Category Archives: vRealize

vRealize Easy Installer Walk-through Guide

Posted by on October 22, 2019 No comments

With the recent release of VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0 and vRealize Automation, also comes a new deployment tool called vRealize Easy Installer.  The Easy Installer is a tool that streamlines and helps you install vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, VMware Identity Manager, and optionally, vRealize Automation via a simple and clean UI.  

The three packages are contained within a single ISO file call VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0.0 Easy Installer.  The ISO can be found within the vRealize Suite Download page in the My VMware portal.   Selecting either vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager or vRealize Automation will take you to the same 9GB ISO download. vIDM still has it’s own individual download if you want/need it.

The Easy Installer is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac, which should make it very accessible to a large audience.  I decided to give it a try out and detail the process below.  It’s a rather simple process to follow as long as a few prerequisites specific to the Installer are met first.

On the Memory front, LCM and vIDM both require 2 vCPUs and 6 GB of memory. vRealize Automation on the other hand will require, for a Standard install, 8 vCPUs and 32 GB Memory. You can times that by three for a Clustered install. If you enable Thin Disk provisioning, 75 GB min storage will be required. Finally DNS records for LCM, vIDM, and optionally vRA if being installed, need to be created first.

In the below process I use Windows 10 as the client source I install from.   

To access the installer we need to right click the ISO file and select mount.  This will mount the ISO as a drive in Windows.  We can then navigate to \vrlcm-ui-installer\win32 (If you were on Linux or Mac this path would be different). Then select installer.exe to start the Installer UI.

Step 1. Select Install
Step 2. Introduction -- Click Next
Step 3. EULA -- Accept terms and CEIP then click Next
Step 4. Appliance Deployment Target -- Enter in vCenter details and click Next
Step 5. Certificate Validation — Accept any warnings and click Next
Step 6. Select a Location -- Select a Datacenter and click Next
Step 7. Select a Compute Resource -- Select a Cluster and click Next
Step 8. Select a Storage Location -- Select a Datastore and optionally Enable Thin Disk Mode and click Next
A warning will display if you click Next and there is insufficient disk space. You will need a minimum of 75 GB for a Thin Disk install
Step 9. Network Configuration -- Enter in global networking details for the install of all products. Optionally enter in NTP settings. Only static IP assignment is possible.
Step 10. Password Configuration -- Enter in a default root/admin password to be assigned to all products
Step 11. Lifecycle Manager Configuration -- Enter in LCM details and click Next
If a VM with the same name is found in vCenter when you click Next you will receive a warning
Step 12. Identity Manager Configuration -- Enter in the vIDM details. Optionally enable the Sync Group Member to the Directory
Do not use admin/sshuser/root when selecting a Default Configuration Admin account name.
Step 13. vRealize Automation Configuration -- Choose to install vRA 8. Standard Deployment will deploy one vRA 8 server. Cluster Deployment will deploy three. The License Key will not be validated at this stage so confirm it is correct.
Step 14. Summary -- Verify all installation parameters and click Submit
If there are any issues during installation the install will fail and you will have the option to download the logs to troubleshoot the issue. Make sure all your DNS settings are correct and the client you are installing from can validate those DNS settings.
A successful install will look similar to this

Change vRealize Network Insight consoleuser Password

Posted by on April 11, 2018 No comments

The last few posts I’ve written about have revolved around vRealize Network Insight.  In these posts I mention using the consoleuser account and in my case using the default password for this account, which for the record is ark1nc0ns0l3 (shhh, don’t tell anyone).  Clearly not good practice so I thought I would briefly mention the process to change the password for the account.

The steps involved to change the password are fairly straight forward and as the consoleuser account can be logged in via SSH out of the box it’s recommended to be changed.

The below process are applicable to both the Platform and Proxy appliances.

1.  Open a console window or SSH to the Platform and or Proxy appliances (depending on what you deployed).  You can user the consoleuser account here with its default password of ark1nc0ns0l3

2. Type in the following command

modify-password system --user consoleuser

3. Type in a new password, hit enter, and verify that password.

…and that’s it!

As I mentioned above this account can be used with SSH and is enabled out of the box so recommended to be changed once vRNI is deployed.

 

Configure An HTTP Internet Proxy In vRealize Network Insight

Posted by on February 28, 2018 1 comment

Well, we’re up to vRealize Network Insight 3.7 and still no GUI way of setting an internet proxy.  Usually you would configure an HTTP Internet proxy via the VAMI but that also doesn’t exist for reasons I don’t quite understand???  Never the less the process to configure an HTTP Internet proxy can be performed via the CLI easy enough.  Reasons why we might want to do this, apart from the obvious of gaining internet access where none exist without a proxy, is so we can check for software updates and connect to support.

The command we use is set-web-proxy

(cli) set-web-proxy -h
usage: set-web-proxy [-h] {show,enable,disable} …

set the web http proxy (for Internet access)

positional arguments:
{show,enable,disable}
show show current configured http proxy state
enable enable http proxy
disable disable http proxy

optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit

1. First thing we do is connect up to an interactive console session or SSH into our vRNI boxes with the consoleuser account.  The default password for consoleuser if you haven’t changed it is ark1nc0ns0l3

2. Type in set-web-proxy show

You will see something similar to below.

(cli) set-web-proxy show
Http proxy connection disabled

3. Next we set our HTTP proxy using set-web-proxy enable.  This will stop and start a few services but not cause any disruption the to running of vRNI.  Below is an example with a proxy address and port.

(cli) set-web-proxy enable --ip-fqdn vrni-platform.mydomain.local --port 3128
Stopping services
* Stopping DNS forwarder and DHCP server dnsmasq [ OK ]
nginx stop/waiting
launcher-service stop/waiting
* Starting DNS forwarder and DHCP server dnsmasq [ OK ]
Enabling http proxy connections…
Http proxy connection enabled
Connected to http proxy vrni-platform.mydomain.local:3128
* Stopping DNS forwarder and DHCP server dnsmasq [ OK ]
Starting services
* Starting DNS forwarder and DHCP server dnsmasq [ OK ]
nginx start/running, process 5337
launcher-service start/running, process 5415
(cli)

4. We run set-web-proxy show again.

(cli) set-web-proxy show
Http proxy connection enabled
Connected to http proxy vrni-platform.mydomain.local:3128

5. Finally we can run show-connectivity-status

A bunch of network information will be returned along with connectivity status of a few URLs.

…
Upgrade connectivity status (svc.ni.vmware.com:443): Passed
Support connectivity status (support2.ni.vmware.com:443): Disabled
Registration connectivity status (reg.ni.vmware.com:443): Passed
…
Web Proxy connectivity status: Passed

Over in the settings page of vRNI you should now see some green icons indicating Upgrade Server Reachable.

References

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight/3.7/com.vmware.vrni.cli.doc/GUID-5BD84F61-4612-4330-B6D5-8D51DBAD3C25.html

Offline Upgrade vRealize Network Insight

Posted by on February 24, 2018 No comments

Earlier this week VMware release the latest update to vRealize Network Insight, version 3.7.  If you jumped on this new update as I did you might have been caught out by a bad build (3.7.0.1518427076).  Upgrading to this version had a DNS issue that caused a communication issue between the Platform appliance and the Proxy appliance.  The version was quickly pulled and replaced a day later with a new and working build, 3.7.0.1519211678.  It’s unlikely that you will have this old build but before upgrading it’s best to check.

vRNI can be updated in two ways.  An Online upgrade via the GUI and an Offline upgrade via the CLI.  There are a few reasons why you might want to perform an Offline upgrade.  Cluster upgrades can only be performed via an Offline upgrade.  Your vRNI appliance might not have internet access.  Or like me you have configured a proxy server on your vRNI appliances but because vRNI wants to make your life difficult it doesn’t detect new updates.

The Offline upgrade can only be performed on version 3.5 or 3.6 and is very similar to previous upgrades.

1. Download the ZIP bundle from VMware.

2. Snapshot both your Platform and Proxy appliances or live life like a cowboy.

3. Copy (SCP) the ZIP bundle to both appliances (Platform & Proxy).

I had difficulties using WinSCP due to the limited console access given by the appliance so I used pscp.exe that comes with the Putty package.  The location to where you can copy the bundle to can also be a bit of a challenge.  I chose /home/consoleuser/downloads/ using user consoleuser.

Below is the command I ran from a PowerShell prompt from my Windows box.

PS C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY> .\pscp.exe -scp E:\temp\VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight.3.7.0.1519211678.upgrade.bundle [email protected]:~/home/consoleuser/downloads/

4. SSH over to the Platform appliance with the user account consoleuser which has to be upgraded first. The default password for consoleuser in vRNI is ark1nc0ns0l3

5. Run the package-installer command to upgrade the appliance.

Below is an example of the command I ran.

package-installer upgrade --name /home/consoleuser/downloads/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight.3.7.0.1519211678.upgrade.bundle

The upgrade process can take a while so be patient.  A successful upgrade should look similar to below.

login as: consoleuser
[email protected]’s password:
vRealize Network Insight Command Line Interface
(cli) package-installer upgrade --name /home/consoleuser/downloads/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight.3.7.0.1519211678.upgrade.bundle
Do you want to continue with upgrade? (y/n) y
It will take some time…
Successfully upgraded
(cli)

6. SSH over to the Proxy appliance now with the same user account consoleuser.

7. Run the same command as on the Platform appliance.

package-installer upgrade --name /home/consoleuser/downloads/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight.3.7.0.1519211678.upgrade.bundle

As with the Platform upgrade it will take some time and the output after the upgrade should look the same

8. (Optional) Run show-version and confirm you are running the latest version build on each appliance.

That’s all there is to it.  Stopping and Starting services aren’t necessary.  As with no need to reboot appliances.

You can now open up a web browser and login to your upgraded vRNI platform appliance. Check that everything looks over in settings.

 References

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vRealize-Network-Insight/3.7/com.vmware.vrni.install.doc/GUID-2DCC214C-6EEE-43FE-B420-E1083E53C58F.html