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.
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.
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.
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.
I’m not sure how supported this is, but this process can recover a vSphere 6 vCenter Server Appliance or Platform Services Controller when you’ve lost the root password.
Download the OpenSUSE Rescue CD - http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/iso/
Mount the CD to the PSC Appliance
Reboot the appliance and enter the BIOS setup using F2, configure the CD-ROM as first-boot device. Save and exit to reboot into the SUSE Live-CD.
Once the Live-CD has booted to a desktop, you’ll see a 12GB volume at the top – that’s your PSC appliance root.
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.
vSphere 6 HA SSO (PSC) with NetScaler VPX Load Balancer for vRealize Automation Deploying vRealize Automation 6.2 Appliance Cluster with Postgres Replication Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 1: Pre-requisites Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation IaaS components - Part 2: Database, Web and Manager services Deploying fully distributed vRealize Automation instance - Configuring NetScaler Monitors Providing a highly available single sign on for vRealize Automation is a fundamental part of ensuring the availability of the platform.
Having 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!
After deploying a new vSphere 6 vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) and configuring the Platform Services Controller (PSC) to act as a subordinate Certificate Authority (CS), I was unable to register the NSX Manager to the Lookup Service. Try saying that fast after a pint or two!?
Attempting to register NSX to the Lookup Service would result in the following error:
NSX Management Service operation failed.( Initialization of Admin Registration Service Provider failed.
Yesterday, I received the dreaded email
We regret to inform you that your attempt to achieve VCDX certification on June 09-11, 2015 in Frimley, UK was unsuccessful.
It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but somehow I still hoped my assessment of the defense was pessimistic and so it was nonetheless disappointing. It’s a big hit to not achieve something I have been focusing on for months and it is hard not to feel embarrassed that I didn’t make the grade.
This is not my normal sort of post - don’t worry, normal service will resume shortly.
I read Christian’s comments on the vCommunity - or lack of it - yesterday and although some things resonate with me, and a lot of other people, I don’t quite agree. I want to be clear this is a response to Christian and not an argument, I respect Christian as someone who does contribute to the vCommunity.
