WilliamLam.com

Docker Container for testing vSphere 3rd Party Content Library

by // Leave a Comment

Last week at VMworld, I co-presented a Technical Deep Dive on vSphere's Content Library feature (INF5106) which was first introduced in our vSphere 6.0 release. One of the demos that I showed case was the 3rd Party Content Library capability which allows you to publish your own Content Library without the need of a vCenter Server. For those of you who attended in person, you may have recalled that I had used a Docker Container to quickly standup an Nginx endpoint for hosting my 3rd Party Content Library.

I have just published my Docker Container called lamw/tp-content-library-demo on Dockerhub . If you wish to build the Docker Container yourself, you can take a look at my Github project vmworld2015-3rd-party-content-library for more details. You can also subscribe to my other 3rd Party Content Library which includes variety of Nested ESXi OVF Templates, for more details you can take a look at the blog post here.

Requirements:

  • Linux Container Host for running the Docker Container like VMware Photon for example
  • vSphere 6.0 environment

Instructions:

Step 1 - Download the 3rd Party Content Library Docker Container by running the following command:

docker pull lamw/tp-content-library-demo

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-0
Step 2 - Start the Docker Container by running the following command:

docker run -d -p 80:80 lamw/tp-content-library-demo

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-1
Step 3 - Verify that the Nginx webserver is properly running by visiting the following URL (replace with the IP Address/Hostname of your Container Host): http://192.168.1.143/vghetto/

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-22
If everything was setup correctly, you should see a variety of files from our sample 3rd Party Content Library along with the various JSON metadata files describing the library itself.

Step 4 - To subscribe to the 3rd Party Content Library, go ahead and create a new Content Library using the vSphere Web Client and start off by specifying the name of the Content Library you wish to create.

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-3
Step 5 - Next, go select the "Subscribed content library" option and paste in the following URL: http://[CONTAINER-HOST-IP]/vghetto/lib.json which is the 3rd Party Content Library endpoint running in our Docker Container.

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-4
Step 6 - Lastly, go ahead and select a storage backing for the library. In this case, I have selected a vSphere Datastore and then click finish to create the library.

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-5
Once the Content Library has successfully been created, we can then click into it to see that we are no subscribing to the 3rd Party Content Library that we had just hosted on our Nginx Docker Container as seen in the screenshot below.

vmworld-tp-content-library-demo-6
If you are interested to learning more about the Content Library feature, we will be repeating the Content Library Technical Deep Dive session at VMworld EMEA for those of you who will be attending. Hope to see you there!

Tech Preview of Windows VC to VCSA Migration at VMworld

by //

A couple weeks back I had teased out the #migrate2vcsa hashtag on Twitter and said to stay tune for folks planning to attend VMworld US in person. If you attended VMworld last week, you may gotten more details during TAM Day, at the VMware Booth or in either of the VCSA breakout sessions INF5975 & INF4528. I just found out this week that some of the VMworld sessions have already been posted online for everyone and it looks like one of my sessions, INF4528 vCenter Server Appliance Best Practices & Tips / Tricks session was one of them.

Well, it looks like the cats out of the bag! To be perfectly honest, I am actually glad, since now I can share some more details with my readers on what the VC Engineering team has been working very hard on. As you probably can guess from the cryptic hashtag, the topic is related to migrating from a Windows vCenter Server to the vCenter Server Appliance. About 6 months ago, we had released the VCS to VCVA Converter Fling and the feedback from customers has just been phenomenal. Though the Fling only supported a limited set of configurations, it did allow us to quickly gather feedback from customers on whether such a tool should still be further developed and more importantly, if the current workflow met user expectations.

At VMworld, we showed off a video of an early but functional Tech Preview of migrating from a Windows vCenter Server to a the vCenter Server Appliance to help Engineering get feedback from customers on the overall workflow. From the customers that I have talked to, the feedback have been super positive and in fact, they were quite excited. I do have to stress that this is still a Tech Preview and you should review the disclaimer below, but it should give you an idea of our current thinking.

Disclaimer: This overview of new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product.

We would still love to hear from you in case you did not get a chance to talk to us during VMworld. We are interested in any feedback you may have in terms of the overlal workflow and whether the process is intuitive or not. If you have any feedback after watching the video, please either leave a comment on my blog here or tweet your feedback using the #migrate2vcsa hashtag on Twitter.

For comparison, you can watch the Fling's workflow video here and compare and contrast that with the Tech Preview video below. In case the video does not automatically start playing at the Migration portion of the presentation (46:35), you can click here for the direct link.

VMworld Session VCSA INF5975 & INF4528 available to public

by // 1 Comment

I just found out this week after reading Eric Siebert blog post here, that a select number of VMworld 2015 US sessions have been made available to the general public on YouTube. I thought this was a very nice and pleasant surprise, especially for those who could not attend VMworld to be able to get a taste of some of the topics covered in last weeks conference. I personally have watched both the Cloud Native Apps and Future of NSX session, both of which I think are worth checking out not to mention the various demos in the NSX session!

For me personally, a hot topic that came up in almost every conversation when talking to our customers, field and partners at VMworld was the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). There were also plenty of sessions at the conference that covered the VCSA from basic introduction to performance to availability. Below are the two VCSA sessions that were selected to be made generally available to everyone, one of which I presented on. Hopefully you enjoy both videos and I would also like to thank everyone who attended my session last Monday. It was really great meeting many of my readers as well as customers looking to take advantage of the VCSA and some of the new features in our upcoming release. I also wrote a blog post here on the upcoming release of vSphere 6.0 Update 1 (GA sometime in Q3 2015) with respect to the VCSA in case you missed it.

INF5975 - vCenter Server Appliance as "First Choice" VC

INF4528 - vCenter Server Appliance Best Practices & Tips / Tricks