In second post of this series we looked at the components which are needed to form a VCAV solution stack and we saw cassandra is an integral part of this solution.

To know about cassandra in detail, you can refer an old blogpost written by me.

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

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

4: Install Cloud Proxy for vCD

In this post we will deploy a Cassandra Cluster. Before installing cassandra software we need to meet following requirements:

1: Verify that routing, NTP, forward, and reverse DNS resolutions are working correctly.

2: Make sure that SELinux and your firewall are in disabled state. If they are enabled then make sure to open appropriate ports in firewall.

I have disabled SELinux and firewall service in my lab. … Read More

In the last post of this series, we deployed the VCAV appliance and discussed that it will be configured later once we are done with the deployment of all the other needed components.

In this post, we will add a vCloud proxy cell to an existing vCloud Director environment.

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

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

What is a Cloud Proxy?

As per VMware documentation:

The Cloud Proxy is a standalone, optional component of vCloud Director that can act as a generic Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection proxy. It supports forwarding incoming TCP connections and listening incoming connections.

The Cloud Proxy creates virtual connections for data to travel from the on-premise to the service provider (cloud) site and reverse. 

For installing Cloud Proxy, you should have your vCD environment already deployed and fully configured.… Read More

In last post of this series we discussed about logical architecture of VCAV and we discussed about the various components involved which makes the VCAV stack.

In this post we will be deploying VCAV appliance. Current version of VCAV is 2.0.1 and it can be downloaded from here. vCloud Availability appliance deployment is straight forward task and is pretty much like any other standard ova deployment. 

Connect to your management vCenter Web Client  and choose to Deploy OVF Template and browse to location where VCAV ova file is stored on your system.

Review the ova details and hit next to continue.

Accept EULA and hit Next.

Provide a name for the VCAV VM and select the datacenter where it will be deployed.

Select the cluster where vm will be deployed and hit Next.

For prod deployment, thick provisioned disk is recommended. For lab deployment thin provisioned disk works just fine.

Select appropriate portgroup to which VCAV vm will connect and hit Next.… Read More

In first post of this series we discussed about what is vCloud Availability solution and what problem are we solving by using this product. In this post we will discuss about the architecture of VCAV and what are the components needed to create a full-fledged DRaaS solution using VCAV.

vCloud Availability Logical Architecture

Basically the architecture relies solely on service provider environment. There can be a slight differences in components that different service provider uses. Typical components can include what is visible in below diagram.

Components shown in gray color are the components which tenant and service provider have already deployed in their side. Colored components are the one which we will be deploying later in this series.

vCloud Availability Components

Below table taken fro m VMware docs explains high level overview of components needed for setting up a VCAV environment.

And that’s it for this post.

In the upcoming posts of this series, we will deploy these components one by one.… Read More

What is vCloud Availability for vCloud Director (VCAV) ?

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director is a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solution that provides simple and secure asynchronous replication and failover for vSphere managed workloads.

VMware released vCloud Availability for vCloud Director keeping in mind to provide cloud innovations to vCloud Air Network partners so that they can implement this software solution to provide Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to customers.

Customer’s who are using vCloud Air, knows that vCloud Air uses vSphere Replication to provide the DRaaS service to their customers. This is a very similar solution which vCAN partners will now be using for DRaaS. 

Since vCloud Air is not present in all regions,  vCloud Availability will be a blessing for vSphere customers because they can now buy and use DRaaS service from a local partner.

In last 3-4 years there is a shift in technology as more and more customer are now adopting to cloud solutions.… Read More