In the second post of this series, we discussed the components needed to form a VCAV solution stack, and we saw that Cassandra is an integral part of this solution. In this post, we will learn how to deploy a Cassandra Cluster.

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

1: vCloud Availability Introduction

2: vCloud Availability Architecture & Components

3: VCAV Deployment

4: Install Cloud Proxy for vCD

 Before installing Cassandra software, we need to meet the following requirements:

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

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

I have disabled SELinux and the firewall service in my lab. 

3: Install Python: Make sure Python 2.7 is installed in your CentOS 7 system.… Read the rest

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 the rest

In the last post of this series, we discussed the logical architecture of VCAV and the components that constitute the VCAV stack.

In this post, we will be deploying the VCAV appliance. The current version of VCAV is 2.0.1, and it can be downloaded from here. vCloud Availability appliance deployment is a straightforward 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 the location where the VCAV OVA file is stored on your system.

Review the OVA details and hit next to continue.

Accept the EULA and hit Next.

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

Select the cluster where the VM will be deployed and click Next.

For prod deployment, a thick-provisioned disk is recommended. For lab deployment, a thin-provisioned disk works fine.… Read the rest

In the first post of this series, we discussed what the vCloud Availability solution is. In this post, we will discuss the architecture of VCAV and the components needed to create a DRaaS solution using VCAV.

vCloud Availability Logical Architecture

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

Components shown in gray are the components that the tenant and service provider have already deployed. Colored components are the ones that we will be deploying later in this series.

vCloud Availability Components

The table below explains a high-level overview of the components that are 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.

I hope you find this post informative.… Read the rest

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 the rest