Getting Started With Zerto-Part 2: Installing Zerto Virtual Manager

Manish Jha

In last post of this series, we discussed about architecture and components of Zerto and we talked about few roles and responsibilities that zerto virtual manager (ZVM) is accountable for. In this post we will learn how to deploy and do basic configuration of ZVM.

Before we move ahead, lets quickly recap what exactly ZVM is responsible for. The main function of ZVM are:

  • It  manages everything required for replication between the protected and recovery site. The actual replication of data is done by VRA though.
  • It interacts with vCenter Server or SCVMM to get the inventory of VM’s, disk size, network settings and host details etc.
  • It monitors changes in VMware environment and responds to that changes, for example, when a protected VM is migrated from one host to another, ZVM intercepts this change and updates this info in the ZVM portal.

Lab Design

Below diagram (not a great one) shows high level overview of components used in my lab.… Read More

Getting Started With Zerto-Part 1: Zerto Architecture and Components

Manish Jha

I am not new to Disaster Recovery solutions as we use vSphere Replication extensively in our environment for DR purpose. There were few features in vSphere Replication that used to annoy me at times and when I heard about awesomeness of Zerto from few friends, I decided to give it a go in my lab.

In this post we will look into what zerto is and will discuss about its architecture and components. Let’s get started.

What is Zerto?

Zerto is an Israel based company and was founded by Ziv and Oded Kedem. Zerto is specialized in providing enterprise class BC/DR solution for virtual datacenters and cloud based infrastructure. 

Zerto is Hypervisor agnostic and currently supports only VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. Zerto also supports cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and vCloud Air/vCloud Director etc. Using Zerto its very easy to host your DR workloads into cloud solution of your choice. … Read More

Installing PowerShell/PowerCLI on RHEL 7

Manish Jha

Today I was reading about influxDB and Grafana as I am planning to deploy it in my lab to monitor my vSphere infrastructure and while going through the installation/configuration steps, I stumbled on one step where we needed to have powercli installed on the box where grafana is installed.

Since I am planning to deploy the influxdb/grafana on my centos 7 box, I started looking for how to configure PowerCLI on top of unix variants. Read few articles and finally deployed it my lab.

PowerShell Core v6.0 was released few days ago by Microsoft with support for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Around same time, VMware released PowerCLI 10.0 which is VMware’s “PowerShell-like” utility. PowerShell version for linux can be downloaded from here

In this post I will be demonstrating installation of both PowerShell and PowerCli Core on RHEL 7 system. If you’re interested in installing this on other variants of linux then please consult this article. … Read More

Configuring vCenter SSO Federation in vCloud Director 8.20

Manish Jha

There are 3 authentication methods that are supported by vCloud Director:

1: Local: These are the local users which are created at the time of installing vCD or creating any new organization.  If you have configured vCD with default configuration, then the first local account that is created is “administrator” user who is system admin for the vCD.

2: LDAP service: A LDAP service enables the organization to use their own LDAP servers for authentication. Users can then be imported into vCD from the configured LDAP. If you have a multi-tenant based vCD deployment, then each organization can use their own LDAP service for authentication.

I wrote an article in past on how to use LDAP authentication with vCD.

3: SAML Identity Provider: A SAML Identity Provider can be used to authenticate users in an organization. SAML v2.0 metadata is required for the service to be configured. The metadata must include the location of the single sign-on service, the single logout service, and the X.509 certificate for the service.… Read More

Expired vApps preventing Org vDC from deleting

Manish Jha

Yesterday I was trying to delete an Org vDC from vCloud Air portal and it was failing time and again. On checking vCloud Director in backend I was seeing error “Cannot delete VDC“

vdc-not-deleting.PNG

When I tried deleting it directly from vCD, it was bitching about some expired vApp templates and was asking to remove them first.

vdc-2.PNG

On checking the Expired items tab, I found that there were few expired vApps

vdc-3.PNG

When I tried deleting them, the operation failed with error

Similar error I was seeing in vCD UI.

vdc-4.PNG

I tried deleting it via API as GUI was not behaving like a good friend.

Fired below API

# curl -sik -H “Accept:application/*+xml;version=5.6” -H “x-vcloud-authorization:Auth” -X DELETE https://us-california-1-3.vchs.vmware.com/api/compute/api/vApp/vapp-63592b99-fe00-41f3-bfbd-dbe27d3e9258… Read More

DRS/SDRS Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules

Manish Jha

Although there are 1000 of articles written on this topic, purpose of writing this article is to cover few objectives of VCAP6-Deploy exam. When I published my VCAP6 study guide, few topics I left purposefully as I had planned to write them later when I get some time.

So in this post we will be discussing about DRS & SDRS affinity/anti-affinity rules. 

Affinity Rules – VM to VM

Affinity rules are used by DRS to keep 2 virtual machines always running together. Affinity rules are generally used to keep virtual machines toether which have dependency on each other.

For e.g: You may want to keep an application and a database servers together on same host so that communication between the 2 servers don’t have to traverse a network link. If the VM’s of a multi-tiered application are running on different hosts, then they may generate a lot of network traffic between 2 hosts and can affect performance of VM’s/Hosts.… Read More

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 10: Catalog Management

Manish Jha

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

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 9: Configuring Blueprints

Manish Jha

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

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 8: Creating Network Profiles & Reservations

Manish Jha

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

vRealize Automation 7.3-Simple Installation: Part 7: Creating Fabric and Business Groups

Manish Jha

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