Configuring AD Authentication in vRealize Log Insight

March 8, 2019 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

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

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.

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.

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

Scaling Up Standalone vRealize Log Insight Deployment

March 8, 2019 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 the rest

Distributed vRA Automated Upgrade via vRLCM

February 24, 2019 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.

Click on the 3 dotted lines and select Upgrade.

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 the rest

Cancelling Request in vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager via API

February 23, 2019 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 the rest

vRA Distributed Install using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manger

February 11, 2019 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.

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 the rest

Installing & Configuring vRealize Suite Life Cycle Manager 2.0

February 11, 2019 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

Initial login credentials are: admin@localhost/vmware

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

vRA 7.4 Distributed Install: Part 4: vRA Distributed Install

February 10, 2019 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.

Accept EULA and hit Next.

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 the rest

vRA 7.4 Distributed Install: Part 3: Load Balancer Configuration

February 10, 2019 Manish Jha

In last post of this series, I talked about my lab setup. In this post I will walk through the load balancer configuration that needs to be in place for supporting the distributed install.

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

Although it’s not mandatory to have the load balancer configured when kicking the distributed install, as we can configure it post vRA deployment, but it is recommended to configure this before attempting the install.

I am using NSX 6.4 in my lab for load balancer. You can choose the supported load balancer of your choice.

I deployed a dedicated Edge GW (size=large) and attached my dvPortgroup named “Production” as uplink. I also added 3 IP’s on the uplink interface (one primary and 2 secondary ip) which will be used during VIP configuration.… Read the rest

vRA 7.4 Distributed Install: Part 2-Lab Setup

February 9, 2019 Manish Jha

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 the rest

VRA 7.4 Distributed Install: Part 1-Introduction

February 9, 2019 Manish Jha

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 the rest