vCloud Extender-Part 2: Service Provider Setup

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series, I discussed about vCloud Extender architecture and its capabilities. In this post I will walk through steps of configuring vCloud Extender in cloud provider side.

vCloud Extender is deployed as ova and deployment steps are straight forward as shown in below slide show. Just make sure to select deployment type as “cx-cloud-service” on customization template page.

Once appliance is deployed and boots up, it will show the browser link to access the appliance for further configuration.

Connect to appliance by typing https://appliance-fqdn/ui/mgmt and login with administrator user and password set during deployment.

Click on Setup Wizard to start configuring the cx-cloud-service appliance.

Register appliance with your management vCenter. If your environment have PSC external to VC, then use PSC IP/FQDN for lookupservice url.

Next is to register cx-cloud appliance with the vCloud director. Enter your vCD details and administrator credentials.

Note: No need to append @system with the username.… Read More

vCloud Extender-Part 1:Introduction

Posted on by
Reply

What is VMware vCloud Extender?

VMware vCloud Director Extender creates a hybrid cloud environment between an end-user on-premise data center, and a multi-tenant vCloud Director environment. vCloud Extender is replacement for vCloud Connector and this product was released soon after vCloud Director 9.0 was announced. 

What does vCloud Extender offers?

vCloud Extender allows customers to migrate workloads from On-prem vSphere environment to a vCloud Director based Public Cloud. The two migration methods that are available with vCloud Extender are the cold and warm migration and I will talk about these methods in detail in upcoming post of this series.

One more exciting feature that vCloud Extender offers is to stretch an on-prem Layer 2 network to cloud. This feature helps customer to achieve their “Cloud Migration” objective without much hassle as you no longer need to Re-IP workloads that are migrating to cloud. 

You do not need to have on-prem deployment of NSX to stretch a layer 2 network to cloud but without on-prem NSX, you are limited to extending only vLANs to VXLAN on the cloud side.… Read More

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 4: Testing DR Operations

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series we paired the two vCloud based cloud instances. Now its turn to test the DR capabilities offered by vCAV-C2C.

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

1: Introduction to vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR

2: vCAV-C2C-POC Deployment

3: Site Pairing

To start testing DR operations, connect to https://VCAV-FQDN:8443 and login with tenant credentials (uname@orgname) and navigate to Paired Clouds.

By default your Site-B will show as unauthenticated. Click on the gear button to enter credentials.

Enter Org name of Site-B and the Org User credentials. Click on Authenticate.

Now both sites will show as authenticated.

Perform the same operation by connecting to VCAV appliance of Site-B and adding Org/User details of Site B and make sure both sites are showing as authenticated.

Once both sites are authenticated, navigate to DR-Workloads tab and click on Discovery

Select source site from where replication will be initiated.… Read More

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 3: Site Pairing

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series we configured the vCAV-C2C appliance for both Site A & B. In this post we will learn how to perform site pairing so that tenants can start replicating workloads between 2 cloud instances.

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

1: Introduction to vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR

2: vCAV-C2C-POC Deployment

To perform site pairing, login to vCAV-C2C appliance of site A by connecting to https://VCAV-FQDN:8046 and navigating to Sites > New Site and enter IP/FQDN of VCAV appliance of Site B.

Accept the SSL certificate.

If your configuration is correct, you will see a succesful site pairing message.

Under Sites > Show all sites, you can see the pairing information.

On diagnostics page you can verify health of Site A & B

And that’s it for this post. In next post of this series we will perform replication of workloads across 2 cloud.… Read More

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 2: POC Deployment

Posted on by
Reply

As discussed in last post, we can configure all roles present in vCAV-C2C in a single appliance for Lab/POC deployment. In my lab I am going ahead with small deployment to have a general understanding of this product before doing distributed deployment.

In my lab I have 2 sites and each site is configured with following components:

1: vSphere/vCenter Server 6.5 U2

2: vCloud Director 9.0

3: VMware NSX 6.3.6

vSphere and vCD is fully configured and Org/Org vDC’s are in place n both sites with external network etc configured. 

Let’s start the deployment with Site-A.

Deployment of VCAV-C2C appliance is straight forward and steps are shown in below slideshow.

Once appliance deployment completes and it boots up, it will give you information on how to connect to appliance for further configuration.

Configure vCloud Availability Replicator

To configure vCloud Availability Replicator role, connect to https://VCAV-FQDN:8043 and click on link under Additional Resources

Login with root credentials set during deployment.… Read More

vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR-Part 1:Introduction

Posted on by
Reply

VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR is the most recent addition to the VMware Cloud Provider Platform portfolio. It was originally introduced in May 2018, and it delighted service providers that have long desired a VMware native Cloud to Cloud DR solution for vCloud Director-based clouds.

What is vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR (vCAV-C2C)?

VMware vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud is a solution for disaster recovery between two instances of vCloud Director. The concept of cloud-to-cloud DR is not new, however, VMware did not have any solutions for vCloud-based clouds. vCAV-C2C bridges this gap and enables VMware Cloud Providers to use their current vCloud Director installations to deliver disaster recovery services, such as replication and failover capabilities for workloads at both the VM and vApp levels.

The following are the main capabilities of the vCAV-C2C solution:

1: Replicate and recover vApps/VMs between two vCD instances for migration, DR, and planned migration use cases.… Read More

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 10: Integrating VCAV With Deployed Components

Posted on by
Reply

Now we have deployed all components needed to form VCAV stack. Its time to integrate all of them with VCAV. Let’s start.

At this point of time I am assuming that you have already declared following variables as per your environment

… Read More

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 9-Create vCloud Availability Portal Host

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series we deployed the VRCS and VR appliances. In this post we will deploy VCAV Portal.

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

5: Deploy Cassandra Cluster

6: RabbitMQ Cluster Deployment and vCD Integration

7: Deploy VRMS Appliance

8: Deploy vRCS and VR Server

What is vCloud Availability Portal ?

The vCloud Availability Portal provides a graphic user interface to facilitate the management of vCloud Availability operations. The vCloud Availability Portal back end scales horizontally and we can deploy more than one portal host for HA and load balancing.

VCAV portal host size varies from small, medium or large, depending upon number of concurrent sessions that portal host will be handling.

For lab purpose small deployment works just fine.… Read More

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 8-Deploy vSphere Replication Cloud Service & vSphere Replication Server

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series we deployed VRMS appliance. In this post we will deploy the vSphere Replication Cloud Service and the vSphere Replication Server appliance.

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

5: Deploy Cassandra Cluster

6: RabbitMQ Cluster Deployment and vCD Integration

7: Deploy VRMS Appliance

Before we kick the deployment, lets recap about what is the role of both appliances in VCAV stack.

What is vSphere Replication Cloud Service (VRCS) ?

The vSphere Replication Cloud Service is a tenant-aware replication manager that provides the required API for managing the service and all the components. vSphere Replication Cloud Service registers as a vCloud Director extension and is accessible through the vCloud Director interface.

What is vSphere Replication Server ?… Read More

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director: Part 7-Deploy vSphere Replication Manager

Posted on by
Reply

In last post of this series we deployed RabbitMQ and integrated it with vCD.

In this post we will deploy and configure vSphere Replication Manager aka VRMS. But before we go ahead and kick the VRMS deployment, lets discuss in brief about what is the role of VRMS in a VCAV stack.

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

5: Deploy Cassandra Cluster

6: RabbitMQ Cluster Deployment and vCD Integration

vSphere Replication Manager manages and monitors the replication process from tenant VMs to the cloud provider environment. A vSphere Replication management service runs for each vCenter Server and tracks changes to VMs and infrastructure related to replication.

VRMS when deployed is integrated with the resource vCenter Server which is in turn is registered to vCloud Director and made available to tenants.… Read More