Part 5. Import external application to AppD

1. Login to the AppD server using the darwin_user account or the one has sufficient permissions,

a. Once logged in Login run to launch the Darwin CLI,

Part 4. Prepare the VM template for Cloud provisioning - Linux

1. Agent files and Location (on AppDirector).

Copy the necessary agents files depending on the OS and architecture to the VM template /tmp folder. You can use SCP/WGET/WinSCP anything.

vRA Guest (gugent) deploy on Windows VM template

1. Login to the Windows template server where you want to deploy the vRA agent. Open the vRA appliance webpage and click on the IaaS Install tab.

Click and download the desired version x32 or x64 of Windows agent under 'Provisioning Utilities'. 

Part 3. Add templates to Cloud Provider and map it with Logical template

1. Login to AppD page and Click on 'Cloud Provider' from drop down menu.

Part 2. Create Cloud Provider in AppD

vCloud Application Director registers a cloud provider by connecting to a vCloud Automation Center provisioning or business group. Verify that your user account has the ROLE_CLOUD_ADMIN cloud administrator role assigned to it in vRA.

VMware vRA Application Director Basic Guide

Pre-requisites and Assumptions

Part 1. Install & Configure vRA Application Director

1. Download the vRA Application Services OVA file from the VMware website.

This is the link: Download Link

2. Deploy the appliance the usual way in vCenter and open the console window.

3. At the course of installation you will see the configuration items in the Console, starting with License key,

vSphere 6.0 Upgrade - vCenter

vSphere 6.0 is now fully available and ready to be rolled. Here I would sit tight and wait for 6.1 to be out. As long as you want to deploy 6.0 in your Test and Dev environment it is fair enough. History shows that all 0 versions (3.0, 4.0, 5.0) were little bumpy and all 1's (4.1, 5.1) were most stable apart from 3.5. But this is my personal view. 

New 2015 Certification Roadmap

VMware has released new certification roadmap with their new version vSphere 6.x. There are certain crucial changes been noticed with major one as No More VCAPs. Earlier VCAP was a distinguished certification where people with either of the VCAP Admin or Design exam could use the logo and certificate separately. Now this is been renamed to VCIX where 'IX' means Implementation Expert. People will have to now successfully pass both the Admin and Design certification to achieve VCIX certification. Reportedly, the exam times have been reduced from 4 hours to 2 hours.

Below is the picture published on VMware website for new roadmap. 

Some excerpts from their website on this,

VCA - there is no change in this certification except that there are two version of VCP exam under Cloud Management & Automation category, that is one VCP-CMA and other one is VCP-Hybrid Cloud. This will still be an online exam.

VCP - Will need to pass VCA first to get to VCP.

VCIX - There will still be two exams (Admin + Design) to achieve this certification. You will have to pass both the exams to get VCIX title.

VCDX - Not much of a change in this certification too except that it will be having a version number attached with it now. We will still need to clear both the Admin & Design exams (VCIX) to get to this certification. Existing VCDX's will only need to submit the design without attending the defense session.

There are still lot of open and unclear questions in this area that we need to wait until it becomes fully functional.

Endpoint & Agent Configuration

Once you are logged in using the added account in the previous post you should see a page similar to below, we will now add Endpoints.

Endpoints are nothing but the resources in terms of Cloud or physical infrastructure that will be consumed by the vCAC Virtual Machine during the deployment.

Business Group creation

Business group is a set of users that are provided with the set of services. Typically it can be a line of service or a department in an organization. A business group is created in a organization by the tenant administrator. A vCAC user must be part of at least one business group to request a machine.

To create a Business group,

Infrastructure --> Groups --> Business Groups,

Select 'New Business group' option,

Create Reservations & Policies

Reservation is a share of provisioning resources allocated by the fabric administrator from a fabric group and reserved for use by a particular business group.

There are three types of Reservations,

1. Shares of memory, CPU, networking, and storage allocated from one compute resource to a particular business group is called as Virtual Reservation.
2. When a set of Physical Machines are reserved for a particular business group for provisioning it becomes Physical reservation.
3. A cloud reservation provides access to the cloud services to the business group.

Create Network Profile

Network profiles are nothing but an entity that allows machines to be assigned static IP addresses. These profiles must be configured with the IP addresses that can be used. These are again very simple and nothing complex to discuss.

To create Network Profile,

Goto --> Infrastructure --> Reservations --> Network Profile

Create Blueprints

Blueprints are the attributes defined for the Virtual Machines to be provisioned and how it is to be provisioned and its policy/management settings. A machine blueprint is a complete specification for a virtual, cloud, or physical machine that defines resources, attributes, policies, and method of provisioning for the new system.

These are the options for the blueprints that can be created, first three are self explanatory, the fourth one which is Multi-machine management is a new feature in vCAC 6.0 release.

As per VMware, "A multimachine service is a compound service that is composed of multiple machines, but provisioned and managed as a single entity. The most common example is a multitier application consisting of Web, application, and database servers that interact to deliver a common service or application. A multimachine service can be any combination of virtual, physical, or public cloud machines that need to be provisioned and managed as a single entity."

Create Service Catalogs

The service catalog is a self-service portal where users can browse and request items that they need, track their requests, and manage the items they have provisioned.

To configure the Catalog goto --> Administrator --> Catalog Management

First lets create a Catalog service, just click on the Green + icon to create a new service. Enter the service name with other relevant details. Make sure to put the owner of this Service.

Governance and Approval policies

Any items that is part of catalog either for new request or existing request has to go through approval process. A tenant administrator or an approval administrator can create approval policies. Each approval policy has an approval policy type that determines what requests that policy can apply to.

To add a new Approval Policy, Goto --> Administration --> Approval Policies

Click on Green + button to create a new approval policy and select the appropriate Policy type from the drop down that meets your requirement.

Demo

Now is the time to see if all we did works or not,

Goto Catalog tab and see if all items are appearing correctly there. If you have done correctly it should look something like below,

All Services view,

Fabric Group creation

Fabric groups is an entity in vCAC that defines the organization of virtualized compute resources and cloud endpoints. Fabric groups are created in a specific organization and map compute resources to the fabric administrators who can manage those resources.

Fabric group by default exist in the default tenant (vsphere.local) and can be used in all tenants by business groups.

To create Fabric group,

Infrastructure --> Groups --> Fabric Groups,

Create Machine Prefix

Machine prefixes are used to generate names of provisioned machines and are shared across all tenants. Make sure you are logged in using the Fabric Administrator else this option will not be visible. Only Fabric Administrators can create the Machine Prefix.

Also this Machine Prefix will be required during the Business Group creation.

Requirements to create Machine Prefix,

1. Machine prefixes must conform with DNS naming restrictions and include only ASCII letters A through Z and digits 0 through 9.
2. There should not be any special characters.
3. For Windows Operating Systems, machine length must be limited to 15 characters.

Tenant Configuration

There are two types of deployments here, one is Single-Tenant and other is Multi-Tenant deployment. In a Multi-Tenant deployment you can add multiple tenants for each organization where each Tenant has its own configuration settings.

You need to login to the vCAC Service portal using the vCenter SSO credentials (administrator@vsphere.local). 

Before you move onto check out Tenants, another important thing is to add License,