WilliamLam.com

Automate the deployment & initial configuration of Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager (formally vRSLCM) 

by // 3 Comments

I love writing automation, especially for deploying a consistent and repeatable environment for testing or learning purposes. I recently deployed the latest Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.14 (formally vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager or vRSLCM) manually using the graphical Easy Installer method, which was easy and straight forward.

Unlike the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) installer, which includes both a UI and CLI option, the latter for automation purposes. I found that ASLCM only provides an interactive UI method for deployment and I was interested in an automated solution. Similar to the VCSA installer, the extracted contents of the ASLCM ISO is the installer and OVA image, so I figured I could just deploy using PowerCLI and I could start playing with ASLCM!

Automating the ASLCM OVA deployment was trivial, but what I discovered was that there was different behavior between using the Easy Installer versus just deploying the OVA and powering it on. I observed that I was not able to login using the password that I had set in the OVF properties for the admin@local user ...

[Read more...]

Automating vRealize stack based on VVD using new vRealize Suite Lifecycle Management

by // 1 Comment

Our Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) at VMware just GA'ed the highly anticipated vRealize Suite Lifecycle Management or vRSLCM for short. As the name suggests, this new solution provides customers a simple and consistent mechanism for managing the entire lifecycle management (Day 0 to Day N) for all VMware vRealize Products including but not limited to Install, Upgrade, Configuration Management, Drift Remediation and Health Monitoring. vRSLCM is delivered as a Virtual Appliance which can be used in either a greenfield and/or existing brownfield environment. You can also manage multiple environments that consists of different vRealize products that have been deployed giving customers 100% visibility into all their different vRealize environments using a single interface. For more information, be sure to check out this blog post here.


One specific feature that I think is worth calling out and not because our team was involved with it is the ability to deploy what vRSLCM calls "Solutions". These Solutions not only correspond to the specific vRealize products being deployed but they also align to the three VMware Validated Design 4.1 Use Cases: IT Automating IT, Micro-Segmentation and Intelligent Operations as shown in the screenshot below.


This means for customers who wish to deploy the vRealize stack based on the VMware Validated Designs can now easily do so by simply selecting one of these solutions and providing their environment specific information such as DNS, NTP, etc. and vRSLCM will deploy and configure the vRealize products as prescribed in the VVD. Customers no longer have to manually read through pages and pages of documentation to get the desired outcome. [Read more...]