Getting Started With HCX PowerCli Module

Manish Jha

With the release of PowerCli 11.2, support for many new VMware products was introduced, including VMware HCX. The PowerCli module name for HCX is “VMware.VimAutomation.HCX” and it currently has 20 cmdlets to manage HCX.

You can use Windows Power Shell to install/upgrade your PowerCLI to v11.2 using the below commands:

1: Once the necessary module is installed, we can use the Get-Command to examine the cmdlets that are available for HCX.

2: Authenticate with HCX: To connect to the HCX Manager, we need to use the Connect-HCXServer cmdlet.

… Read More

Exploring HCX API

Manish Jha

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension is a powerful product for data center migration, replacement, and disaster recovery. VMware HCX supports 3 major clouds at the moment: VMware Cloud on AWS, OVH Cloud, and IBM Cloud.

Although the HCX interface for workload migration is very simple and even first-time users can migrate workloads without much difficulty, it is always good to know about the API offerings of any product so that you can automate it via scripting.

The HCX API allows customers to automate all aspects of HCX, including the HCX VAMI UI for initial configuration as well as consuming the HCX services that are exposed in the vSphere UI.

HCX has its own API explorer (similar to the vSphere swagger interface). You can use additional tools like Postman or Curl to explore the capabilities of the HCX API.

Method 1: Using HCX API Interface

The HCX API interface can be accessed by typing https://<hcx-manager–fqdn>/hybridity/docs/index.html,… Read More

Upgrading Clustered vRLI Deployment

Manish Jha

In this post I will walk through steps of upgrading a clustered vRLI deployment. Before preparing for upgrade, make sure to read VMware documentation for the supported upgrade path.

One very important consideration before you start upgrading vRLI:

Upgrading vRealize Log Insight must be done from the master node’s FQDN. Upgrading using the Integrated Load Balancer IP address is not supported.

To start vRLI upgrade, login to the web interface of master node and navigate to Administration > Cluster and click on Upgrade Cluster button.

Note: In my lab I am upgrading vRLI from 4.5 to 4.6. Upgrade bundle for this version is available here

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Hit Upgrade button to start upgrade.

Note: Make sure you have taken snapshots of the master/worker nodes before starting the upgrade.

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Upload the .pak upgrade bundle file. 

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On accepting EULA, upgrade process starts. 

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Wait for 5-7 minutes for upgrade to complete. 

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Upgrade is performed in a rolling fashion.… Read More

Configuring AD Authentication in vRealize Log Insight

Manish Jha

vRealize Log Insight supports 3 Authentication methods:

  • Local authentication.
  • VMware Identity Manager authentication.
  • Active Directory authentication.

You can use more than one method in the same deployment and users then select the type of authentication to use at log in.

To AD authentication to vRLI, login to web interface and navigate to Administration > Authentication page

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Switch to Active Directory tab and toggle the “Enable Active Directory support” button.

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Specify your domain related details and hit Test Connection button to test whether vRLI is able to talk to AD or not. Hit Save button if test is successful. 

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Now we need to specify the users/groups who should have access to vRLI. To do so navigate to Access Control tab and select “Users and Groups” and click on New User to add an AD account.

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Select AD as authentication method and specify the domain name and the user who should have access to vRLI.… Read More

Scaling Up Standalone vRealize Log Insight Deployment

Manish Jha

vRealize log insight can be deployed as a standalone or as a clustered solution. In a clustered deployment the first node is the master node and the remaining nodes are termed as worker nodes. The process of scaling up is pretty straight forward and in this post I will walk through the steps of doing so.

Few things which you should consider before expanding a vRealize Log Insight deployment are:

  • vRealize Log Insight does not support WAN clustering (also called geo-clustering or remote clustering). All nodes in the cluster should be deployed in the same Layer 2 LAN. 
  • Configure a minimum of three nodes in a vRealize Log Insight cluster. 2 node cluster is not supported.
  • Verify that the versions of the vRealize Log Insight master and worker nodes are same. Do not add an older version vRealize Log Insight worker to a newer version vRealize Log Insight master node.
  • External load balancers are not supported for vRealize Log Insight clusters.
… Read More

Distributed vRA Automated Upgrade via vRLCM

Manish Jha

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.

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Click on the 3 dotted lines and select Upgrade.

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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 Jha

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 Jha

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.

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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.
… Read More

Installing & Configuring vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager 2.0

Manish Jha

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

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Initial login credentials are: admin@localhost/vmware

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

vRA 7.4 Distributed Install: Part 4: vRA Distributed Install

Manish Jha

In last post of this series , I talked about how to configure NSX based load balancer for vRA environment. In this post I will walk through vRA appliance deployment.

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

1: Introduction & Reference Architecture

2: Lab Setup

3: Load Balancer Configuration

Download vRA 7.4 appliance and deploy 2 instances of vRA VM’s.

Once both the appliance boots up, connect to the vami of first appliance by typing https://<vra1-fqdn>:5480/

At first login, the deployment wizard will automatically launch in the UI. Hit Next to continue.

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Accept EULA and hit Next.

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For distributed install, select the type as Enterprise deployment model.

Installation wizard provides recommendation for minimum number of vm’s needed for each service.

If you are planning to include IaaS along with vRA then make sure Install Infrastructure as a Service box is selected.… Read More