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Unattended Deployment of vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

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I deployed VMware's new vCenter Infrastructure Navigator in my lab over the weekend and just like the rest of the other virtual appliances (vCloud, vCO, vCC, vShield), here is how you can automate the deployment of VMware vIN.

Here are the ovf parameters that are available to deploy vCenter Infrastructure Navigator:

  • vm.password
  • vami.gateway.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.DNS.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.ip0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator
  • vami.netmask0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator

To see these properties before deploying, you can query using the ovftool which can help you identify the name of the ovf variables using the following command:

ovftool --hideEula Navigator-1.0.0.49-592384_OVF10.ova

Note: Before deploying vIN, ensure that you have the vCenter advanced setting VirtualCenter.ManagedIP configured as it is needed by the vService in vIN. For more details, take a look at this blog post on how you can easily automate this.

Here is an example of the ovftool command to deploy vIN Server:

ovftool --acceptAllEulas --skipManifestCheck '--net:Network 1=VM_Network' --datastore=iSCSI-4 --diskMode=thin --name=vin --prop:vami.DNS.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.100 --prop:vami.gateway.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.1 --prop:vami.ip0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=172.30.0.150 --prop:vami.netmask0.vCenter_Infrastructure_Navigator=255.255.255.0 --prop:vm.password=vmware123 Navigator-1.0.0.49-592384_OVF10.ova 'vi://root:*protected email*/?dns=vesxi50-3.primp-industries.com'

Of course, I wrote a simple shell script deployvIN.sh to help with the deployment. The script assumes you have ovftool installed and the OVF files located in the same directory as the script. You will need to edit the following variables if you wish to deploy vIN:

Note: There are many ways of using the ovftool to deploy an OVF. In this simple example, it requires you to specify an ESX(i) host, but you can modify the locator to deploy to a VM folder or datacenter path. For more examples and options, please take a look at the ovftool documentation.

Here is an example of the script in action:

Once the vIN virtual appliance has been deployed, you can also have it automatically power on by specifying the following parameter --powerOn.

If everything was successful, you should be able to license vCenter Infrastructure Navigator using the vSphere Client C# client and then login to the vSphere Web Client to enable the discovery process for your virtual machines. Shortly after, you should start seeing some application dependency within your vSphere environment like this:

Automating vCenter Server Advanced Settings

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This weekend I needed to make a change to one of the advanced settings in my vCenter Server. This can be done using the vSphere Client, but it is also possible to use the vSphere API, (although it is not well-known). This can come in handy especially when you need to make a change across several dozen vCenter Servers and not have to manually login to each one. In the vSphere API, there is a property under the service content called setting which contains an array of advanced settings that can be modified.

I wrote a quick vSphere SDK for Perl script called vCenterAdvSettingMgmt.pl which allows for two type of operations "list" and "update". When you use the update operation, you will be required to pass in both the key and value that you would like to change.

Here is an example of the "list" operation:

Here is an example of the "update" operation where I am updating the "VirtualCenter.ManagedIP" setting:

You can verify the change by re-running the "list" operation:

This script came in very handy when deploying the new vCenter Infrastructure Navigator which requires "VirtualCenter.ManagedIP" to be configured prior to deploying.

How to Change the IP Address for vCenter Operations 5 vApp

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There was an interesting question on twitter from Matt Cowger yesterday asking how to modify the IP Address of the Analytics VM in the new vCenter Operations 5 vApp after it has been deployed. The new VC Ops 5 is actually composed of two virtual machines: UI and Analytics VM. As part of the initial deployment, they're is an exchange of information between the two VMs to properly get setup which includes the IP Addresses of each other. Simply modifying the IP Address of either VM will result in VC Ops not functioning correctly.

I personally have not had to re-IP my home deployment of VC Ops, but I did have some experience with CapacityIQ before it was combined into the VC Ops product and there was a nifty CLI tool called ciq-admin that was not very well known. I thought I check to see if the new VC Ops had something similar and to my surprise, an updated version of the tool exists and has been renamed to vcops-admin.

After a few minutes of looking around, it was clear that one could modify the IP Address of the Analytics VM and here are three simple steps.

Disclaimer: This is for educational purposes only, this is not officially supported by VMware. Please ensure you test and backup your system before making any changes in a real production system. Data that was previously collected will still be available after the change of an IP Address.

Modifying IP Address for Analytics VM:

Step 1 - First we need to shutdown VC Ops, you can do this from the administrator page by going to https://[vcops-ip]/admin and stopping the service under the Status tab. In this example, I will be showing you how to so using the CLI on the UI VM (this is primary system you use to access VC Ops)

You will need to sudo to "admin" user to run the command "vcops-admin stop". If you accidentally logged into the analytics VM and try to run the command, you will receive an error as the CLI is only available on the UI VM.

Step 2 - Log into the remote console of the analytics VM, this is required as you will be changing the IP Address and may possible impact network traffic. You will need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 using an editor such as "vi" and specify the IP Address you wish to change to. Once you are done, you will need to restart the network interface for the changes to take effect. To so so, run the following command "service network restart".

Step 3 - Go back to the UI VM (you will need to sudo over to "admin" account if you are not already) and you will now need to "repair" the connection between the UI and Analytics VM to ensure they can communicate with each other. To do so, you will run the following command "vcops-admin repair --ipaddress [new-analytics-ip]". If the UI VM is able to successfully connect to the new IP Address of the Analytics VM, it will automatically start up the VC Ops service. Once the service has been started, VC Ops is now running and operational.

Now what if you want to change the UI VM's IP Address? I thought this should be pretty straight forward right? Well, it took me a bit longer than I was expecting but the process is just four easy steps.

Modifying IP Address for UI VM:

Step 1 - Stop VC Ops service, you can do this using the admin portal or via SSH as shown in Step 1 of Analytics VM

Step 2 - Login to the remote console of the UI VM this is required as you will be changing the IP Address and may possible impact network traffic. You will need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 using an editor such as "vi" and specify the IP Address you wish to change to. Once you are done, you will need to restart the network interface for the changes to take effect. To so so, run the following command "service network restart".

Step 3 - Login via SSH to UI VM using the new IP Address (you will need to sudo over to "admin" account if you are not already) and you will now need to "repair" the connection between the UI and Analytics VM to ensure they can communicate with each other. To do so, you will run the following command "vcops-admin repair --ipaddress [new-analytics-ip]". If the UI VM is able to successfully connect to the Analytics VM, it will automatically start up the VC Ops service.

Step 4 - The last step is to update the vCenter VC Ops plugin information so when you navigate to the VC Ops extension, it knows the new IP Address. This step can be done by logging into the admin portal and under "Registration" tab, you will need to click on the "update" button for each and every vCenter that is attached to the VC Ops. In this example, I will show how to do so using the "vcops-admin" CLI. You will need to run the following command:

vcops-admin register update --vc-name [vc-name] --vc-server [https://vc-server/sdk] --username [vc-username] --password [vc-password] --force

Note: This process may take a few minutes for each vCenter that you need to update, also if you  have a dedicated service account for the collector, you can specify --collection-user and --collection-password agruments.

Though the process of modifying the IP Address is not available through the UI today, it is a feature that I will be requesting as this should be a trivial task for users.