Written by Simon Eady on 10/9/2015
Published under vRealize Operations
So vROps 6.1 has gone GA! What have the guys at VMware added? I have listed what I consider the hi-lights below The maximum of 8 nodes has been doubled to 16! SSO integration has been added (requires vSphere 6.0) **Support for SRM has been added ** vRealize Hyperic functionality has been added With the addition of End Point Operations Management, the value of vRealize Hyperic functionality has been extended to the vRealize Operations Manager core product, without the need to deploy vRealize Hyperic
Written by Sam McGeown on 3/9/2015
Published under VMware and vSphere
With a Platform Services Controller appliance deployed as part of a vCenter Server installation, either integrated as part of the vCSA or as a separate PSC appliance, you can easily join the PSC to an Active Directory domain using the Web Client. When you’ve deployed the PSC as the single sign on layer of a distributed vRealize Automation deployment, you don’t have the vSphere Web Client to configure it in the same way.
Written by Simon Eady on 27/8/2015
Published under vRealize Operations
One of the great new features included in vROps is High Availability, however when you look a little closer at how it works careful thought needs to go into whether you want to use it or not. I have had several discussions with my colleagues on the subject about whether you should or should not enable it in any given deployment of a vROps cluster. So the following are my thoughts and bullet points for you to consider when faced with same dilemma.
Written by Sam McGeown on 19/8/2015
Enter a name for the monitor, and leave the other parameters the same. Select the “Special Parameters” tab and configure the send string to the URL to monitor - e.g for the PSC SSO it’s going to be: GET /websso/HealthStatus For the receive string, enter the expected response (“GREEN”). Click Create. Assigning a NetScaler Monitor to a Service Assign the monitor to the PSC Services (or Service Groups) configured for PSC by opening the Configuration > Traffic Management > Load Balancing > Services page and selecting the PSC service for HTTPS/443 and clicking Edit.
Written by Simon Eady on 17/8/2015
Published under vRealize Operations
Recently I have been working with various products that compliment or are accessed by vCOPs/vROps via Management packs. As vROps is still fairly new in comparative terms to other products like vCOPs and VCE Vision, when planning migrations from vCOPs to vROps it is naturally important to check compatibility and what is required for a successful migration. If you are doing a greenfield deployment of vROps there is nothing to be concerned about, you simply need the VCE Vision appliance running version 2.
Written by Sam McGeown on 14/8/2015
Published under VMware and vRealize Automation
Now that the prerequisites for the IaaS layer have been completed, it’s time to move on to the actual installation of the IaaS components, starting with the database. We then move onto the first Web server, which also imports the ModelManagerData configuration to the database, populating the database with all of the info the IaaS layer needs out of the box. We then install the second Web server before moving on to the active Manager server.
Written by Sam McGeown on 14/8/2015
Published under VMware and vRealize Automation
One of the trickiest parts of deploying vRealize Automation is the IaaS layer - people sometimes look at me like I’m a crazy person when I say that, normally because they’ve deployed a PoC or small deployment with just a single IaaS server. Add in 5 more servers, some load balancers, certificates, a distributed setup and MSDTC to the mix and you have a huge potential for pain! If you’ve followed my previous posts, you’ll see know that I’ve got a HA Platform Services Controller configured, and a HA vRealize Appliance cluster configured with Postgres replication - all good so far.
Written by Simon Eady on 7/8/2015
Published under
A few months ago I decided to tackle the VCAP5-DCD exam and when booking I gave myself 2 months to study before the date of the exam. I was keenly aware that at least in this calendar year the VCAP5-DCD exam and undergone some changes E.G. it no longer had multiple choice questions (think VCP5-DCV in terms of format) There was a wealth of knowledge out there from people whom had either passed/failed or were currently studying so it didn’t take too long to get an understanding of what disciplines/knowledge VMware were looking for in the exam.
Written by Sam McGeown on 24/7/2015
Published under VMware and vRealize Automation
Having just completed a particularly problem-prone distributed IaaS install, this was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back. Logging into vRealize Automation for the first time as an Infrastructure Admin displayed the infrastructure tab and all menu labels as big ugly references, and no functionality: {com.cmware.cap.component.iaas.proxy.provider@csp.places.iaas.label} Rebooting the IaaS web servers restored the functionality of the IaaS layer but still did not fix the label issue, it took a further reboot of both vRealize Automation appliances, then the IaaS web servers to finally view the correct labels.
Written by Sam McGeown on 21/7/2015
Published under VMware
Note: This falls under the “I don’t think this is supported” category – use this method at your own peril! As part of some testing I’ve been doing for vRealize Automation DR scenarios, I wanted to test changing the IP address of a HA PSC pair using a script (think SRM failover to a new subnet). What I didn’t want to do was simply edit the connections directly – quite often with the VMware appliances there are scripts on start-up to ensure the configuration is correct and consistent – what I wanted was to be able to find a more supported and reliable way.