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 the rest

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.

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

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

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

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

In our last post Creating and configuring Organizations we have created a new organization and went through the configuration settings. In this post we will see how to allocate resources to an organization.

Basically allocating resources means configuring org vDC’s and org vDC will be deriving their resources from Provider vDC (PvDC).

Lets begin with configuring the org vDC in this post.

Login to vCloud Director web interface and navigate to Home Tab and select item no 6 “Allocate resources to an organization“

A new wizard named “New Organization vDC” will be launched and the very first option that you will be presented is selecting the organization to which you want to allocate resources.

Select the organization from the list (I have only one in my home lab) and hit Next.

The next screen present you with option to select the Provider vDC. As the name suggests Provider vDC is the candidate which provides the resources to any org vDC.… Read the rest

In our last post of Configuring Networks in vCloud Director we have created External Network and Network Pools. Network Pools and External Network is consumed by the organizations and org vDC in vCloud Director.

In this post we will learn how to create organization and org vDC and will see how they utilize the network components.

1: Creating Organization

Login to web interface of vCloud Director and navigate to Home tab and click on Item no 5 “Create An Organization”

It will launch the New Organization wizard as shown below. This page lets you create the organization and generates the URL to access your organization.

Note: Organization name should not contain any spaces as it is not supported. Name of the organization affects the associated URL because naming format for URL will be https://name of vcd/cloud/org/name of your organization.

In my home lab I have chosen the name “Developers” for my organization and it generated the URL as https://vcd/cloud/org/Developers

Once you are done setting up organization name hit Next.… Read the rest

In our last post Configuring vCloud Director we have seen the initial configuration of vCloud director. Also we have created one Provider VDC and prepared the Esxi hosts for setting up the vCloud infrastructure.

In this post we will learn how to create networking components in vCloud Director. In my post Understanding vCloud Networking i tried to touch down on theoretical concepts of vCloud Networking. Now we will try our hands out on configuring the different network components in this post.

1: Creating External Network

The External Network is used for inter-Cloud connections. Its “your connection to the outside world” and by outside world I didn’t meant internet access. It’s anything that is taking your traffic out of your cloud. It may be connected to internet but not necessarily.

For creating External Network you should have a port-group created on vDS in advance. I have created a port-group by name “vCloud_Ext_NW” on my vDS and it is connected to a 10.10.10.x/24… Read the rest

One of the most complex concept of VMware vCloud Director is understanding the Networking and at times it can be very confusing.

In this post I will try to shed some light on the concepts of networking within vCD. Chris Wahl has explained vCD networking in his video series “vCloud Director Essentials” in a very beautiful way but still I was not 100% confident about concepts.

In this post I will try to explain the concepts which I learned from Chris video series as well as other sources. Feel free to do more research if any info provided here is not clear to you as I said earlier vCD networking is bit difficult to understand in very first attempt.

So Lets begin.

There are 3 types of Networking available within vCD:

1. External Network
2. Org Network
3. vApp Network

These three layers have been created to give the end-user the flexibility needed in a multi purpose virtual datacenter.… Read the rest

Problem: Today I faced a new problem in my home lab when I was trying to install the vShield components on my Esxi Hosts. Selecting the Esxi host and navigation to vShield tab was displaying an error

” vCenter User ‘Alexvcadmin’ has not been assigned a role on vShield Manager”

Reason: The reason for this error was I had not defined any role for the vCenter user (vcadmin in my case) on vShield manager appliance.

Resolution: To fix this issue login to web interface of vShield Manager, select Settings and Reports and navigate to Users tab and click on Add button to add a new user.

As you can see in below screenshot vcadmin user is not visible under user list.

Clicking on Add button will pop-up a new window where you have to specify the user details and associate this user with available role.

Select the second option “Specify a vCenter User” and provide the details of username in the format of Domainusername

Hit Next to select the roles for this user.… Read the rest

In our last post Configuring vShield Manager we have seen the initial configuration of vShield Manager. Now its time to start doing configuration of the vCloud Director. In this post I will touch down on different configurable options available in vCloud Director. So Lets start.

Open console of the vCloud Director by typing the URL https://vcloud_director_ip

It will present the welcome page listing the initial configuration items.

Hit Next to proceed. The very first configuration item is accepting the license agreement.

Hitting Next will prompt you to enter the License Key for your vCloud Director instance.

Once you entered your license key hit Next. The next screen will present option to set the administrator username and password and other related options. This username/password will be used for logging onto the vCloud director and perform all the other configurations.

Hit Next to proceed after you have entered the details. Next screen will provide you an option to define the system name.… Read the rest