vCloud Director is one of the products I really enjoy working with and it has come a long way from when it was first released. I remember trying to work through deploying the early releases of v1 and 1.5 which seems like a life time ago now.
In my opinion one thing it has always needed is more visibility for the Tenant. Up until the release of version 1.0 of the vRealize Tenant App for VCD it was difficult for customers to get a detailed view of how their VMs inside of a hosted VCD environment have been performing. When a customer needed to troubleshoot issues at a VM level they would always have to reach out to their provider first.
Now with the combination of vRealize Operations Manager 7, vRealize Management Pack for VCD, vRealize Management Pack for NSX and the vRealize Tenant App for vCloud Director 2.1 this is no longer the case. Tenants can now access all of this information on an easy to read dashboard, along with reporting and billing capabilities from the drop down menu within vCloud Director.
To get started we need to have vRealize Operations Manager deployed with our environment so the following is a walk through for the base deployment of the vRealize Operations Manager 7 virtual appliance. As there are a few components we need to deploy and connect together this one post looks like it might turn into three as we also need to run through deploying RabbitMQ. Stay tuned for those as they will be up soon.
So to get started let’s download the appliance from VMware
Log into vCenter and right click on the host or cluster where you would like to deploy the VM and select Deploy the OVF Template
Enter a Name for the VM and click Next
Select a location to install the OVF and click Next
Review the details and click Next
Accept the License agreement and click Next
For this deployment I will be selecting the Small deployment configuration. Pretty sure my lab won’t get anywhere near 3500 VMs.
Then click Next
From here modify the disk format if required and select the datastore to install the VM on. Then click Next
Select the Destination network and click Next
Fill out the following fields to complete the installation,
Timezone Setting
Default Gateway
Domain Name
Domain Search Path
Domain Name Servers
Network IP Address
Netmask
Review the settings and click Finish
Next we are going to log into the web portal to configure vRealize Operations Manager as a Master node. The Master node is required first and you can also add in a data node, a HA master replica node and a remote controller node. For this installation as we will only have a single master node so both administration and data functions will run from the same VM.
The default installation has the following configuration, 4 vCPU and 16GB of ram. It also has 3 hard disks attached, 20GB, 250Gb and 4GB.
Browse to the newly deployed VM to start the setup https://LABVROPS01
Now you should see the Get Started screen. For this deployment we are going to select New Installation
On the New Cluster screen click Next
Enter the admin password you would like to use and click Next
From here you can select a Certificate to use but for this example I am just going to use the default certificate as its being run up in my lab.
Click Next
Enter the Cluster Master Node Name you would like to use and then add in an NTP Server.
Once complete click Next
Since we have only setup the one node so far just click Next on the Add Nodes screen
Then on the Ready to Complete screen click Finish
You will then be redirected to the vRealize Operations Manager screen. If at this point it logs out just log back in with admin and credentials you entered during the install and click Start vRealize Operations Manager.
Then click Yes on the Confirm First Application Startup screen
Now it’s time to get yourself a coffee and wait for the Master server Cluster Status to change to Online. This can take over 10 minutes in some instances.
When everything is ready you should see the following screen. Both the Cluster Status and the Master Node should be Online.
We have now deployed the Master Node which is required before any other additional nodes can be added in. You can now follow a similar process to add in additional collector nodes and replicas if required for your scenario. After deploying the OVF file again you will just need to select Expand An Existing Installation and follow the prompts.
For this guide I won’t be adding in any additional nodes as the main purpose of this post is to get us to a point where we are ready to deploy and integrate the vRealize Tenant App 2.1 for vCloud Director.
Now it’s time to login to vRealize Operations Manager and finish the setup.
Connect to vRealize by entering the following url – https://labvrops01/ui
You will be presented with the Congratulations on setting up vRealize Operations Manager screen. Click Next to continue.
Accept the License Agreement and click Next
Enter the product key and click Next
Select whether or not you would like to Join the Vmware Customer Experience Improvement Program and click Next
Then click Finish to complete the setup
Once complete you should see the following dashboard.
One thing we should do first is set the Currency. From the Administration tab expand Management and click on Global Settings. Then on the right locate Currency and click Choose Currency.
Then you can search for your currency to narrow down the list. Click on the currency you would like to use and then tick the box below explaining that once you set this you cannot change it. Then click Set Currency.
This is something that is required before you can setup the billing within the app.
Click OK on the Info box that is displayed.
In the left hand menu expand Access and select Authentication Sources. From here you can go through and connect your vRealize Operations Manager deployment to AD. This part is optional.
You can select Active Directory from the Source Type drop down menu. Fill in the connection details for your environment, Test the connection and click OK.
Step 1 is now complete and we have the base installation of vRealize Operations Manager 7 in place. In my next post we will cover the RabbitMQ component and then go through deploying and configuring the Tenant App plugin so that it is available to Tenants within vCloud Director.
You can find a link to that post here
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