vRealize Automation iaas-service does not register after installation

While doing the usual vRA 6.2.2 large deployment distributed install, and after everything in the installation went smoothly without any errors, the vRA infrastructure tab was not working. Checking the vRA Services through the vRA Appliance VAMI, and noticed all of my services are up and running as  expected with its status being registered, beside the iaas-service which its status was left blank. Look at the below screenshot and notice where the service column ” iaas-service        com.vmware.csp.iaas.blueprint.service” status being blank.

vrealize automation iaas-service not starting

Going through every test I can think of, I could find no meaningful error in any of the logs, till I opened my infrastructure tab again but in Chrome this time and rather than getting the usual 404 error it was giving me earlier the below message came up: Invalid Argument. Host name may not be null

vra Infrastructure tab Invalid Argument Host name may not be null

 

After a bit of digging/research, I have found out that the VIP names the customer is using included under scores which is not supported by vRA for both hostnames or VIP names. This has been documented in the vRA 6.2 Installation and configuration document here as well in KB2086553.

Resolution for this issue: You will need to avoid this scenario before hand, else you will have to redo the full installation.… Read More

vRealize Automation 6.2 moving to Internal replicated vPostgres

When delivering a vRealize Automation 6.1 and prior in a distributed install, the recommendation was always to have an external vPostgres instance. This has changed in vRealize Automation 6.2 and it’s briefly touched upon in the vRA 6.2 reference architecture found at: vRealize Automation 6.2 reference Architecture. I wanted to make sure to highlight this, as many have missed this change and others are still wondering how it can be implemented or why this change. It’s important to mention as well, you can use this replication architecture for any version of vCAC/vRA that’s higher than 6.0.1.

Let’s start by highlighting the change, we are moving from having a separate/external vPostgres  machine to host the vPostgres (being a vRA appliance that is re-purposed to be used as vPostgres or a full vPostgres install) to using the internal built-in vRA Appliance vPostgres and replicate across the two vRA Appliances. The below image demonstrate this change:

vRA internal vPostgres replication
So what do you get of moving to this new model? Actually there is few advantages of implementing your vRA 6.2 this way, below is couple of them.

1- You have less machines to manage by eliminating the extra one or two external vPostgres machines you needed in the 6.1… Read More

Resource Actions does not show up in vRealize Automation 6.2.1

I had an instance of vRealize Automation 6.2 with few resource actions that were built under Advanced Services with things like take snapshot and move VMs to a different folder in vCenter. These were working like a charm in vRealize Automation 6.2, but as soon I upgraded to 6.2.1 they stopped showing in the items actions menu. I have re-checked my configuration and tried few additional resource actions with no luck.

After a bit of research I have found out that its a known problem caused by a bad DLL within the 6.2.1 and its easy to fix by following KB2111713. I have as well happen to be able to reproduce the same issue with a fresh install of vRA 6.2.1, so if your resource actions does not show up in the actions menu, although you have done all the right steps KB2111713 or the step below is your way to fix it.

1- Download the new DLL by following the download link in KB2111713, the download name is vRA_621.zip, where it includes a single DLL file which in turn called  “DynamicOps.Api.v61.dll".

2- Stop all of your vRA IaaS Services in the following order: 1- Proxy Agents 2- DEMs, 3- DEM Orchestrator 4- vCloud Automation Center Manager service

3- Backup your old DynamicOps.Api.v61.dll… Read More

vCAC 6.x using gugent to run scripts

Lately, I have been getting a lot of questions about how to use the vCAC Gugent to run scripts within the guest OS of your deployed VM. While if you are deploying simple VMs using vCAC this use case might not sound obvious, it has a lot of uses to it in the real world. Before I go through how to get your vCAC Gugent or now called vRA Gugent (Guest Agent) to run scripts, let’s take few examples of why you want to do this:

– Imagine the use case where you want to assign an IP Address in a Guest OS that is not supported by VMware Customization tool. You can actually assign an IP Addess to it by running after deployment  script using the Guagent to change the IP Address of that machine. Actually while I had this post in mind for a while, it end up getting to my top priority today as a colleague was asking me about this use case scenario.

– Imagine the use case where you want to run some security scanning scripts after the OS was fully deployed. This is will be any easy way of doing it.

– Imaging the use case where you want to initialize a client or agent for application deployment/management tool (Ex: Puppet, Chef, Altiris, TSM Client, …)

– It can be even be used as a cheaper dirty way of deploying applications or services.… Read More

VMware vRealize Automation 6.2 and the missing vCO

If you have tried to upgrade your current vCloud Automation Center distributed install to vRealize Automation 6.2 or if you have tried to plan for the upgrade lately, you will notice one piece of the puzzle seems to be missing. At the time vRealize Automation 6.2 was released, vRealize Orchestrator 6.0 was not released yet as it suppose to be a part of the vSphere 6.0 release(not yet released).

While the vRealize Automation 6.2 appliance has came up with a builtin vCO 6.2 with the 6.2 plugin installed which was sufficient for small deployment that did not require a distributed install, customers with distributed install are wondering what to do. In this article I wanted to highlight the three options available to you and when to approach each of these routes.

1- vRealize Orchestrator(vRO) 6.0 has been made available to vRealize Automation 6.2 customers before vSphere 6.0 go GA, where you will have to open a support ticket to obtain it. Here is the KB article documenting that: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2100951

2- Convert a vRA 6.2 appliance into vRO 6.2 appliance, again here is the KB documenting this: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2100951     (Almost there is no more use case for this with vRO 6.0 available to you through GSS.… Read More

vCloud Automation Center 6.x Time Bomb Issues

As I know quite few of my vCloud Automation Center 6.x (lately renamed to vRealize Automation) customers are following my blog, I wanted to share this important information of a two different time bombs issues that affect the 6.x releases of the product.  The purpose of this post is to highlight these two time bomb issues and the simple changes required to avoid them affecting the availability & manageability of your vCAC environment. If you have not done this or not sure if it was done during the installation time, please take the time to do it now. It is worth checking even if your environment was setup by a vCAC expert as it might have not been known during the the time your setup was installed:

1- vCAC 6.x VAMI Root account time bomb.

In vCAC 6.x There is a one year expiration time bomb in the VAMI Root account. This will prevent you from logging in to the VAMI consoles. To fix run this command…

# chage –M 99999 root

 This will change the timeout  and should prevent future issues. This occurs in both the vCAC Identity Appliance , and the vCAC Appliance.

2- vCAC 6.x SSO internal tenant admin password  time bomb.Read More

VMware vRealize Automation 6.2 is now available for download

vRealize Automation 6.2, which is the new name for vCloud Automation Center has been made available for download earlier today. This release will be adding a lot of new enhancement & features where you can find the full list in the vRealize Automation 6.2 Release notes. In here I want to cover few main enhancements, that I was patiently waiting for.

1- Ability to edit custom properties for published applications in the service catalog. While this enhancement is sneaked in very late down in the release note & many have not given it as much attention, it is one of the greatest enhancement in my opinion in this release. If you have worked with vCAC in the past and tried to integrate it with VMware Application Director (just renamed to vRealize Automation Application Services), you were always faced with the challenge that if you publish applications using application director into vCAC, you will not be able to pass custom properties to the underlying VMs blueprint, which was a big challenge. Actually in many cases, it eliminated the ability to use application director without a very heavy customization. Now this constrain being lifted, I can see the amount of great power vRealize Automation will enjoy when coupled with vRealize Automation Application Services.… Read More