Automating the deployment of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu

I recently wrote about our Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu solution and how it can really benefit IT Admins, beyond just the App Modernization use case which it was primarily designed for. App Transformer is provided as a Virtual Appliance (OVA) and the deployment using the vSphere UI is very straight forward. In this blog post, we will focus on automating the deployment of the App Transformer OVA.

To demonstrate the automation, I have created two example scripts, one that uses PowerCLI and the other using OVFTool. Both scripts contain the exact same variable names that will need to be updated by customers based on their environment. You can find the description for each variable blow covering both the appliance and application settings.

App Transformer Appliance Settings

App Transformer Application Settings:

• AT_USERNAME – Username to login to App Transformer UI
• AT_PASSWORD – Password to login to App Transformer UI (requires a minimum of 12 characters)
• AT_ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD – Password used to encrypt the database
• AT_INSTALL_EMBEDDED_HARBOR – Install Embedded Harbor registry, useful for proof of concept/testing purposes

PowerCLI

For those interested in using PowerCLI for automation, you can use the deploy_app_transformer_ova.ps1 script and below is an example output. Upon completing the OVA deployment and powering on the VM, the script will also wait until the following URL: https://[IP_ADDRESS_OF_APP_TRANSFORMER is valid. This can take some time depending on the available resources in your environment and as you can see from my setup, it took a little under 30min.

OVFTool

For those interested in using a traditional shell script and OVFTool for automation, you can use the deploy_app_transformer_ova.sh script and below is an example output.

Note: Unlike the PowerCLI script, which will wait until the following URL: https://[IP_ADDRESS_OF_APP_TRANSFORMER is valid, this script simply deploys the OVA and then powers it on. It will take some additional time for the App Transformer to fully initialize and once completed, you should be able to access it via your browser using either the FQDN and/or IP Address.