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Load Balancing VMware Cloud Director 10.4.x Cells with NSX ALB (AVI)

by Tommy Grot April 11, 2023

written by Tommy Grot 2 minutes read

Topic of the Day – Load Balancing VMware Cloud Director 10.4.x multi cell deployment. For this deployment I am using 3 VCD Cells, they consist of Small Size ( 2vCPU and 12GB, these are not recommended specifications for a production appliance – Per VMware.)

This walkthrough will show you how to load balancer the appliances only, we are not integrating NSX ALB into VMware Cloud Director for Tenants to consume, stay tuned for a future walkthrough for VCD and NSX ALB Integration!

What you will need:

Multiple VCD Appliances
Certificate with multiple SANs ( I used my wildcard cert)
Certificates and Public Addresses configured already on all VCD Appliances
4 DNS A Records, 1 A Record Pointing to VIP IP address of ALB VS Pool, 3 A Records for individual appliances

More information on VMware Cloud Director 10.4.1 Certificate Implementation here

Lets login to NSX ALB, Go to Virtual Services and top right click on “Create Virtual Service”

-> Advanced Setup

Select your NSX Cloud which we will deploy the VIP pool

Select VRF Context, which for my deployment I am used my t1-edge-01-m01-gw, which is my Tier 1 Router attached to my primary Tier-0.

Next we will configured Virtual Service VIP for our Service Engine for ALB.

Attach the VsVIP to your Tier 1 Logical Router

Add a Virtual IP that is free from within your VIP Pool that is pre-allocated manually or can be via IPAM Dynamically. For my implementation I am setting the IP address statically.

Click Save -> Then it will take us back to the main page where we are deploying the Virtual Service

Next step we will set the Profile of our Virtual Service to the following

System-TCP-Proxy
System-L4-Application

(Side topic, VMware Cloud Director works better with a Layer 4 Load Balancer, there are issues that occur if a Layer 7 HTTP load balancer is utilized)

Now that our Profile is set, next we will create our Pool. I named my “VMware-Cloud-Director-Appliances-Pool”

The Following Settings that should be set are:

Default Server Port: 443
Least Connections (can use other Algorithms based on your needs)
Tier1 Logical Router – t1-edge01-m01-gw (this is my Tier1)
Servers – Created IP Address Group
Health Monitor
SSL – System-Standard, (Service Edge Client Certificate)

Any other settings will depend on your implementation

Once all settings have been configured, now we will hit save and proceed to the last page “Advanced”

Ensure to select your Service Engine Group, or ALB will deploy it on the default group and might cause issues.

After you have the AVI Service Engine deploying, now you can go to VCD, and setup Public Addresses – Pre reqs are that you need to have VCD SSL CA Signed or Self Signed already configured and just need to enabled Public Addresses for the Web Portal and API.

That’s it! Very simple implementation to utilize VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer and Load Balance VMware Cloud Director Appliances!

April 11, 2023 0 comments 2.5K views

Cloud

VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2 Installation / Configuration

by Tommy Grot January 19, 2022

written by Tommy Grot 1 minutes read

Installing VMware Cloud Director, this walkthrough will guide you on how to deploy VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2. My next blog post will be on how to configure tenants and different network toplogies within vCD.

Download the OVA from VMware’s website login will be required to gain access to the installation medium

Select the VMware Cloud Director OVA and then click Next

Chose the naming convention of your vcd instance

Select the Compute Cluster that you wish to deploy VCD on

Review the details

Accept that lovely EULA! 🙂

Select the Configuration of the VCD instance. Each confiruation has different resouce allocations.

Select the Storage you wish to deploy the VCD instance too, for mine i chose my vSAN Storage

Select the Networks that VCD will utilize, for my setup I am using two NSX-T overlay backed Segments with the Database segment being isolated and the vcd segment being routable

Verify all settings before hitting Finish!

After the deployment is completed you can integrate VCD with NSX-T and vCenter

Once logged in, go to Infrastructure Resource

Click ADD – to add vCenter server

Once you accepted the SSL Certificate from vCenter, then you will enable tenant access and click finish. After vCenter has been added you will see an overall vCenter Info, like in the screenshots below

After vCenter has been added, you may add NSX-T managers

Click on ADD – fill in the NSX-T Manager(s) URL/IP and user account

Trust the certificate from NSX-T Managers, then you are all set!

January 19, 2022 0 comments 2.4K views

Ansible

Creating Multiple Virtual Machines with Ansible in VMware vSphere 7 Update 1

by Tommy Grot October 15, 2020

written by Tommy Grot 2 minutes read

In today’s blog post, we will be creating a Ansible Playbook to create multiple Virtual Machines within VMware vSphere 7 Update 1.

These tasks below are completed via Ubuntu 20.04, if you need to download Ubuntu do it here.

My personal recommendation is to have a Virtual Machine with Ubuntu server with Ansible installed to do all this work, if you are not comfortable with Command Line Interface (CLI) you may also use Ubuntu Desktop.

Step 1 – Update / Upgrade your Ubuntu 20.04 Virtual Machine

sudo apt update -y
 sudo apt upgrade -y

If need to reboot then run this command.

sudo reboot

After rebooting the Virtual Machine, log back in and check to see if you have the latest python installed with this command below

python3 -v

Once Python3 is verified you will need to install python3-pyvmomi, this is a Python SDK for the VMware vSphere API.

apt install python3-pyvmomi

Below is a playbook to create multiple Virtual Machines, prior to running this playbook. You will need to have a template configured and ready!

Few things to do before running this playbook:

Create a “[email protected]” account to run all your playbooks, instead of using the [email protected] default account.
Have a virtual machine template already converted and ready to be deployed.
Fill out all required variables / information of your: vCenter Server IP Address or DNS, username, password, data center name, template name, datastore name.
Configure the naming convention you want your Virtual Machines to be named, by configuring the “with_items” below and how many clones you will want to be created.

---
 - hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: no
  vars:
    vcenter_server: "vCenter IP Address or DNS"
    vcenter_user: "[email protected]" 
    vcenter_pass: "Insert_vCenter Password"
    datacenter_name: "Datacenter"
    #cluster_name: "Cluster" uncomment this if you have a cluster
  tasks:
  name: Clone the template 
  vmware_guest:
  hostname: "{{ vcenter_server }}"
  username: "{{ vcenter_user }}"
  password: "{{ vcenter_pass }}"
  validate_certs: False
  name: "{{ item }}"
  template: template-esxi-0
  datacenter: "{{ datacenter_name }}"
  folder: /
  #cluster: "{{ cluster_name }}" uncomment this if you have a cluster
  datastore: "<Insert Datastore Name>" 
  state: poweredon 
 with_items:
  #Configure the amount of Clones you would like with the items below.
  - <your vm name01>
  - <your vm name02>
  - <your vm name03>

October 15, 2020 0 comments 3.9K views

VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter 7 Update 1 – Installation Walkthrough

by Tommy Grot October 6, 2020

written by Tommy Grot 3 minutes read

To Install vCenter 7.0 Update 1 with Embedded Platform Service Controller – Download the ISO from VMware (login will be required) Once downloaded, open the VMware VCSA.iso

Select vcsa-ui-installer folder

Then select choice of operating system (This tutorial is completed via Windows 10)

After going to win32
Then click on installer.exe

During this install we will be installing fresh new instance of VCSA.

Select Install

This installation now only offers Embedded Platform Services Controller. The External Platform Service Controller topology is depreciated model per VMware

Click Next

Accept EULA

Specify the VMware ESXi Host or vCenter IP Address – Example – 10.0.0.100 or DNS Name – esxi01.virtualbytes.io ; vcenter.virtualbytes.io
( VMware recommends to operate its platform with DNS names, this allows easier management and IP address modifications )

After all proper information is configured / documented – Click Next

Accept the Certificate Warning from the ESXi Host

Setup the appliance –
- Specify a name for your vCenter Server (ex. vCenter, VCSA, etc)
- Specify the VCSA root password ( If you do lose this password there is a step by step procedure to recover access)

During this Stage 1 – Here you can specify the VCSA installation to the specified datastore. Enabling Thin Disk Mode – will per-allocate the actual used storage of the virtual machine on the datastore (This saves storage from being filled)

VMware recommends to install vCenter under a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) with a FQDN – this allows you to change the IP address of a VCSA.
Be cautious of filling the “Configure network settings” page – This will lead to a inoperable vCenter instance.
Recommendation – Setup an ‘A’ Record on your local network DNS server or Domain Controller to point to the fresh new vCenter Server Appliance

VERIFY! VERIFY! VERIFY! – If you do not verify your appliance deployment configuration and you mis-configure a setting – You will be reinstalling VCSA from scratch again. (BE CAREFUL!)

After you have verified all information – Click Next

This stage will take few minutes – Grab a coffee or water! 🙂

Once the Deploy vCenter Server Appliance is completed – You will see another window to “Continue” – Click Continue and this will lead you to the next window.

Stage 2 – This stage you will get to configure the Appliance configuration such as (SSH, SSO, CEIP)
SSH – is recommend to be turned off for security reasons, unless you are setting up more than one vCenter server and setting up vCenter High Availability
SSO – the single sign on, the default is vsphere.local, if you have a on premise domain controller, make sure you do not use the same domain name, this will prevent you from adding vCenter to the Active Directory domain forest.

Most recommended option is to synchronize the time with the ESXi Host – Also making sure that the NTP Service is running on the ESXi Host and is up to date with a relative time server.

During this option – SSO ( Single Sign On ) If you plan to join your vCenter to a Active Directory Domain – Make sure to specify a different domain or keep vsphere.local (You cannot use same AD domain as SSO domain on VCSA)

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again – due to a password mis-configuration

Your choice to Join the CEIP Program ( This is recommend to join CEIP to get the Skyline Alerts and Health Updates)

Verify the finalization stage – this stage will configure your vCenter Server Appliance.

VERY IMPORTANT! Make sure the password you specify in this configuration window is accurate. If not you will be repeating the installation all over again due to a password mis-configuration

Once you confirm the final confirmation – There is no going back! Unless you took a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance prior to starting the vSphere SSO domain portion.

Enjoy your coffee or water – and wait patiently (This takes around 10-20 minutes, depending on the hardware)

You’ve installed vCenter Server Appliance! Now you may log into it URL to your server will be a – DNS A Record you configured in your local DNS Server.

https://your_vcenter_dns_name

October 6, 2020 0 comments 1.7K views

VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter 6.7 – Installation Walk-through

by Tommy Grot February 27, 2019