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VMware Usage Meter Support!

August 13, 2018 by Leave a Comment

If you are a service provider that is a part of VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) which formerly known as vCAN, then you had to use VMware Usage Meter to report usage. At certain time you might need help either with failure during setting up VMware Usage Meter or you need help troubleshooting an issue with Usage Meter. Service providers seem to often ask how to get support with Usage Meter. Usage Meter is like any other VMware product, it is supported by VMware Support Organization (GSS). VMware Support organization (GSS) had been trained on VMware Usage Meter, and to approach the right support channel, please follow the steps below:

To log a technical ticket with our GSS teams, please follow these steps:  https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2006985

  1. In your myVMware portal select Support in the upper right hand corner
  2. Under Select an Issue choose System Management in the Technical support pull down menu
  3. Scroll down to VMware vCloud Usage Meter under supported products and click on the version of UM that you require support on
  4. Enter support request information

I hope this help!… Read More

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vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR capabilities is here!

May 18, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Today, VMware has announced the long waited  vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR 1.0. This is a thrilling news to many of our VCPP service providers partners who wanted a VMware native Cloud to Cloud DR/migration solution for vCloud Director based clouds.

vCloud Availability C2C

Below is few highlights of the newly introduced  vCloud Availability for Cloud-to-Cloud DR.

Simple Deployment:  vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR is delivered as a single Photon-based appliance with a full GUI driven installation. During the beta phase, service providers were able to get it operational in less than an hour! This is a game changer if you compare it to the previous more complex stretched cluster solution, that required specialized hardware.

Hardware Independant:  As the replication is completed in software, there is no hardware dependancy and the service provider can utilize the storage of their choice.

Self-Service: Self-service protection, failover, and failback workflows per virtual machine (VM)/vAPP is provided out of the box.

Modern Interface:  Simplified and easy to use modern HTML-5 interface. Further, it offers a Single, unified portal for both tenant and service provider users.

Multi-Tenant Support: vCloud Availability Cloud to Cloud DR 1.0 is fully multi-tenant aware which integrate very well with the strong multi-tenanacy of vCloud Director

Symmetrical replication flow that can be started from either the source or the recovery vCloud Director site.The… Read More

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vCD 9.1 Just Went GA with Great New Features

March 9, 2018 by 2 Comments

Although vCloud Director 9.1 is released less than 6 months after vCloud Director 9.0, it is packed with tons of enhancements and new features. It is hard to believe it is just a minor release. Below is a recap of the top feature of the vCD 9.0 release:

HTML 5 Tenant Portal Enhancement.

While in vCD 9.0 the well received HTML 5 Tenant Portal was introduced, in vCloud Director 9.1 it got enhanced to include enchanced monitoring dashboard, vAPP, and Catalog deployment and management. These enhancemed to the HTML 5 interface has gotten it much closer to parity with the Flex interface and will make it ready for prime time.

vcd 9.1 new html 5 dashboard

HTML5 Administration Portal

VMware vCloud Director 9.1 includes a dedicated HTML 5 provider portal where administrators of the IaaS environment can manage all the system resources and configurations of vCloud Director from an easy to access web portal. The Flex portal will still be available for more advance and indepth configuration while the HTML5 interface get in parity with the Flex interface.

Standalone VMRC & OVF/OVA Upload

Previous verions of vCloud Director has required a web browser plugin called vCloud Director Client Integration Plugin to be installed to Upload OFV/OVA as well to access VMRC.… Read More

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vCloud Director Client Integration Plugin is not working

January 11, 2018 by 3 Comments

I have been asked repeatedly lately on how to get the vCloud Director Client Integration Plugin (CIP) working. I wanted to put this post out there to help you getting it working in no time. It is important to note that, the Client Integration Plugin (CIP) is only needed in vCD to carry out import and export of templates and media images.

To improve system security in vCD 8.20 and higher, the vCloud Director Client Integration Plug-In (CIP) is no longer bundled with the vCloud Director server installation. It must be downloaded from vmware.com. When you initiate any operation that requires this plug-in, the vCloud Director Web Console verifies that an appropriate version of the plug-in is installed in your browser, and prompts you to download and install a newer version if necessary.

vCD Download the Client Integration Plug-in

Ok, first step first, before panicing and starting with the troubleshooting steps below, please start by ensuring you are using a supported browser. If you are using a browser that is not on the supported browsers list,  then you need to shift to a supported one before trying anything else. Remember we have these support matrix for a reason.  Below is a list of vCD 9.0 supported browsers:

The vCloud Director Client Integration Plug-in is compatible with recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.… Read More

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VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 what’s new

October 19, 2017 by Leave a Comment

vCloud Availability 2.0 is available for download today here. vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 delivers the following key enhancements:

    • vSphere 6.5 Support: Added support for vSphere 6.5 on the service provider side. This was missing in the previous release and many service providers were looking for it. The supported vSphere versions on the tenant side remain unchanged. For more interoperability and compatibility information about vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, see the Interoperability Pages for vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0. Here is a screenshot of what the interoperability matrix look like.

vCloud Availability for vCloud Director Interop Matrix

    • 5-minutes Recovery Point Objective (RPO): vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 2.0 delivers an enhanced RPO support of 5-minutes compared to the previously supported RPO of 15 minutes.
    • Enhancements to vCloud Availability for vCloud Director Service Manager Portal: The Service Manager Portal, introduced in the vCloud Availability for vCloud Director 1.0.1.2 release, allows service providers to monitor and manage their DR environments. The current release includes usability and performance enhancements to improve the response time on the Inventory page and a new Tenant Impersonation feature. The new feature allows service providers to act as tenant users. Using the Tenant Impersonation feature, service providers can filter tenant organizations and perform DR operations using a tenant role, the same way a tenant user would.
… Read More
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vCloud Director 9.0 is Ready for Download

September 30, 2017 by Leave a Comment

vCloud Director 9.0 has been announced at VMworld with some exciting enhancements. I am positive most of our VCPP (VMware Cloud Partner Program) partners will be looking forward to many of these features. Just in case you have missed it, VCPP (VMware Cloud Partner Program) is the new name for the VCAN(vCloud Air Network) Program. In this post, I will be covering few of the spotlight features of vCD 9.0.

Before I start, I want to highlight that’s while many vCD releases in the past few years were more progressive, this one is more on revolutionary side. I would highly recommend service providers to start evaluating vCD 9.0, as soon it released out not to be left being none competitive with those who upgrade. The difference this time is not hidden in the API, but include major changes in the UI interface as well. Read below for more details, and download the bits at vCloud Director 9.0 Download Link to start testing it out in your labs.

  • Modernized HTML5 interface. vCloud Director 9.0 comes with a new much slicker and smoother graphical interface for the tenant portal based on HTML5 which is an evolution from the previous Flex graphical interface. While this one might not be in parity with the Flex version in version 9.0,
… Read More
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VMware Cloud Availability 1.0.1.2 Compatibility Matrix

September 25, 2017 by Leave a Comment

VMware Cloud Availability (vCAv) is a solution provided by VMware to Service Providers to offer DRaaS with VMware Cloud Director(vCD) as a target.

VMware Cloud Availability vCAv

Two features that makes VMware vCloud Availability valuable to service providers are:

  • It support multi-tenancy out of the box: This means the Service Provider will not have to acquire a separate hardware and setup an isolated vSphere environment per client, which end up improving the TCO and ROI for both the Service Provider and their customers.
  • The vCenter/vSphere versions do not have to match between the service Provider and the Tenant. This is big as the service provider will have the liberty to board customers running a different version of vSphere and vCenter without having to impact the version they run on premise.

A question I am often asked lately when talking about VMware Cloud Availability is: Does the on premise environment of vSphere/vCenter have to match the versions used by the service provider and if not what versions are compatible? The short answer is no, for more info on the supported versions, look below.

Provider Versions

While vCD 8.20 and vSphere/vCenter 6.5 is recommended below is the different versions supported for the Service provider.

  • vCD 8.10, 8.10.1
… Read More
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vROPS Tenant App for VCD 1.0 is GA

August 24, 2017 by Leave a Comment

The announcement of vROPS Tenant App for vCloud Director  1.0 is a great news to our vCloud Air Network Partners. vRealize Operations Tenant App for vCloud Director 1.0 is GA as of August 23, 2017! Now you can provide your customers with a better self-service monitoring solution that they were asking you for. This will provide a new monetizing opportunity for our vCAN Partners as well enhance their customers experience.

vRealize Operations Manager Tenant App for vCloud Director
It is a tenant facing application which provides a tenant administrator visibility to their vCloud Director environment. Service provider admin can enable access to the application to any tenant. It solves monitoring, troubleshooting and capacity planning use cases for a tenant. This is available only to service providers.

vRealize Operations management pack for vCloud Director

Highlights of what vROPS Tenant App for VCD 1.0 offers:

  • Extends vRealize Operations Manager to include vCloud Director constructs
  • Leverages vRealize Operations advanced analytics
  • Tenant specific monitoring, troubleshooting and capacity planning
  • Tenant Admin specific views to enable Operations Management solving monitoring, troubleshooting and capacity planning use cases
  • Provider Admin can pick and choose the tenants to whom access it to be provided. It can be provided as an extra addon.
  • Photon OS based Virtual appliance (OVA) for easier installation
  • H5 Client based on VMWare Clarity

 

Please note vROPS Tenant App for vCloud Director  1.0… Read More

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vRealize Automation 7.3 what’s new?

May 16, 2017 by 3 Comments

vRealize Automation 7.3 has been released today with tons of new capabilities and features (>20 Spotlight Features). In this post, I will highlight several of these new enhancements to introduce you to what you can get by upgrading to vRA 7.3. I hope this will help you find out if the features you are looking for is a part of this release. I know many on my list and my customers lists have been addressed, but there is always room for more.

Below is few important links to check to learn more about vRealize Automation 7.3:

vRealize Automation 7.3 new features:

Parameterized Blueprints to Enhance Reusability and Reduce Sprawl​

  • Introduced component profiles for defining both size and image attributes, enabling “T-shirt sizing” as a request item
    • Component profiles provided for image and virtual machine size including CPU, memory, and storage size
  • Efficiently manage blueprints by leveraging abstracted component profiles
  • Increase reusability while significantly reducing blueprint sprawl
  • Trigger approval policies on size or image conditions
  • Import or export of component profiles using vRealize CloudClient
  • Automatically substitute component profile values

In the past, I have seen the request for VMs “t-shirt sizing” coming up often.… Read More

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vRealize Automation 7 Property Dictionary Relationship

May 9, 2017 by Leave a Comment

In the past I have documented how to do vCloud Automation 6.x Property Dictionay and Property Dictionary relationship in a post that was well recieved and got quite popular which can be found at: vCAC 6 Property Dictionary Relationship. I have meant to do the same for vRA 7 Property Dictionary Relationship for sometime as it has dramatically changed from it’s 6.x days, but I had pushed it forward several times and finally got the time to get around it.

In this post, I am going to show you how to populate a dropdown menu created in vRA property dictionary from a vRO workflow. Further, I will show you how to filter it based on another dropdown as well. This is get very useful when you have two related dropdown in your vRealize Automation Request forum and would like to filter one of them based on the other dropdown selection.  It help you ensure only valid values are showing in the second dropdown menu making your request form more user friendly. Further, this same process can be used to populate the dropdown list from an external source like MS SQL or so on.

Before you start with this exercise, I would highly recommend you go through my past post to get an understanding of the terms used in this post: vCAC Custom Properties – Build Profiles(Renamed Property Groups in vRA 7.0)… Read More

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How to Configure vRealize Automation 7.x Management pack in vRealize Operations Manager

April 10, 2017 by Leave a Comment

The installation of vRealize Operations Manager Management Pack for vRealize Automation is a popular ask due to the benefit of in depth monitoring of vRA offered by vROPs. The vRealize Automation Management Pack for vRealize Operations Manager is very quick to configure as long you know the steps and permissions required. In this post, I will show you how to easily start monitoring your vRA 7.x environment with vROPs. The steps below should get you setup in no time.

1- Download the vRealize Operations Manager Management Pack for vRealize Automation from VMware Solutions Exchange.

2- Log in to vRealize Operations Manager by using the administration console using the Admin user.

3- In the left pane of vRealize Operations Manager, click Administration and click Solutions.

vROPs Solution Tab before installing vRA Management Pack

4- Hit the Green Plus (Add management Pack button), then upload the downloaded management pack.

Installing vROPs management pack for vRealize Automation

5- Accept the EULA and hit next/install on the install screen, then wait for the plugin to complete installation.

6- When you have finished the installation of the vRA Management Pack for vROPs, the next step before you configure it, is to assign a service user proper permission to vRA to allow vROPs to connect/collect monitoring data from vRA. This user will need the following permissions: Tenant Administrator, IaaS Administrator,  Software Architect, and Fabric Group Admin.… Read More

Filed Under: Cloud, Management & Automation Tagged With: ,

vRA Installation Error: Another instance of the component is already installed on this server.

March 23, 2017 by Leave a Comment

While I have been installing vRA lately as a part of a VMware Validated Design engagement using the Automated Deployment Tool, my vRA deployment tool failed as the DBA has not provided the right permissions on the SQL box required to install vRA. The error received at that moment was: “Error occurred while executing SQL file: User does not have permission to perform this action.”.  This error showed up in vCAC-Config.log file on the first IaaS web server.

The above error was pretty descriptive and easy to rectify by assigning a sysadmin role to my vRA user account used for the vRA installation as well provide it with a dbo role on the vRA database. I decided to go ahead and re-run my installation after I have resolved the permissions issue, and I started facing the following error, which I was not clear what’s going on initially: “Another instance of the component is already installed on this server.”

Here is what made this error initially confusing, it comes up as a part of SQL Database creation block. Below how the error looked as the installation was executing:

[root]  [INFO] ———————————————————————————————————————-
[root]  [INFO]         Installation of IaaS “db” component on host “vraweb01.vt.com” starts now
[root]  [INFO] ———————————————————————————————————————-
[root]  [INFO] Executing db Installation command:
[root]  /usr/sbin/vra-command execute –node 574C2057-4BEE-40E0-A163-AD86A1FTT32A install-db –SqlServer vtvrasql01.vt.com,1433… Read More

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F5 load balancer common misconfigurations for vRA 7 Distributed setup

November 24, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Working with several customers to build vRealize Automation 7.x in production environment has exposed me to many vRA Distributed installs that involved the use of Load Balancers. There seems common mistakes that customers fall for when configuring load balancers for vRA 7.x distributed environments that cause the installation to fail or the setup not to function as intended. Here I wanted to highlight few of these. While I will be focusing on F5 in here, these mistakes can affect other load balancers as well.

vRealize Automation 7 F5 load balancer

1- Utilize the load balancer VIP for initial installation

Several customers try to use their load balancer VIP during vRA installation. While if setup perfectly this will work, a small mistake with the VIP configuration can make the installation and configuration of vRealize Automation feel impossible. For this I would recommend you create the VIP DNS record and just point it to your first nodes. Complete your vRA installation and configuration and only after confirming your setup is stable and fully installed to point your VIP DNS record to your actual VIP IP. This will make your installation go much smoother, and allow you a much easier path to troubleshooting if you made a mistake during load balancer configuration.… Read More

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vRA 7.2 what’s new?

November 22, 2016 by 3 Comments

vRealize Automation 7.2 which was promised at VMworld to enhance ease of use with Out-of-The-Box support for ServiceNow, Azure, and Containers. has just been released today as promised in VMworld. You can download it at: vRealization Automation 7.2 download link. This article highlight few of the major improvements introduced with vRA 7.2.

Azure Endpoint

Microsoft Azure vRA Endpoint

While Amazon AWS, vCloud Air and vCloud Air Network endpoints have been out of the box in vRealize Automation for the longest time, Microsoft Azure has always required custom coding integration to work in vRealize Automation. Many customers showed interest in being able to deploy Microsoft Azure and were waiting patiently for vRA to offer it out of the box. This is coming your way out of the box in vRA 7.2. This will extend vRealize Automation Hybrid Cloud offering reach to Microsoft Azure customers.

The new Azure endpoint will allows customers to:

  • Configure Azure connections (endpoints) per tenant
  • Assign reservations and integrate with their governance model
  • Design blueprints creation with Azure resources, specify network and storage options
  • Supports Azure Networking (subnets, load balancers)
  • Deploy converged blueprints with Azure resources in them
  • vRealize Automation can automatically select the most appropriate subscriptions to deploy to
  • Perform state-aware resource actions on their Azure resources
  • Incorporate key vRA functionality, such as approvals, extensibility, and CBP
  • OTB Day2 lifecycle operations include start, stop, restart, delete

Note: Azure Endpoint is the first to be built on top of extensibility platform (XaaS vs .Net)… Read More

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vRealize Automation 7.x F5 Load balancer Configuration

November 21, 2016 by 3 Comments

This week I had to work with a customer who used F5 to load balance their vRA Distributed environment, and it has proven that just a small change from recommended configuration can break your full setup. For this reason, I have decided to document the full F5 load balancer configuration on this page. This post can still be helpfull to get you started with other load balancers as well.

As medium distributed install seems to be the most common between customers, I will use it as the base of my post in here, but I will cover the differences in large distributed install as well. Let’s start at first with the list of our setup components. As you will notice in the below table that the manager service and Web are both sharing the same servers unlike large architecture installation where Web and Manager Service are separated into different servers. That has been said, you will still need to setup a different VIP one for Manager Service and one for Web in both medium and large distributed setups. The main difference is that in a medium setup both VIPs will point up to the same servers. You will need as well to setup another VIP for the vRA Appliances.… Read More

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