OVFTool – Page 13

Ultimate automation guide to deploying VCSA 6.0 Part 0

02.09.2015 by William Lam // 8 Comments

With vSphere 6.0, there is a new deployment model for vCenter Server which is comprised of following two core components:

Platform Services Controller (PSC) Node - Provides VMware Infrastructure services such as vCenter Single Sign-On, vSphere Licensing and VMware Certificate Authority Management (VCMA)
vCenter Server Management Node - Provides vCenter Server Service, Inventory Service, vSphere Web Client, vPostgres DB, vSphere Syslog Collector, vSphere Auto Deploy, and vSphere Dump Collector Services

From these two components, there are three deployment types (also shown in the diagrams below):

Embedded Node - Both the Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server Management Node reside on a single system, this is true for both the Windows vCenter Server and the VCSA
External Platform Services Controller Node - You can deploy multiple PSC's and configure them with independent SSO Domains or have them all joined to a single SSO Domain, replicating between each other
vCenter Server Management Node - This requires that you have deployed an external PSC which the vCenter Server can point to

There are currently two supported methods of deploying the VCSA 6.0 Appliance which is using the new HTML based UI (Supported only on Windows) or a new scripted installer method (supports Windows, Mac & Linux). Both of these methods today require direct access to an ESXi host for deployment, which may not work for everyone. What if you want to deploy the new VCSA 6.0 using an existing vCenter Server or running it on top of VMware Fusion or Workstation? Luckily, I spent quite a bit of time going through all these "alternative" deployment methods and documenting the process so that you have a choice on how you would like to test and evaluate vSphere 6 and the new VCSA in your environment.

These alternative methods will be using the VCSA OVA which is actually included in the VCSA ISO. You will need to extract the contents of the VCSA ISO and you can find the OVA in the following path after extraction: VMware-VCSA-all-6.0.0-2562643->vcsa->vmware-vcsa where vmware-vcsa is the VCSA OVA file. Depending on the deployment method you are using, you may only need to just extract the contents of the ISO or possibly rename the vmware-vcsa with .ova extension to deploy. Please refer to the articles below for more details.

Disclaimer: Though these alternative deployment options work, they are however not officially supported by VMware. Please use at your own risk.

In the upcoming days, I will be sharing a 4-part blog series for automating the deployment of the new VCSA 6.0 with the following deployment options:

In each article, I will provide resources on how to deploy to an existing vCenter Server or directly to an ESXi host using ovftool via a shell script as well using PowerCLI, deploying to VMware Fusion and deploying to VMware Workstation. Stay tune for Part 1 ...

Automate Deployment & Configuration of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 Part 1

12.10.2014 by William Lam // 1 Comment

Yesterday was a huge day for VMware's Management BU which released several updates to their product offerings within their vRealize Suite 6.x including some new products like the new vRealize Code Stream mentioned during this years VMware Europe Conference. Prior to GA, I had already received several Automation questions regarding the upcoming vRealize Operations Manager 6.0 (vROps). Luckily, I had a couple of days to play around with the new release before it was made public and I must to say, I am quite impressed at how easy and intuitive it is to deploy and configure the new vRealize Operations Manager 6.0.

To make it even easier for customers to evaluate the new release, I wanted to take a look at how you can easily automate both the deployment and configuration of the new vRealize Operations Manager. I have broken the process down into three parts: deployment using ovftool which will include both a non-Windows as well as a Windows solutions for my PowerCLI buddies, initial configuration using the command-line via a shell script and finally the same identical initial configuration but using the new vRealize Operations Manager Cluster Mgmt API (also known as the CaSA API which stands for Cluster and Slice Administration).

As mentioned already, this first article will focus on deploying the new vRealize Operations Manager OVA using ovftool. Previously, the vCOps VA was deployed as a vApp that contained two Virtual Machines. The new architecture provides a more dynamic approach and a new capability has been brought into the application that allows you to easily scale out the various vROps "roles" such as the Admin, UI, Data, Data Collector and Replica. This greatly simplifies the initial deployment which is always a plus in my book!

Disclaimer: These scripts are provided for informational and educational purposes only. It should be thoroughly tested before attempting to use in a production environment.

I have created a simple shell script called: deployvROps.sh and there are several variables that need to be edited based on your environment including the path to the OVA. Please take a look at the script prior to executing.

To execute the script, you simply just run the following:

./deployvROps.sh

You will be prompted to confirm the configurations you have specified before the OVA is deployed. If everything was successfully deployed, you should see your new vROps VM power up. Next, open a browser to either the IP Address or hostname of your vROps VM and you should see the following landing page as shown in the screenshot below. At this point, you have completed the deployment of vROps 6.0. As for next steps, you can either manually proceed to configure your new vROps instance or stay tune for Part 2 where I will demonstrate how you can easily automate the initial vROps configurations.

Note: There is a hidden OVF property called guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled that will allow SSH to be enabled upon deployment. To be able to configure this property, you must add an advanced ovftool option called --X:enableHiddenProperties which the shell script already takes care of. Unfortunately, for PowerCLI's Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet, these custom options have not been implemented and hence you will not be able to turn on SSH when using the PowerCLI method. I have already filed an FR internally for this and hopefully see this in a future release of PowerCLI.

Here is a Windows solution to deploying the vRealize Operations Manager called Deployment.ps1 using PowerCLI's Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet and I have contributed a new sample to Alan Renouf's PowerCLI Deployment Repository. Before running the Deployment.ps1 script, you will also need to edit the variables in the script to match your environment.

Here is a screenshot using the Deployment.ps1 script:

Now that you have your new vRealize Operations Manager deployed, you can manually go through the guided wizard for the initial configuration or stay tune for Part 2 where I will demonstrate you how you can easily automate the initial vROps configurations using the command-line.

How to evaluate the vSphere VCSA Beta running on VMware Fusion & Workstation?

10.13.2014 by William Lam // 17 Comments

If you are taking part in the vSphere Beta (available to public to sign up but still under NDA), you may have recently noticed a new milestone release (RC) that has been made available for download. Having been a long time Beta participant when I was customer and still continuing to do so in my current role, the best way to evaluate and test new VMware software is to of course run them on top of vSphere! I know this may not be an option for everyone and the next best thing would be to use VMware Fusion or Workstation.

For those of you who have tried to run the vSphere Beta of VCSA on VMware Fusion or Workstation, you may have found that it does not work as there are some input parameters that are required as part of the new VCSA deployment. These parameters leverages OVF properties which are currently not supported in VMware Fusion and Workstation and therefore the new injectOvfEnv option in ovftool can not be used.

Having said that, VMware Engineering is quite aware that this can be challenging for many customers as well as VMware Employees who make use of Fusion and Workstation on a daily basis. That is why they have built the VCSA to be quite flexible to support both vSphere as well as Fusion and Workstation, however the process may not be completely obvious for the latter. If you inspect the latest VCSA Beta OVA, which you will need to extract from the ISO, you will notice a series of "keys" that begin with guestinfo which is just leveraging custom key/value pairs for the OVF environment.

Ideally, these are passed in from the OVF Properties using either the vSphere Web Client or the new VCSA deployment tool. However, due to the lack of OVF Property support, it can also be passed in through the VMX file of the Virtual Machine.

Here are the steps to deploy the VCSA Beta using either VMware Fusion or Workstation:

Step 1 - Download the VCSA Beta which is available as an ISO

Step 2 - Extract the contents of the ISO and add the .ova extension to following file located in vcsa/vmware-vcsa (this is the VCSA OVA)

Step 3 - Upload the OVA using either VMare Fusion or Workstation (you can either double click or just go to File->Open) but make sure you do not power it on after deployment. (this is very important)

Step 4 - Locate the directory in which the VCSA was deployed to and open up the VMX file and append the following (make sure to change the IP information and passwords based on your environment):

guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr.family = "ipv4"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.mode = "static"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.addr = "192.168.1.90"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.prefix = "24"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.gateway = "192.168.1.1"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.net.dns.servers = "192.168.1.1"
guestinfo.cis.vmdir.password = "VMware1!"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.passwd = "VMware1!"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.time.tools-sync = "True"
guestinfo.cis.appliance.ssh.enabled = "True"

Note: The example above is a very basic VCSA deployment which should suffice for the majority of you. If you wish to deploy a more complex scenario, you can inspect the VCSA OVA for additional parameters and see their expected values.

Step 5 - Once you have saved your changes, go ahead and power on the VCSA. At this point, the guestinfo properties that you just added will be read in by VMware Tools as the VCSA is booting up and the configuration will begin. Depending on the speed of your hardware, hopefully in a very short amount of time you will have a fully configured VCSA that is ready for your evaluation and testing.

Here is a screenshot of running the VCSA Beta on both VMware Fusion and Workstation:

If you wanted to take this one step further and automate the entire deployment, you can leverage the ovftool to deploy the OVA as shown with the Fusion example below:

'/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/VMware OVF Tool/ovftool' --name=vmware-vcsa --acceptAllEulas --allowExtraConfig /PATH/TO/VCSA/OVA '/Users/lamw/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized'

and then append the specific configuration using either an echo or here-statement. You can also do the same on Windows leveraging either plain Windows Bat script or PowerShell.

Hopefully for those of you who only have access to Fusion or Workstation, you can now also take part in the vSphere Beta if you do not have a vSphere lab that can be used. I would also recommend checking out the vSphere Beta Community as there is a new contest that launched today for finding bugs in the latest RC release. Not only can you help improve the product through your feedback, you can also win some some $$$ in doing so!