Sam has been working in the IT industry for nearly 20 years now, and is currently working for VMware as a Senior Technical Marketing Manger in the Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) focussed on Automation. Previously, he has worked as consultant for VMware PSO, specializing in cloud automation and network virtualization. His technical experience includes design, development and implementation of cloud solutions, network function virtualisation and the software defined datacentre. Sam specialises in automation of network virtualisation for cloud infrastructure, enabling public cloud solutions for service providers and private or hybrid cloud solutions for the enterprise.
Sam holds multiple high level industry certifications, including the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) for Cloud Management and Automation. He is also a proud member of the vExpert community, holding the vExpert accolade from 2013-present, as well as being selected for the vExpert NSX, vExpert VSAN and vExpert Cloud sub-programs.
Recently I encountered this problem in a customer site whereby the logon to VCSA 5.5 would either time out, or take 3-5 minutes to actually log on.
Running a netstat on the VCSA during the attempt to logon showed there was a SYN packet sent to the vCOps appliance on port 443 that never established a connection. Another check was attempting to connect using curl <https://> –k - this would time out.
This is the fourth article in a series about how to build-out a simple vCAC 6 installation to a distributed model.
By the end of this post we will have deployed a second vCAC Appliance, clustered it with the first appliance and registered the load balanced URL with the Identity Appliance. This will mean logging on to https://vcloud.definit.local/shell-ui-app
will be successful.
This is the second article in a series about how to build-out a simple vCAC 6 installation to a distributed model.
The diagram below shows the deployment at the end of this part, with vPostgres deployed and the vCAC Appliance running from the remote database.
An overview of the steps required are below:
Issue and install certificates
Deploy an external vPostgres appliance and migrate the vCAC database
Configure load balancing
Deploy a second vCAC appliance and configure clustering
Install and configure additional IaaS server
Deploy vCenter Orchestrator Appliance cluster
Create the required DNS records
First of all, create DNS records for your vPostgres database server – you need both an A and PTR record. Most VMware appliances will check for a reverse DNS lookup when they boot and will set the hostname accordingly.
This is the first article in a series about how to build-out a simple vCAC 6 installation to a distributed model.
In a simple installation you have the Identity Appliance, the vCAC appliance (which includes a vPostgres DB and vCenter Orchestrator instance) and an IaaS server. The distributed model still has a single Identity Appliance but clusters 2 or more vCAC appliances behind a load balancer, backed by a separate vPostgres database appliance. The IaaS components are installed on 2 or more IaaS Windows servers and are load balanced, backed by an external MSSQL database. Additionally, the vCenter Orchestrator appliance is used in a failover cluster, backed by the external vPostgres database appliance.
Derek Seaman’s excellent SSL toolkit. I know that there are hours and hours of work put into this script by Derek and I want to thank him for that – it’s a massive time saver. This modification is to fit a different set of circumstances – “standing on the shoulders of giants” – and should in no way be seen as me criticising or stealing Derek’s work.
I was recently sent a copy of Christian Mohn’s new book “Learning Veeam Backup and Replication for VMware vSphere” to review, and as ever this is my honest opinion of this book. I am not receiving anything other than the copy of the book for this review. I don’t work for a vendor, so I have no axe to grind!
Content
The book starts of with explanations of basic backup strategies and explains principals like Grandfather-Father-Son media rotation and RPO/RTOs. From there it dives into the architecture of Veeam BR and its components. The remainder of chapter 1 covers a walk through of the installation of the product.
Yesterday saw another fantastic London VMUG with lots of quality sessions and opportunities to network with peers and friends. The committee seem to do a fantastic job every time and this one was no exception, so thanks to Alaric Davies, Jane Rimmer, Stuart Thompson and Simon Gallagher!
I recently got my hands on a copy* of Chris Wahl and Steve Pantol’s Networking for VMware Administrators and was very keen to read it – especially given the reputation of the authors. I came to the book as someone who is at CCNA level (although now expired) and someone who regularly designs complex VMware networks using standard and distributed switches. I would class myself as having a fairly decent understanding of networking, though not a networking specialist.
