In last post of this series we learnt how to create and design blueprints. This post will be focussed on catalog management. Once you have created blueprint items, next thing is to associate them with a service and defining the entitlements so that end-user can start requesting items from catalog to which they are entitled for.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

8: Creating Network Profiles & Reservations

9: Configuring Blueprints

We will start the discussion with service and then proceed to entitlements.

What is service?

Services are used to organize catalog items into related offerings to make it easier for end users to browse catalog items they needed in an easier and convenient way.… Read More

In last post of this series we learnt about Network profiles and Reservations. In this post we will be focussing on how to create blueprints. Blueprints in one thing with which you will be spending a lot of time day in day out. 

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

8: Creating Network Profiles & Reservations

Lets start the discussion with blueprints.

What is Blueprint?

Blueprints define the resources and attributes associated with the provisioning of a virtual, physical, or cloud machine. vRA supports several type of platforms as endpoint such as vSphere, vCloud, Hyper-V, XEN, Physical, Amazon etc so a unique Blueprint is needed per platform.… Read More

In last post of this series we covered creation of Fabric groups and Business groups. In this post we will learn about Network Profiles and Reservations.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

Lets start the discussion with Network profiles and its significance.

Network profiles

Network profile is needed to configure the network settings of a virtual machine deployed by users of a business group. Creating a network profile provides an administrator capabilities similar to IPAM. vRA have an inbuilt IPAM solution baked with it, but you can also use external IPAM solution such as infoblox.… Read More

In last post of this series we learn how to add various endpoints to vRA so that the endpoints can be consumed by the users. The resources presented by endpoints first needs to be aggregated in fabric groups so that they can be assigned to users. In this post we will learn about fabric groups and business groups and will walk-through how to create them

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I urge you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

6: Configuring Endpoints

So what is a Fabric Group?

The Fabric groups are what enable you to provide access to resources from your physical infrastructure. Fabric includes all the computing resources that are discovered from the added endpoint data collection.… Read More

In last post of this series, we performed the initial configuration of the default tenant (vsphere.local) and integrated directory service for centralized authentication. In this post we will learn about configuring endpoints.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: vRA Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

5: Tenant and Users Initial Configuration

Lets discuss little bit about endpoints before configuring them,

Endpoints are infrastructure sources that are consumed by vRealize Automation. These endpoints are used by vRA to provision virtual machines,networks etc. vRealize Automation 7.3 supports following endpoints:

• Cloud: Amazon EC2,Openstack,vCloud Director,vCloud Air
• Management: vROPS
• Network and Security: NSX
• Orchestration: vRO
• Storage: NetApp ONTAP
• Virtual: vSphere (vCentetr), Hyper-v, Citrix Xen server

You need to have IaaS Admin role assigned to a user for configuring endpoints.… Read More

In last post of this series, I walked through the vRA appliance deployment and configuration. We verified that deployment was successful and we were able to login to vRA appliance using the SSO user. 

In this post we will learn about default tenant initial configuration and how to associate directory services with vRA.

If you have landed directly on this page by mistake, then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

4: Installing and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

Lets start configuring the default tenant.

Login to vRA appliance by typing https://VRA-FQDN/vcac and use administrator as username and password set during deployment. 

If this is your production deployment, then you might want to use your company branding i.e setting up logo etc.

Once you are done with branding your vRA instance, navigate to Administration -> Tenants.… Read More

In last 3 posts of this series, we learnt how to setup environment and integrate NSX with vSphere etc. There are lot of pre-works which needs to in place before going ahead with vrealize Automation deployment and I tried to cover few of them in earlier posts. Few will be covered in upcoming posts of this series.

If you have landed directly on this page then I encourage you to read earlier posts of this series from below links:

1: Lab Setup

2: Installing and Configuring NSX

3: Installing SQL Server for IaaS DB

Lets jump into vRA deployment now. Make sure you  have read VMware documentation and all installation pre-requisites are met before starting deployment.

Deploying vRA is straight forward task and steps can be viewed from below slideshow.

Once the ovf is deployed and appliance is booted, you can login to appliance VAMI. Details of VAMI can be viewed by launching console of the appliance, which is nothing but https://VRA-FQDN:5480

The moment you login to VAMI, vRealize Automation installation wizard will automatically launched.… Read More

One of the requirement for installing vRA is to have a database server for IaaS components. This DB server can reside on same host where IaaS role will be configured or can be external to IaaS host.

To see list of supported database that can be used for IaaS DB, please see vRealize Automation Support Matrix document from VMware. 

Below table shows list of database that is suported with vRA 6.x/7.x

Note: Express versions of MSSQL are not supported. If you don’t have MSSQL enterprise edition for lab setup and you want to use express edition in your lab then please see this article by Rob Bastiaansen.

Hardware Requirements for database server: 

• CPU: 2 vCPU
• RAM: 2 GB
• Disk: 40 GB

MSSQL Installation

Launch the MSSQL installer and click on “New SQL server stand-alone installation”

If you are using licensed version of MSSQL, then enter the product key.

Accept Eula and hit Next.… Read More

One of the first goal for 2018 is to pass my VCP7-CMA exam and thus I decided to set up a home lab on latest version of vRealize Automation i.e 7.3 and this post is all about my lab setup.

1: In my lab I am using vSphere 6.0 U3 and I have deployed 4 hosts and each host have 4 vCPU and 32 GB RAM.

2: Deployed vCSA 6.0 U3 (vCenter with Embedded PSC)

3: Purely using vDS (v6.0) in my lab and I have created port groups for separation of traffic. Each Esxi host have 4 NIC’s :

• vmnic0 for Management network : 192.168.109.X/24 
• vmnic1 for vMotion network: : 192.168.108.X/24
• vmnic2 and vmnic3 for iSCSI storage connectivity: 192.168.106.X/24

4: Deployed openfiler and created 2 volumes. Both mapped to single target and servicing all 4 Esxi host that are in mgmt cluster. Thus each esxi host is mounting 2 luns from openfiler appliance. … Read More