vcenter server appliance

Automating VCSA 5.5 Configurations including SSO Administrator password

11.03.2014 by William Lam // 3 Comments

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the VCSA (vCenter Server Appliance), not only for its ease of deployment and setup but also the fact that I can easily automate the entire deployment in just under a couple of minutes. I have written about this topic in the past using the vpxd_servicecfg command to automate both VCSA 5.0 and VCSA 5.1. I figured it was probably a good idea to update this for latest VCSA 5.5 which includes several new enhancements to vpxd_servicecfg command such as the VMware Customer Experience Improve Program configuration (vTelemtry) among other options that you can explore by simply running the vpxd_servicecfg on the VCSA.

The other reason I wanted to update this for the latest VCSA 5.5 is that I was working with Engineering last week on a project and several of them did not know about this capability of being able to automate the VCSA configuration. Instead of providing them with the raw commands, I thought I would create an updated script that can be shared with the community so that others could also benefit from it. Lastly, I also did this for myself as I deploy a large amount of VCSA for all sorts of testing that I am doing on a regular basis and this would allow me to quickly speed up my deployment by simply going to my own blog 🙂

Below is a shell script that contains several variables that can be edited based on your environment setup and you can run this script over SSH using something like: ssh root@[VCSA-IP] < configureVCSA.sh

#!/bin/bash
# William Lam
# www.virtuallyghetto.com
# Script to automate VCSA 5.5+ Configurations

# User Configurations

# SSO Administrator password (*protected email*)
SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD=VMware1!

# Join Active Directory (following 5 variables required)
JOIN_AD=0
AD_DOMAIN=primp-industries.com
AD_USER=administrator
AD_PASS=mysupersecurepassword
VCENTER_HOSTNAME=vcenter51-1.primp-industries.com

# Enable NTP
ENABLE_NTP=0
NTP_SERVERS=192.168.1.1

# Enable VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program
ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY=1

################ DO NOT EDIT BEYOND HERE ################
 
echo "Accepting VMware EULA ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg eula accept

if [ ${JOIN_AD} -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "Configuring vCenter Server hostname ..."
        SHORTHOSTNAME=$(echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} |  cut -d. -f1)
        /bin/hostname ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME}
        echo ${VCENTER_HOSTNAME} > /etc/HOSTNAME
        sed -i "s/localhost/${SHORTHOSTNAME}/g" /etc/hosts
 
        echo "Configuring Active Directory ..."
        /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg ad write "${AD_USER}" "${AD_PASS}" ${AD_DOMAIN}
fi

echo "Enbaling Time Synchronization ..."
if [ ${ENABLE_NTP} -eq 1 ]; then
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write ntp ${NTP_SERVERS} 
else
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg timesync write tools 
fi 

echo "Configuring vCenter Server Embedded DB ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg db write embedded
								 
echo "Configuring vCenter Server SSO w/custom *protected email* password ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg sso write embedded ${SSO_ADMINISTRATOR_PASSWORD}

echo "Starting the vCenter Server Service ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg service start

if [[ -e /var/log/vmware/phonehome ]] && [[ ${ENABLE_VC_TELEMTRY} -eq 1 ]]; then
	echo "Enabling vCenter Server Telemtry ..."
	/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg telemetry enable
fi

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!

Quick Tip - Automate the enabling of the Customer Experience Improvement Program (vTelemetry) in VCSA

09.16.2014 by William Lam // 4 Comments

The VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program is a new feature that was introduced with the latest release of vCenter Server 5.5 Update 2 (vCenter Server for Windows & the VCSA). This feature provides the following per the documentation:

If you choose to participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program (Program), VMware receives anonymous information to improve the quality, reliability, and functionality of VMware products and services. VMware wants to understand better your vSphere deployment and business needs, and improve VMware response to customer requirements. You can choose to participate in the Program for vSphere at any time.

In my opinion, this has been needed for quite some time now. If you have ever installed any consumer based software, there is usually an option that allows customers to provide basic telemetry data back to the vendor so that they can better understand how the product is being used and more importantly leverage that data to help improve the product and features future.

The process of collecting basic telemetry (sometimes also known as phone home) is not a new concept in the Enterprise. In fact, for those of you who manage a storage array, this has been a standard practice for many many years now where every night, the storage array sends back a variety of telemetry data that may include performance information, utilization, logs, etc. to the vendors HQ. This data is then analyzed and the vendor maybe able to sport trends of a potential issue and proactively alert customers to take action before a problem even arises. Michael White has also recently written about the topic here which I recommend a read as well.

There are four categories of data that is being collected:

esxcfg-info.xml
Extension.json
AboutInfo.json
performance-stats.txt

If you wish to learn more about what is being collected and how to view the data before it is sent, please take a look at the documentation here.

One thing I had noticed when deploying the latest VCSA 5.5 Update 2 is that there is now an option to enable the Customer Experience Improvement Program and of course I was interested in automating this configuration as part of my VCSA deployment script.

Taking a look at the logs, I found that there is a new option that has been introduce in /usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg called telemtry:

Telemetry data collection modes:
read         : read and return the current status of the collector
enable       : enables the telemetry data collection
disable      : disables the telemetry data collection

To enable the Customer Experience Improvement Program as part of the VCSA setup, you must enable it after vpxd (vCenter Server) has started. Here is the modified VCSA configuration shell script:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Accepting EULA ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg eula accept

echo "Configuring Embedded DB ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg db write embedded

echo "Configuring SSO ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg sso write embedded

echo "Starting VCSA ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg service start

echo "Configuring VC Telemetry ..."
/usr/sbin/vpxd_servicecfg telemetry enable

If you decide not to enable this feature during the initial deployment or if you have upgraded from an existing vCenter Server, this feature can also be enabled after the fact. To do so, you will need to login to your vCenter Server using the vSphere Web Client and under the Settings tab of your vCenter Server, there is an option to enable or disable the Customer Experience Improvement Program

Note: When enabling or disabling the Customer Experience Improvement Program, a restart of vCenter Server is not necessary.

Hopefully customers will see the benefit and value in joining the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program and over time, I think you will start to see some really neat benefits for those who participate in this program.