DefinIT

Deploying vRealize Automation 6.2 Appliance Cluster with Postgres Replication

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Posts in this series
  1. vSphere 6 HA SSO (PSC) with NetScaler VPX Load Balancer for vRealize Automation
  2. Deploying vRealize Automation 6.2 Appliance Cluster with Postgres Replication
  3. Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 1: Pre-requisites
  4. Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 2: Database, Web and Manager services
  5. Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation instance - Configuring NetScaler Monitors

The recommendations for the vRealize Appliance have changed with 6.2, the published reference architecture now does not recommend using an external Postgres database (either vPostgres appliance, a 3rd party Postgres deployment or using a third vRealize Appliance as a stand-alone database installation). Instead the recommended layout is shown in the diagram below. One instance of postgres on the primary node becomes an active instance, replicating to the second node which is passive. In front of these a load balancer or DNS entry points to the active node only. Fail-over is still a manual task, but it does provide better protection than a single instance.

The cafe portal and APIs are still load balanced in an active/active configuration and are clustered together.

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Deploying VMTurbo Virtual Health Monitor

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Why pay for monitoring? VMTurbo Free Virtual MonitorHaving just welcomed VMTurbo on board as a blog sponsor, I thought I’d do a quick posting on how to deploy their free Virtual Health Monitor appliance.

Sign up for a free license here and download the appropriate version

Deploy the VMTurbo Appliance

Deploying the appliance is simply a case of importing the OVA downloaded. There’s nothing really to configure and it took 61 seconds in my lab environment, so it’s pretty quick! Network configuration is via DHCP and you can configure a static IP by logging into the console and running “ipsetup”

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vSphere 6 Lab Upgrade – vCenter Server Appliance

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vsphere logoI tested vSphere 6 quite intensively when it was in beta, but I didn’t ever upgrade my lab – basically because I need a stable environment to work on and I wasn’t sure that I could maintain that with the beta.

Now 6 has been GA a while and I have a little bit of time, I have begun the lab upgrade process. You can see a bit more about my lab hardware over on my lab page.

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vROps – first look – part 1 – installation

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For several months now we have seen glimpses of vROps by way of limited blog posts and the HOL demo’s so it was great to see it finally released.

So what is it like out of the box?

vROps 6.0 Release notes

The first clear change is the move away from 2 VMs in a vAPP and consolidation down to 1 VM which is then easily scalable to more as you require.

The UI has been completely reworked and the install process has also completely changed, so lets take a look.

vROps 6.0 OVF download

Deploying from the ovf is very straight forward (you no longer need to worry about IP Pools either!)

Once you have deployed the OVF start up the VM and wait for it to complete its boot process then navigate to the IP you gave vROps to begin the deployment/configuration. As you can/will see below a lot of time has been invested to simplifying the configuration process.

vROps deploy

Get started!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Opted to do a new a new installation upon which I was then presented with a 5 step process to deploy vROps

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vCAC 6.0 build-out to distributed model – Part 4: Deploying and clustering a secondary vCAC Appliance

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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.

vCAC deployment with clustered and load balanced vCAC Appliances

vCAC deployment with clustered and load balanced vCAC Appliances

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

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