Over the last couple of weeks, I have received numerous requests about automating the deployment of the recently released vRealize Automation 7 (vRA) similar to what I did for vCloud Automation Center 6.0 when it was released. To be honest, I have not spent much time with vRealize Automation as you can see from my last post, it was dated back in 2013. I know there have been some significant improvements in the latest vRA release and perhaps it now officially supports silent or scripted installs like the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).
I was a bit bummed to hear that this capability still had not made it into the product which would make streamlining proof of concept and Production deployments a breeze. I mean, why would you want to manually install it if you could automate, right? 🙂 I figure I reach out to one of my vRA Engineering buddies Kim Delgado to see if anything had already been done in this area. She was nice enough to share a couple of resources which cover certain parts of the deployment but nothing that was tying everything together.
I figure I would see what I could re-purpose and try to put together a few simple scripts that would allow anyone to easily stand up a minimal vRA 7 deployment for testing and POC purposes. I normally like prove everything out before publishing but in this case, I figure I would just go with the flow. So far, I have broken down the automation into the following three sections listed below. I have successfully completed Part 1 and Part 2 and I have not attempted Part 3 and Part 4, so I do not know it it will be possible or what issues I might run into.
- Automating vRealize Automation 7 Minimal Install: Part 1 - vRA Appliance Deployment
- Automating vRealize Automation 7 Minimal Install: Part 2 - vRA IaaS Agent Deployment
- Automating vRealize Automation 7 Minimal Install: Part 3 - vRA Appliance Configuration
- Automating vRealize Automation 7 Minimal Install: Part 4 - vRA IaaS Configuration
Note: You can deploy vRA 7 in either a minimal setup which has just the vRA appliance and vRA IaaS system running or in a fully distributed model which they are calling Enterprise. In the series, I will only be covering the minimal deployment. For those interested in a distributed deployment, hopefully you will be able to build upon the scripts that I have created and should be a fun learning exercise for those looking to do more automation.
In part 1 of this series, I will be covering the deployment of the vRA 7 Appliance and have created the following PowerCLI deployment.ps1 script. There are several properties you will need to fill out such as the networking configuration, OS credentials, etc. before you can run the script. Once the script completes, you can verify that the deployment was successful by opening a browser to VAMI interface of the vRA Appliance using the following URL: https://[VRA-HOSTNAME]:5480
Stay tuned for Part 2 next week where I will be covering how to automate the installation of the vRA IaaS Management Agent.
makes sure to create a cert for each service if using a internal or external cert. 🙂
Hello William,
As usual, your posts are life saving for us. I am trying to build on what you have already shared here. I need to automate an Enterprise Deployment. Any idea of how I can create the Postgres SQL cluster between the 2 vRA appliances? of course all ressources are welcomed. Any hint on how I can leverage the commands of the VAMI to get that going on my side? Been trying for months.... 🙁
Hi William - can we download trial versions of vrealize suite (operations / automation / orchestrator) ? or is it only available to partners ?
Hello William,
Thank you for making my work simple!
Im trying to build what you have shared here but Im facing a strange issue.
After the vRA appliance deployment using OVA file, it is not taking the hostname 🙁
It shows "localhost.localdm" even the DNS name on the vSphere also showing the same.
What i observed here, the "hostname" property is not passed to the appliance while the installation.
PS C:\> $ovfconfig.vami.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
gateway :
domain :
searchpath :
DNS :
ip0 :
netmask0 :
Above it shows there is no "hostname" listing on VAMI
But hash table shows the hostname field. You can find it below
PS C:> $ovfconfig.ToHashTable() | ft -AutoSize
Name Value
---- -----
va-ssh-enabled
vami.searchpath.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
varoot-password
vami.gateway.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
vami.ip0.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
vami.domain.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
vami.hostname
vami.netmask0.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
vami.DNS.VMware_vRealize_Appliance
NetworkMapping.Network 1
IpAssignment.IpProtocol
Please help me to get the hostname on the vRA appliance...
Hello Sarin,
you cannot set the hostname via the vami/ova config. You need to ssh into the appliance to run the following command:
('/usr/sbin/vcac-vami host update '+$VRA_APPLIANCE_HOSTNAME+' >> "${VRA_INSTALL_LOG}" 2>&1') where $VRA_APPLIANCE_HOSTNAME is the variable that has the hostname value.
Hi Ally,
Thank you for your reply!
Sorry for the delayed response...
I have tried the above command but it is not changed the host name. Still it is showing "localhost.localdom"
Actual server name - VRA-test-1.vra.com
The "/etc/hosts" has below entries
127.0.0.1 VRA-test-1.vra.com load-balancer-host
# VAMI_EDIT_BEGIN
# Generated by Studio VAMI service. Do not modify manually.
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.7.11 localhost.localdom localhost
# VAMI_EDIT_END
localhost:~ #
Could you please help on this?
Any other way to fix this issue?