vRealize Automation- Deploying and Configuring vRealize Automation Appliance

Manish Jha

In our last post we have installed and configured Identity Appliance which will serve as SSO for rest of the components of vCAC (vRA). In this post we will learn how to install and configure vRealize Automation Appliance (formerly vCAC).

Before diving into installation lets have a basic understanding of what is vRA and what it do.

Overview of vRA

The vRA appliance provides cloud management & a self-service portal for cloud services  as well as authoring, administration, and governance.  vRA can be deployed as a single instance or we can deploy multiple instances of it behind a load balancer to achieve high availability.

Installation Prerequisites

1: DNS (forward / reverse) entry created for vRA appliance.

2: Network Time Protocol (NTP) server configured.

3: SSO (Identity Appliance or vCenter 5.5 U1 SSO) installed and configured.

4: 2 vCPU / 8 GB of RAM / 30 GB of storage.

Database Consideration

The vRA appliance have an embedded Postgres database but we have also following choice for database selection:

a: Use the embedded vPostgres database available with  vRA appliance.… Read More

vRealize Automation- Deploying and Configuring Identity Appliance

Manish Jha

Setting up vCAC (vRA) environment consists of 3 things:

1: Deploying and Configuring Identity Appliance

2: Deploying and configuring vRA Appliance (vCAC Server)

3: Deploying and Configuring IaaS Components

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then I would recommend reading them first before going ahead. You can access the earlier posts from below links:

1: Introduction to vCAC(vRA)

In this post we will be focusing on Installing and Configuring the Identity Appliance

What is Identity Appliance?

The VMware Identity Appliance is a virtual appliance for vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) that provides vCAC with single sign-on (SSO) authentication capabilities.

The Identity Appliance is available in form of ovf template which can be deployed on top of vSphere. Depending upon the infrastructure design, you can deploy a single instance of Identity Appliance or can go ahead with multiple instances (For HA purposes).

Note: Identity Appliance is not a mandatory requirement if you are running vSphere v5.5 Update 1 or above in your environment.… Read More

vRealize Automation- vCAC Introduction

Manish Jha

What is vCloud Automation Center?

vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) is part of vCloud suite (Enterprise Edition) which provides administrators with the ability to provision and configure storage, network and compute resources across multiple platforms.

It makes life of a cloud administrator easier by allowing them to automate application delivery and simplify the deployment of multi-tiered applications while managing multi-vendor and multi-cloud infrastructures.

VMware offers vCloud Automation Center in three editions: Standard, Advanced and Enterprise.

The goal of vCAC is to deploy and provision cloud services across private & public clouds, physical infrastructures, hypervisors and public cloud providers. The following cloud Platforms are supported by vCAC:

1: vCloud Director (as of version 5.1)

2: Hyper-V

3: XenServer

vCAC also supports Dell DRAC, HP ILO, Cisco’s UCS manager and there’s an integration with NetApp DataOntap.

vCAC Architecture                                       

The architecture of vCAC looks like below

vcac arch

Graphic Thanks to VMware

At the very high level, vCAC architecture can be broken down into following tiers:

  • Presentation Tier– The uppermost tier provides an interface to the end-users/consumers who access resources and applications provisioned from the Cloud. 
… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 14-Migrating VM from vSphere Infrastructure to private Cloud using vCloud Connector

Manish Jha

In our last post  of this series we have learnt what is vCloud connector and what it does.

Now its time to see vCloud Connector in action. In this post we will learn how to migrate a VM from existing vSphere Infrastructure to a private cloud running on vCloud Director.

vCloud Connector has server/node type architecture where there will be one server and one node for each type of cloud. Also we require a node to be deployed for vSphere Infrastructure.

In my last post Installing/Configuring vCloud Connector I have deployed a server and also a node for my vSphere infrastructure. After that we have to deploy a new node for the private cloud (running on vCloud director)

I have already deployed the same and in below screenshot you can see one node by the name “vCC-Node-Pri Cloud”

vcc-p1

Also I have registered this node with my vCloud Director instance

vcc-p2

On vCloud Connector Server I have added the newly added node which is registered with vCloud Director

vcc-p3

I can see both my node (for vSphere and vCloud director) listed here

vcc-p4

Now login to vCenter Server using VI client and from home page click on vCloud Connector to launch below page.… Read More

Troubleshooting Datastore Cluster Disappearance Issue in vCloud Director

Manish Jha

Today I was facing a weird issue in my vCloud Lab. All my datastores have disappeared from vCloud Director and the storage policy was not showing any datastore. I have included a few snapshots from my lab here:

1: Storage Policies was not listing any datastore

ste-1

2: Selecting Datastore and Datastore Cluster was not listing any datastore either

ste-2

3: Due to this my Provider vDC was not able to see any datastores

ste-3

4: And since Provider vDC had no visibility to any datastore, my Organization vDC was throwing this alert

ste-4

This was strange as till last night everything was all right in my lab.

I started googling and got a cool VMware KB 2075366 which helped me in resolving my issue.

This is what I done to resolve the issue:

1: SSH to my vCloud Director Server and navigated to directory /opt/vmware/vcloud/bin and fired the following commands:

[root@vcd bin]# ./cell-management-tool -u svcvcloud -p MYPassword cell –quiesce true
[root@vcd bin]# service vmware-vcd stop

2: Login to SQL Server Management Studio and selected my vCloud Database and ran the following SQL query

Note: Before running the below query make sure you have taken backup of your database

delete from dbo.cluster_compute_resource_inv;… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 13-Installing and Configuring vCloud Connector

Manish Jha

In this post we will see how to deploy vCloud Connector and use it to facilitate a hybrid cloud architecture. Before going into installation and configuration part first lets see what is vcloud connector

What is vCloud connector?

The VMware vCloud Connector is a tool that facilitates hybrid cloud computing for organizations. The vCloud Connector essentially helps to orchestrate and administer the migration of VM’s across different data centers and clouds.

VMware vCloud Connector links your internal private cloud with public clouds, so you can manage them as a single hybrid environment and transfer workloads back and forth.

vCloud Connector also provides the following key features.

  • Content Sync lets you set up a Content Library to distribute and synchronize templates across clouds.
  • Datacenter Extension (Stretch Deploy) lets you extend your private data center to a public vCloud.
  • Offline Data Transfer enables you to transfer large amounts of data from your private data center to VMware vCloud® Air™.
… Read More

Importing vApp into vCloud Director catalog from vSphere

Manish Jha

In this post I am going to cover how to import a vApp running on vSphere to a catalog in vCloud director.

I have a VM “server2k3” in my vSphere environment which I will be exporting as vApp in my public catalog in vcloud director.

I have selected my organization which have rights to publish catalogs to other organizations in my vCloud director environment. From Catalogs tab I selected option import from vSphere.

From vCenter server list select your vCenter and then select the VM which will be imported. Give a name and description for the imported VM.

In copy or move option I selected “move” otherwise I will have 2 instance of my server 2k3 VM on vCenter server. One appearing as normal VM and one as vApp  under resource pool corresponding to my public organization. Also I have made this vm as gold master.

Hit ok after you are done with selections.… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 12-Deploying vApps from Catalogs

Manish Jha

In our last post Creating and Publishing Catalogs we have seen how to create a public catalog and share it with organizations present in your cloud infrastructure. Also I have populated the public catalog with one server 2003 vApp.

In this post we will see how an organization named “developers” deploy a new vApp from the public catalog that is shared with it. So Lets begin

Login to vcd web interface and go to Manage and Monitor tab and select organizations. In right hand side of the window double click on developers to open it.

orgc-1

Go to catalogs tab and verify public catalogs is listed there.

orgc-2

Now go to home tab and click on “Add vApp from catalog”

orgc-3

From Look In tab select “Public Catalogs” as we have not defined any organization catalog for organization developers.

orgc-4

I have imported a server-2k3 vApp in public catalog. Select the vApp and hit next.… Read More

Building a Private Cloud with vCloud Director-Part 11-Creating and Publishing Catalogs

Manish Jha

In our last post of this series we have seen how to  Create and Configure org vDC. Now since Org vDC have been setup, next task is to create some vApps in the organization. But before creating vApps there must be catalogs defined.

What is catalog?

A catalog is a container for vApp templates and media files in an organization. Organization administrators and catalog authors can create catalogs in an organization. Catalog contents can be shared with other users in the organization and can also be published to all organizations in the vCloud Director installation.

There are 2 types of catalogs available within vCloud Director:

1: Public: Public catalogs are created for sharing with many/all organizations within a vCloud infrastructure. Organization administrators from any organization in the vCloud Director can view the vApp templates and media files in a public catalog and copy those files to a catalog in their organization for use by their members.… Read More

Setting up LDAP Authentication in vCloud Director

Manish Jha

Logging in to your vCloud Director system/organisation via the web interface can be achieved in a number of ways. You can use local authentication (users local to vCloud Director), your Active Directory, or another LDAP v3 compliant directory service for authentication and group membership lookup.

After you connect vCloud Director to an LDAP server, you can import system administrators from the groups and users in the LDAP directory. You can also use the system LDAP settings to import users and groups to an organization, or you can specify separate LDAP settings for each organization. An LDAP user cannot log in to vCloud Director until you import them to the system or an organization.

Note:

1: vCloud Director does not support hierarchical domains for LDAP authentication.

2: vCloud Director cannot modify the information in your LDAP directory. You can add, delete, or modify LDAP users or groups only in the LDAP directory itself.… Read More