Top Posts
What’s New In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0
Deploying & Configuring the VMware LCM Bundle Utility...
VMware Cloud Foundation: Don’t Forget About SSO Service...
VMware Explore Las Vegas 2025: Illuminating the Path...
Securing Software Updates for VMware Cloud Foundation: What...
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2: A Guide to Simplified...
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2: Unlocking Secure Hybrid Cloud...
VMware Cloud Foundation – Memory Tiering: Optimizing Memory...
Decoding VMware Cloud Foundation: Unveiling the numerous amount...
VMware Cloud Director 10.6.1: Taking Cloud Management to...
Virtual Bytes
  • Home
  • Home Data Center 2025
  • VMware
    • Cloud
    • Datacenter & Cloud Infrastructure
      • VMware ESXi
      • VMware vCenter
      • VMware vSAN
    • Networking & Security
    • Desktop & App Virtualization
      • Omnissa Horizon
    • Troubleshooting
    • Ansible
  • Education
  • Hardware
    • Hardware Tips & Tricks
  • Events
  • About
    • About Me
    • Home Lab Archives
      • Home Lab 2020-2022
      • Home Lab 2016-2020
Category:

Cloud

Cloud

VMware Cloud Director 10.4.x & Terraform Automation Part 1

by Tommy Grot April 3, 2023
written by Tommy Grot 5 minutes read

Today’s post is about VMware Cloud Director 10.4.x and Terraform!

With Terraform there are endless possibilities, creating a virtual data center and being able to tailor to your liking and keeping it in an automated deployment. In this multi-part blog post we will get into VCD and Terraform Infrastructure as Code automation. This will be a multi-part post, for now we are starting off at Part 1!

What You will Need:

  • A Linux VM to execute Terraform from
  • Latest Terraform Provider (I am using beta 3.9.0-beta.2 )
  • Gitlab / Code Repo (Optional to store your code)
  • VMware Cloud Director with NSX-T Integrated already
  • Local Account with Provider Permissions on VCD (mine is terraform)

Lets Begin!

To begin our terraform main.tf, we will specify the terraform provider VCD version which I am using 3.9.0-beta.2

 terraform {
  required_providers {
    vcd = {
      source  = "vmware/vcd"
      version = "3.9.0-beta.2"
    }
  }
}

provider "vcd" {
  url                  = "https://cloud.virtualbytes.io/api"
  org                  = "system"
  user                 = "terraform"
  password             = "VMware1!"
  auth_type            = "integrated"
  max_retry_timeout    = 60
  allow_unverified_ssl = true

Once you have your Terraform Provider configured and administrative privilege account next, we will start creating an Organization within VCD.

# Creating VMware Cloud Director Organization#
resource "vcd_org" "demo-org-10" {
  name             = "demo-org-10"
  full_name        = "demo-org-10"
  description      = ""
  is_enabled       = true
  delete_recursive = true
  delete_force     = true
  

  vapp_lease {
    maximum_runtime_lease_in_sec          = 3600 # 1 hour
    power_off_on_runtime_lease_expiration = true
    maximum_storage_lease_in_sec          = 0 # never expires
    delete_on_storage_lease_expiration    = false
  }
  vapp_template_lease {
    maximum_storage_lease_in_sec       = 604800 # 1 week
    delete_on_storage_lease_expiration = true
  }
}

Next the code below will create a Virtual Data Center within that Organization you have created above.

resource "vcd_org_vdc" "demo-org-10" {
  depends_on  = [vcd_org.demo-org-10]
  name        = "demo-org-10"
  description = ""
  org         = "demo-org-10"
  allocation_model  = "Flex"
  network_pool_name = "VB-POOL-01"
  provider_vdc_name = "Provider-VDC"
  elasticity = true
  include_vm_memory_overhead = true
  compute_capacity {
    cpu {
      allocated = 2048
    }

    memory {
      allocated = 2048
    }
  }

  storage_profile {
    name    = "vCloud"
    limit   = 10240
    default = true
  }
  network_quota            = 100
  enabled                  = true
  enable_thin_provisioning = true
  enable_fast_provisioning = true
  delete_force             = true
  delete_recursive         = true
}

Next, we will specify the automation to create a template library within that Virtual Data Center.

#Creating Virtual Data Center Catalog#
resource "vcd_catalog" "NewCatalog" {
  depends_on = [vcd_org_vdc.demo-org-10]
  org = "demo-org-10"

  name             = "Templates"
  description      = "Template Library"
  delete_recursive = true
  delete_force     = true
}

The next step will depend on if you have NSX already configured and ready to consume a Tier-0 VRF into this Provider Gateway we are about to ingest into this Virtual Data Center. My Tier-0 VRF is labeled = vrf-tier-0-edge-03-gw-lab, as I tell Terraform the existing data where to pull from NSX and to assign it to this VDC.

# Add NSX Edge Gateway Tier 0 to VDC
data "vcd_nsxt_manager" "main" {
  name = "nsx-m01"
}

data "vcd_nsxt_tier0_router" "vrf-tier-0-edge-03-gw-lab" {
  name            = "vrf-tier-0-edge-03-gw-lab"
  nsxt_manager_id = data.vcd_nsxt_manager.main.id
}

resource "vcd_external_network_v2" "ext-net-nsxt-t0" {
  depends_on = [vcd_org_vdc.demo-org-10]
  name        = "lab-03-pro-gw-01"
  description = "vrf-tier-0-edge-03-gw-lab"

  nsxt_network {
    nsxt_manager_id      = data.vcd_nsxt_manager.main.id
    nsxt_tier0_router_id = data.vcd_nsxt_tier0_router.vrf-tier-0-edge-03-gw-lab.id
  }

  ip_scope {
    enabled        = true
    gateway        = "192.168.249.145"
    prefix_length = "29"

    static_ip_pool {
      start_address  = "192.168.249.146"
      end_address   = "192.168.249.149"
    }
  }
}

Now, that we have created a Provider Gateway by consuming a VRF Tier-0 from NSX, next we will create a Tier-1 Gateway and attach it into the Virtual Data Center so we can add segments!

resource "vcd_nsxt_edgegateway" "lab-03-pro-gw-01" {
  depends_on = [vcd_org_vdc.demo-org-10]
  org         = "demo-org-10"
  owner_id    = vcd_vdc_group.demo-vdc-group.id
  name        = "lab-03-pro-gw-01"
  description = "lab-03-pro-gw-01"

  external_network_id = vcd_external_network_v2.ext-net-nsxt-t0.id

    subnet {
    gateway       = "192.168.249.145"
    prefix_length = "29"
    # primary_ip should fall into defined "allocated_ips" 
    # range as otherwise next apply will report additional
    # range of "allocated_ips" with the range containing 
    # single "primary_ip" and will cause non-empty plan.
    primary_ip = "192.168.249.146"
    allocated_ips {
      start_address  = "192.168.249.147"
      end_address   = "192.168.249.149"
    }
  }
}

Now we can create a segment and attach it to our Tier-1 Gateway within the Virtual Data Center!

#### Create VMware Managment Network /24 
resource "vcd_network_routed_v2" "nsxt-backed-1" {
  depends_on = [vcd_org_vdc.demo-org-10]
  org         = "demo-org-10"
  name        = "vmw-nw-routed-01"
  edge_gateway_id = vcd_nsxt_edgegateway.lab-03-pro-gw-01.id
  gateway       = "10.10.10.1"
  prefix_length = 24
  static_ip_pool {
    start_address = "10.10.10.5"
    end_address   = "10.10.10.10"
  }
}

This is it for Part 1! Stay tuned for Part 2 where we will customize this VDC we created with Terraform!

April 3, 2023 0 comments 1.2K views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

Upgrading VMware Cloud Director to 10.x Versions

by Tommy Grot March 3, 2023
written by Tommy Grot 4 minutes read

This walkthrough is valid for VMware Cloud Director 10.6.x Upgrade!


What’s New

VMware Cloud Director version 10.4.1.1 release provides bug fixes, updates the VMware Cloud Director appliance base OS and the VMware Cloud Director open-source components.

Resolved Issues

  • VMware Cloud Director operations, such as powering a VM on and off takes longer time to complete after upgrading to VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1After upgrading to VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1, VMware Cloud Director operations, such as powering a VM on or off takes longer time to complete. The task displays a Starting virtual machine status and nothing happens.The jms-expired-messages.logs log file displays an error.RELIABLE:LargeServerMessage & expiration=
  • During an upgrade from VMware Cloud Director 10.4 to version 10.4.1, upgrading the standby cell fails with a Failure: Error while running post-install scripts error messageWhen upgrading the VMware Cloud Director appliance by using an update package from version 10.4 to version 10.4.1, the upgrade of the standby cell fails with an error message.Failure: Error while running post-install scriptsThe update-postgres-db.log log file displays an error.> INFO: connecting to source node> DETAIL: connection string is: host=primary node ip user=repmgr> ERROR: connection to database failed> DETAIL:> connection to server at “primary node ip”, port 5432 failed: could not initiate GSSAPI security context: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor >> code may provide more information: No Kerberos credentials available (default cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_1002)> connection to server at “primary node ip”, port 5432 failed: timeout expired
More Fixes and Known Issues here

More Information about VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1

VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 introduces several new concepts that facilitate creating, deploying, running, and managing extensions. Solution Add-Ons are an evolution of VMware Cloud Director extensions that are built, implemented, packaged, deployed, instantiated, and managed following a new extensibility framework. Solution Add-Ons contain custom functionality or services and can be built and packaged by a cloud provider or by an independent software vendor. VMware also develops and publishes its own VMware Cloud Director Solution Add-Ons.

My Versions

  • VMware NSX 4.1.0.0.0.21332672
  • VMware vCSA 8.0.0 21216066
  • VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1

First. properly shutdown your VCD Cells if you have multiple cells. Once they are turned off take a snapshot of all of the appliances

Next we will want to upload the tar.gz file via WINSCP to the primary VCD Cell if you have a multi cell deployment you will need to upgrade the first cell, then second and third.

I have logged into the VCD appliance with root account

Then open up a Putty session to the VCD appliance login as root,

Then change directory to /tmp/ Once in the directory:

cd /tmp

Create a Directory within /tmp directory, with the command below:

mkdir local-update-package

Start to upload the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz file for the upgrade into /tmp/local-update-package via winscp

File has been successfully uploaded to the VCD appliance.

Next steps we will need to prepare the appliance for the upgrade:

We will need to move the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz from the /tmp directory to /tmp/local-update-package/

mv VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz /tmp/local-update-package

Once in the local-update-package director, and you have your VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz run the command below to extract the update package in the new directory we created in /tmp/local-update-package

tar -zxf VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz

You can run the “ls” command and you shall see the VMware_Cloud_Director_10.4.1.9360-21373231_update.tar.gz file along with manifest and package-pool

After you have verified the local update directory then we will need to set the update repository.

vamicli update --repo file:///tmp/local-update-package

Check for update with this command after you have set the update package into the repository address

vamicli update --check

Now, we see that we have a upgrade that is staged and almost ready to be ran! But, we will need to shutdown the cell(s) with this command

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u administrator cell --shutdown

Next is to take a backup of the database, log into VMware Cloud Director Appliance, https://<your-ip>:5480 , same port as vCSA VAMI.

Backup was successful! Now, time for the install

Apply the upgrade for VCD, the command below will run will install the update

vamicli update --install latest

Now, the next step is important, if you have any more VCD Cell appliances you will want to repeat first few steps and then just run the command below to upgrade the other appliances:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade 

Select Y to Proceed with the upgrade

After successful upgrade, you may reboot VCD appliance and test, and after successful tests remove your snapshot.

March 3, 2023 0 comments 3.4K views
3 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
CloudNetworking

Reverse Proxy & Load Balancing a Web Server with VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer

by Tommy Grot December 16, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

Want to setup a load balancer and reverse proxy with VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer, and you want to replace your Nginx Reverse Proxy, well let’s get started!

First, we will make sure that you already have NSX ALB setup and configured within your environment, this walkthrough will only step you through on building a Virtual Service and Pools and VIPs for your multiple web servers. During this deployment you can set up many different FQDNs.

Requirements

  • Public FQDN
  • Lets Encrypt SSL Certificate (Wild Card or SAN or Single Cert)
  • NAT – Service Engine
  • Virtual IP
  • Service Pool
  • Web Server(s)

Product Versions:

  • VMware NSX ALB: 22.1.2
  • VMware NSX: 4.0.1.1.0.20598726

Steps

Login as an administrator account to NSX ALB ->

Go to Virtual Services -> Create Virtual Service

Select -> Advanced Setup

Next prompt -> Select your Cloud (For my setup I am doing everything NSX Overlay Backed)

Click Next -> Select your VRF Context (I am using a Tier 1 Gateway)

So now at this point – you should see this screen below, we will create a New Virtual Service, this will be the main ingress and egress point of your network and the external world. I have a NAT from my firewall going to this Virtual Service (VIP) Virtual IP.

  • Name: External-ParentSNI-VS (This is my naming convention, but you can choose your own)
  • Select: Enable Virtual Hosting VS
  • Virtual Hosting Type: SNI
  • VS VIP – (Create the main VIP for Ingress/Egress NAT, that is routable)
  • Application Profile: System-Secure-HTTP
  • WAF ( You can enable if you would like too, this is optional)
  • Service Port ( 80,443 – For 443 you will want to select SSL)
  • Pool – (Create a Pool, I used one of my very first web servers to start the pool)
  • SSL Certificate – Select your Cert – by default ALB will put System-Default-Cert

Click Save / Next – For this portion of the Virtual Service with Parent SNI we are done, next we will deploy the Child SNI which will be a parent to the main Ingress/Egress SNI Virtual Service.

As an example – I will use my Virtual Bytes SNI Child Virtual hosting.

Click on drop down for Pool, if you have not created a pool we will do so now.

  • Name: External-Parent-SNI-VS-Pool
  • VRF Context – Your Tier 1 Gateway
  • Default Server Port: 443

Select your first webserver, this will let you start the Virtual Service. You can do it via a IP Group or IP Address or DNS Name as well as have the capability to use a security group from NSX.

After you have created all the required services you should be able to access your web server from an internal or external (Internet) if you have NAT’d. But for the next steps we will repeat the steps for a Child SNI.

Child SNI Setup

  • Go to Virtual Services – > Click on Create Virtual Service (Advanced)
  • Name: You Web Server
  • Check – Virtual Hosting VS
  • Virtual Hosting Type: SNI
  • Virtual Hosting Parent: External-ParentSNI-VS (or your own naming)
  • Domain Name: www.yourdomain.com
  • Application Mode: System Secure-HTTP
  • Pool: Create a pool for the Virtual Machine or service you want to load balance
  • SSL Certificate: Select your Certificate

Click Next all the way till the end, and now you have successfully setup a Child SNI which now you can replicate the same steps for multiple web servers, and you no longer need to NAT anymore IPs, since your main ingress/egress is already NAT’d and everything will flow through the main Parent service.

December 16, 2022 0 comments 3.1K views
1 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

“The Next Chapter of Cloud Management” VMware’s LAST multi-cloud briefing of 2022

by Tommy Grot December 5, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 2 minutes read

With all these organizations trying to be multi-cloud centric it is hard to set up and control all those environments. Organizations that have Amazon Web Services or Azure and they run VMware Clouds on top of those environments, well that’s a tedious job to keep control and tabs on everything. Creating dashboards and information from a high level for leadership will let them know what kind of costs and consumption they are utilizing for their workloads. Well, with VMware Aria Hub – it is now possible to keep track of everything, from cost to capacity and consumption and how they can scale back workloads without compromising the business aspect and goals!

*** Disclaimer *** – Preview information and functionality will not be available till early 2023!

Links:

  • VMware Guard Rails
  • VMware Aria Migrations
  • VMware Aria Business Insight

Check out the Video below for more details –

VMware Aria Graph is a highly scalable system but also federated which you can federate from any other third party with their solutions. You can gather data from many third-party sources and create rich data and analytics to help your business needs. With VMware Aria Graph if you already own VMware vRealize Suite then this will be even better for your organization this will allow you to gather data and create more richer business models and practices with the data you will gather about your environment.

Main Dashboard – Shows overall cost, infrastructure and security compliance, and many more features.

Application View – This lets you see the aggregate information of your application, along with resources, and cost and what relationships the application has for what kind of image was used to build this and what kind of security settings have been applied like firewall rules..

Aria Guard Rails – Policy as code, continuous police enforcement engine. This will let you know what kind of security violations that are not controlled and with guard rails there is a library with pre-built templates for bootstrapping environments, cost, security. This will let you ensure that you set the proper security policies.

Deployment Information – Resources this draws out in detail how your workloads a connected and consumed and you can click on each individual icon and get into the depth information of each workload or VM

Migrating Workloads to VMC – you can select what kind of workloads you want to move to AWS VMC; you can get very granular on what kind of VM you want to move, you can move based on VLANs or prevent moving some workloads to save cost or keep on premise.

Cost of Ownership, this allows you to preview what your workload would cost on VMC on AWS.

Migration Planning – Gives you an awesome road map to plan out your workloads and how they will migrate and what business practices you want to implement and execute before running the migration.

Step 2 of Migration

Step 4 – Scheduling your migration

December 5, 2022 0 comments 478 views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

VMware Aria – VMware Multi-Cloud Briefing December 5th, 2022

by Tommy Grot December 1, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 1 minutes read

The new and exciting annoucment that occured at VMware Explore 2022 about VMware Aria! I personally got to meet the team behind the VMware Aria and vRealize Buisness Unit team thank to our awesome VMware Senior Techinical Account Manager!

My first day at VMware Explore 2022, I got to see all the new release and information before it hit emargo, with Purnima’s Session with the Multi Cloud Journy. Overall, it was a great time to see how the product would help organizations and developers and engineers with creating new solutiuons that are multi-cloud. Many oragnizations today, are going versatile with many different clouds where many of the organizations are in a cloud chaos point in their life of their organization and they do not know or how to take control over and get their cloud infrastructures and development in line.

With that said! I am linking here some news that will be released on December 5th, 2022. So stay tuned and check this page below!

December 1, 2022 0 comments 437 views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

VMware Cloud Director – Customization & Branding w/ API

by Tommy Grot September 9, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

A in depth post on how to customize your VMware Cloud Director! If your organization has a specific theme and logo, well tonight’s post will guide you through the steps to get it all configured and looking all spiffy!

By default, installation Cloud Director offers two types of themes, the default white mode and dark mode. You can manage, create, and add your own themes to VCD. The steps we will be following through will be done system level so all Tenants and the Provider will see the updated VCD UI!

First connect to VCD Cell appliance via SSH –

Change Directory to

cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin

Run the Cell Management Tool

./cell-management-tool manage-config -n backend.branding.requireAuthForBranding -v false

Next we will utilize Postman to do the next few tasks

Access Token Authentications

You will want to get your Access Token and API Version, below I will explain on how to do that to get your API version

Get -> https://<Your-IP-Here>/api/versions

Authorization Tab

  • Basic Auth – Username: “administrator@system” & Password: <your password>

Headers Tab

  • Key: Accept Value: application/*;version=37.0

Below is the supported version I utilized, I did not used the beta version.

</VersionInfo>
<VersionInfo deprecated="false">
    <Version>37.0</Version>
    <LoginUrl>https://172.16.204.120/cloudapi/1.0.0/sessions</LoginUrl>
    <ProviderLoginUrl>https://172.16.204.120/cloudapi/1.0.0/sessions/provider</ProviderLoginUrl>
</VersionInfo>

POST API Sessions

Now we will create a POST within Postman.

POST https://172.16.204.120/api/sessions

Authorization Tab

  • Basic Auth – Username: “administrator@system” & Password: <your password>

NOTE -> Once you execute the POST, make sure you get a 200 OK status before proceeding futher.

Next you will want to save the token above as sampled in the image, you will need it for the Beare Token.

Headers

  • KEY: x-vcloud-authorization VALUE: e31a8bd0d1244282bed8b4b809ba9e1f
  • KEY: X-VMWARE-VCLOUD-ACCESS-TOKEN VALUE: <eyJ….>

Cloud Director Web Portal Customization

For this next section you will need to execute GET calls to get the current portal configuration with the above Bearer Token KEYS and VALUES

GET https://172.16.204.120/cloudapi/branding

Once you execute the call you will want to go to the Body section and you will see something like this, but a fresh installation of VCD – Portal Name will be ” VMware Cloud Director” and the theme name would be “Default” Which mine is set to Dark mode.

Sample Body Configuration

{
    "portalName": "Virtual Bytes Cloud",
    "portalColor": null,
    "selectedTheme": {
        "themeType": "BUILT_IN",
        "name": "Dark"
    },
    "customLinks": [
        {
            "name": "help",
            "menuItemType": "override",
            "url": null
        },
        {
            "name": "imprint",
            "menuItemType": "override",
            "url": null
        },
        {
            "name": "about",
            "menuItemType": "override",
            "url": null
        },
        {
            "name": "vmrc",
            "menuItemType": "override",
            "url": null
        }
    ]
}

    Then once you get your custom configuration ready you will want to do a PUT Call via Postman

Once you POST your Branding configuration, go back to Web UI of VCD and hit refresh! You should see something like below 🙂

Cloud Director Web Portal Logo Customization

Now. for our logo we will do another API call via Postman to PUT a png file for the system level logo.

Authorization Tab

  • Bearer Token from previous API call we did

Headers

  • KEY: Accept VALUE: application/*;version=37.0
  • KEY: x-vcloud-authorization VALUE: “e31a8bd0d1244282bed8b4b809ba9e1f” <- Put your value for the call not mine 🙂
  • KEY: X-VMWARE-VCLOUD-ACCESS-TOKEN VALUE: “eyJhbGciOiJSUzI…..” <- I shorted the Bearer Token

Go to Body – Change it to binary and find your logo.png file to upload and then hit Send.

Top right corner you will see the logo I uploaded to Cloud Director!

September 9, 2022 0 comments 1.7K views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
CloudVMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4.0 Offline Bundle Walkthrough

by Tommy Grot September 4, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 1 minutes read

Hey there tech enthusiasts! Are you ready to dive into the nitty-gritty details of upgrading your VMware Cloud Foundation offline bundle? Well, you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’ll be breaking down everything you need to know about upgrading your VMware Cloud Foundation offline bundle, step by step.

This Offline Walkthrough is valid for any VMware Cloud Foundation – Offline Upgrade, ensure you have at lease the most up-to-date bundle utility to proceed

Go to Drivers & Tools

Download Bundle Transfer Utility

Upload the Bundle Utility tool to SDDC Manager appliance via WINSCP or SCP.

Change Director to

/opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-tools/bin

Then run the command below to generate a marker file (This lets the bundle utility know what is needed to be downloaded)

./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --generateMarker

Then open up WINSCP and connect to SDDC Manager (Login as VCF user)

Once you copeid them from the /root/ directory to your home/vcf directory, then refresh your WinSCP window and you shall see the marker file.

If you do run into permission issues, elevate from vcf to root via ” su ” , type in password and then once your as root, run these commands.

chmod 777 markerFile
chmod 777 markerFile.md5
chown vcf:vcf markerFile
chown vcf:vcf markerFile.md5

Then copy the two maker files into your vcf directory on C:\

Run the command, you will see a long list of bundles-(xxxxx) to download, some will be patches, and installs, but you want the correct version for your VCF Bill of Materials.

Run the command below

./lcm-bundle-transfer-util -upload -bundleDirectory /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/offlinebundle

Thats all! Now let the bundles keep getting ingested, this will take a bit depending on the amount of bundles.

September 4, 2022 1 comment 2.1K views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
CloudNetworking

Workspace One Access Integration with NSX-T

by Tommy Grot May 29, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 1 minutes read

Tonight’s quick walkthrough on how to integrate NSX-T and Workspace One Access (VIDM) This allows workspace one to create a OAuth connection with NSX-T where you can control user access via WSOA and leverage Active directory and instead of trying to manage local accounts and dealing with a mess!

Login into NSX-T Manager -> System

User Managment -> Edit

Then Login into Workspace One Access ->Catalog ->Settings

Go to Remote App Access -> Click on Create Client

Fill in the Name of the Client ID, I chose nsx-mgr-OAuth-wsoa

Generate Shared Secret, copy it so then when we go back to Workspace One Access we can paste it in.

Now. that we are back in NSX-T, fill in your FQDN for your workspace one appliance if you have a load balancer setup then enable it but for this walk through we are doing a single Workspace One Appliance.

Now, that we have the few things filled out, Dont click Save Just yet!

SSH into your Workspace One Appliance. We will get the SSL Thumbprint.

Change directory to /usr/local/horizon/conf

If you are using a CA Signed Certificate you will need to follow the prompt below.

openssl s_client -servername workspace.yourfqdn.io -connect workspace.yourfqdn.io:443 | openssl x509 -fingerprint -sha256 -noout

There is our fingerprint! Now we copy and go back to NSX-T

After the Integration is complete, now go back to Workspace One and add the users / groups through Active Directory.

May 29, 2022 0 comments 2.4K views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3: Creating a Tenant

by Tommy Grot April 15, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

A little about what VMware Cloud Director is – it is a CMP or also known as a cloud managment plane which supports, pools and abstracts the VMware virtualization infrastructure as (VDC) Virtual Data Centers. A provider can offer many different flavors and specifcations of a Tenant to a customer, it could be a Gold, Silver or Bronze types of capacity and tiering which allows a good allocation model depending on a customer that needs a higher guarenteed resource usage or allocation where as a lower tier customer wants to test few software solutions they could use a bronze tier and be able to save costs.

Once you are logged in, then you will want to create few things first! But my previous blog post already explains on how to add a vCenter Server and NSX-T integration here at this post.

Well lets begin! First we will want to create a Network pool which is a VXLAN that will reside within the tenant environment will run ontop of Geneve on the overlay!

  • Login into the Provider portal of VCD with the administrator account
  • https://<vcd-ip>/provider/

Go to Network Pools

The network will be Geneve backed to ride the NSX-T overlay

Select the NSX-T Manager

The network pool which is backed by NSX-T Transport Zone we will want to select the transport zone that you have created for your edge nodes during the NSX-T setup.

Once you have your Network Pool setup and followed the steps you should see something like this!

Network Pool has been successfully created as shown below

After a network pool has been created, next we will create the Provider VDC ( Virtual Data Center)

Select the Provider vCenter you have configured within the Infrastructure portion

Select the Cluster, for me – I have a vSAN Cluster

Once you select the vSAN or Cluster you have in your envirnonemnt, you may proceed but the Hardware Version should be left as default since this is the maximum hardware version VCD can run and accept.

Select vSAN Storage Policy if you have vSAN if not then select the proper storage policy your storage platform is using
The network pool we created earlier, this is where we get to consume it and we let NSX-T manager and Geneve network pool run out VCD environment
  • Next, we will create an organization for us to be able to attach a VDC to
    it, which for this walk through my org is Lab-01. That will be the same name
    you use when you login as a tenant into VCD.
  • An organization is just a logical group of resources that are presented to customers, where each organization has its own isolation/security boundaries and their own Web UI which they can use an identity manager to integrate such as LDAP for seamless user management.

Once a New Organization has been created, next we will create a Organization VDC (Virtual Data Center)

Click on Organizations VDCs and Create “NEW” Organization

Type a name of the organization you wish to create

Attach that organization to the provider virtual datacenter we created earlier

Select the allocaiton model, I have seen the Flex model be the most flexible to have the ability to have better control over the resources even at the VM level. More information is here on VMware’s website

For this demonstration, I am not allocating and resource I am giving my Tenant unlimited resources from my vSAN Cluster, but for a production environment you will want to use the proper allocation model and resources.

Select the Storage policy along with i like to enable Thin provision to save storage space!

Each organization will have its own Network Pool but it will run ontop of the Geneve overlay

About to finish up the setup of a VDC!

We have logged into the new Tenant space we have created! 🙂

April 15, 2022 0 comments 1.4K views
0 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Cloud

Upgrading VMware Cloud Director to 10.3.3

by Tommy Grot April 14, 2022
written by Tommy Grot 4 minutes read

Upgrading VMware Cloud Director from 10.3.2.1 to 10.3.3, primarily to fix a Security Vulnerability.

Also, there are some enhancements which follow:

What is New?!

The VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3 release provides bug fixes, API enhancements, and enhancements of the VMware Cloud Director appliance management user interface:

  • Backup and restore of VMware Cloud Director appliance certificates. VMware Cloud Director appliance management interface UI and API backup and restore now includes VMware Cloud Director certificates. See Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Director Appliance in the VMware Cloud Director Installation, Configuration, and Upgrade Guide.
  • New /admin/user/{id}/action/takeOwnership API to reassign the owner of media.
  • Improved support for routed vApp network configuration of the MoveVApp API.

This release resolves resolves CVE-2022-22966. For information, see https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories.

There are also lots of fixes, if your VCD is having issues there is a possibility this upgrade could fix lots of issues!

All the Fixes are listed on this site : https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Director/10.3.3/rn/vmware-cloud-director-1033-release-notes/index.html

First things first, lets download the newest release for VMware Cloud Director 10.3.3 – File Name: VMware_Cloud_Director_10.3.3.7659-19610875_update.tar.gz

Then shutdown your VCD Cells if you have multiple of them. Once they are turned off take a snapshot of all of them, along with the NFS Transfer Service Server usually it is a VM, take a snapshot of it too just in case you want to roll back if any issues occur.

Next we will want to upload the tar.gz file via WINSCP to the primary VCD Cell if you have a HA VCD topology, then the secondary get upgraded after the primary is finished.

I have logged into the VCD appliance with root account

Then open up a Putty session to the VCD appliance login as root,

Then change directory to /tmp/

Once in the directory:

Make Directory with the command below:

mkdir local-update-package

Start to upload the tar.gz file for the upgrade into /tmp/local-update-package via WINSCP

File has been successfully uploaded to the VCD appliance.

Then next steps we will need to prepare the appliance for the upgrade:

We will need to extract the update package in the new directory we created in /tmp/

tar -zxf VMware_Cloud_Director_v.v.v.v–nnnnnnnn_update.tar.gz \ -C /tmp/local-update-package

You can run the “ls” command and you shall see the tar.gz file along with manifest and package-pool

After you have verified the local update directory then we will need to set the update repository.

vamicli update – -repo file:///tmp/local-update-package

Check for update with this command after you have set the update package into the repository address

vamicli update – -check

Now, we see that we have a upgrade that is staged and almost ready to be ran! But, we will need to shutdown the cell(s) with this command

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool -u <admin username> cell –shutdown

Next is to take a backup of the database, so if your cloud director appliance was orginally version 10.2.x initially and you have upgraded it throughout its life span, then your next command will be little different which is /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-backup.sh – (which i have noticed it gets renamed during a upgrade process from 10.2.x to 10.3.1)

But if your appliance is 10.3.x and newer then /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-db-backup will be your backup to run.

I changed directory and went all the way down to the “bin” of the backup file and now i executed the script.

Backup was successful! Now, time for the install 🙂

Apply the upgrade for VCD, the command below will run will install the update

vamicli update – -install latest

Now, the next step is important, if you have any more VCD Cell appliances you will want to repeat first few steps and then just run the command below to upgrade the other appliances:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/upgrade

Select Y to Proceed with the upgrade

After successful upgrade, you may reboot VCD appliance and test!

April 14, 2022 0 comments 2.8K views
1 FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
Newer Posts
Older Posts




Recent Posts

  • What’s New In VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0
  • Deploying & Configuring the VMware LCM Bundle Utility on Photon OS: A Step-by-Step Guide
  • VMware Cloud Foundation: Don’t Forget About SSO Service Accounts
  • VMware Explore Las Vegas 2025: Illuminating the Path to Cloud Excellence!
  • Securing Software Updates for VMware Cloud Foundation: What You Need to Know

AI AVI Vantage cloud Cloud Computing cloud director computing configure cyber security director dns domain controller ESXi How To las vegas llm llms multi-cloud multicloud NSx NSX-T 3.2.0 private AI servers ssh storage tenant upgrade vcd vcda VCDX vcenter VCF VDC vexpert Virtual Machines VMs vmware vmware.com vmware aria VMware Cloud Foundation VMware cluster VMware Explore VMware NSX vrslcm vsan walkthrough

  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • Youtube

@2023 - All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by Virtual Bytes

Virtual Bytes
  • Home
  • Home Data Center 2025
  • VMware
    • Cloud
    • Datacenter & Cloud Infrastructure
      • VMware ESXi
      • VMware vCenter
      • VMware vSAN
    • Networking & Security
    • Desktop & App Virtualization
      • Omnissa Horizon
    • Troubleshooting
    • Ansible
  • Education
  • Hardware
    • Hardware Tips & Tricks
  • Events
  • About
    • About Me
    • Home Lab Archives
      • Home Lab 2020-2022
      • Home Lab 2016-2020