this series, I talked briefly about what vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is and its capabilities. Also I covered the installation and initial configuration settings of the appliance.

In this post I will walk through steps of deploying vRA 7.4 distributed install in automated fashion using vRLCM.

Before trying vRLCM, I did a vRA distributed install manually because I wanted to understand the flow of distributed install. If you are new to his topic then I would suggest reading below posts before you can start using vRLCM to automate deployments:

1: Introduction & Reference Architecture

2: Lab Setup

3: Load Balancer Configuration

4: vRA Distributed Install (Manual)

Let’s get started with vRLCM.

First we have to create an environment. From home page click on Create Environment.

vRA-LCM (1).PNG

Specify following:

  • Datacenter: Which you created earlier
  • Environment type: Valid selection are Development, Test, Staging and Production. Since this is my test environment I selected test.
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Installing & Configuring vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager 2.0

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vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager 2.0 was released in September 2018 and with this release a lot of new features were added. Please refer to this post to learn What’s new in vRLCM 2.0.

What is vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager?

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager automates install, configuration, upgrade, patch, configuration management, drift remediation and health from within a single pane of glass, and automates Day 0 to Day 2 operations of the entire vRealize Suite, enabling simplified operational experience for customers.

In this post I will walk through the important configuration steps that needs to be in place before you can start consuming vRLCM to automate your stuffs.

vRLCM Deployment and Configuration

Deployment of vRLCM appliance is very straightforward like any other VMware va based deployment.

Once the vRLCM appliance is deployed and boots up, connect to the appliance by typing https://<vrlcm-fqdn>/vrlcm

vlcm-12.PNG

Initial login credentials are: admin@localhost/vmware

vlcm-13.PNG

Post login you need to change the root password of the vRLCM appliance.… Read More