Tag : VMware

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 18, 2016 .

I am right now sitting on the train heading back into London with a smile on my face. I’m listening to music (Eye of the Tiger just started playing) and I’m tapping away on my laptop. Why am I smiling? Well it is simple, today was the first time I realised and understood the value of the community. Today was my first UK VMUG it was the first time in a long time I have enjoyed a UK wide conference. London VMUG (#LonVMUG) is #AWESOME, but today was just bigger (and better) in every way imaginable.

VMware VMUG UK VMUG vExpert

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 16, 2016 .

I’m just back in from attending my first @UKVMUG #vCurry evening.

I have to say I had a #awesome evening in the tres cool surroundings of the National Motorbike Museum in Birmingham. (cue obligatory screen shots of motorbikes below)

It was good to catch up with people i hadn’t seen in a while in the community and even make new acquaintances over rather nice curry with all the trimmings. The only very slight downside for me is I don’t like lamb, so I had to opt for the vegetarian option (which was better than I expected). I, of course, made up for this by having two helpings of the desert (chocolate brownie… with custard - don’t ask).

2016 UKVMUG VMUG VMware

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 15, 2016 .

If you didn’t already here the news, VMware vSphere 6.5 is now GA . Whilst lots of people will be concentrating on upgrading vSphere 5.x/6.x to 6.5 I’m going to start with the basics…

To install the Platform Services Controller using the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), you first have to mount the ISO. In Windows 10 this is simple!

Installation Steps

So first things first, double click on VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-<buildnumber>.iso to mount it as a drive on your system. (In my instance on my Windows 10 machines, this was drive letter H:)

VMware vSphere Platform Services Controller PSC vCenter Server

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 15, 2016 .

The task of deploying VMware vRealize Automation 7.x is now mainly completed by the Deployment Wizard (unless you actually like pain) but before you can run the deployment wizard you need to install the VMware vRealize Automation Management Agent onto the IaaS Servers that you will be using within your deployment.

So I can hear you asking:

  • What happens when you want to deploy new IaaS components into you vRealize Automation environment?
  • What happens when you want to scale you DEMs horizontally (onto new servers) rather than vertically (deploying more DEMs per server)?
  • What happens if you want to add another vCenter Proxy Agent for High Availability or a new vCenter Instance?

Well, I’m glad you asked!

VMware vRealize Automation

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 7, 2016 .

Just over a week until the UK VMUG 2016. This will be my first year in attendance and after a really good VMworld Barcelona I’m looking forward to it. Whilst only a single day (if you excluded the vCurry the night before) I am hoping it will be successful in capturing the essence of VMworld.

There seemed to be a big focus on VMware User Group in the VMware EMEA Solution Exchange this year, both around promotion of the “free to join” standard membership and the “pay for” VMUG Advantage membership. Personally, this is my second year as a VMUG Advantage Member and the discounts on Exams and VMworld attendance has basically paid for the membership. Albeit when there are no more exams to do, I’m sure it will start costing me money… wait… when is there never any VMware exams to do?

VMware VMUG UK VMUG vExpert

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 5, 2016 .

The Series

  1. Configuring SSL certificates for vRA 7.x (inc vRO)
  2. Replacing the Appliance Management Site Certificate for vRealize Automation
  3. Replacing the Control Center Certificate on an embedded vRO instance
  4. Replacing the Package Signing Certificate in vRO 7

Replacing the Certificate

This is the final post in a series tackling the extra certificates you may want to replace once you have deployed vRealize Automation.

This is relatively straightforward to accomplish, but @SpasKaloferov covers this well in his article http://kaloferov.com/blog/how-to-change-the-ssl-certificate-of-a-vro-appliance-7-x/ so there is no point me re-inventing the wheel.

VMware vRealize Automation vRealize Orchestrator Certificates

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 5, 2016 .

The Series

  1. Configuring SSL certificates for vRA 7.x (inc vRO)
  2. Replacing the Appliance Management Site Certificate for vRealize Automation
  3. Replacing the Control Center Certificate on an embedded vRO instance
  4. Replacing the Package Signing Certificate in vRO 7

Replacing the Certificate

This is the third post in a series tackling the extra certificates you may want to replace once you have deployed vRealize Automation.

There are plenty of articles on changing the SSL certificate for this website https://vra-fqdn:8283/vco-vcoconfigurator on an External instance of vRealize Orchestrator, most notably is @SpasKaloferov ’s post http://kaloferov.com/blog/how-to-change-the-ssl-certificate-of-a-vro-appliance-7-x/

VMware vRealize Automation vRealize Orchestrator Certificates

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 5, 2016 .

The Series

  1. Configuring SSL certificates for vRA 7.x (inc vRO)
  2. Replacing the Appliance Management Site Certificate for vRealize Automation
  3. Replacing the Control Center Certificate on an embedded vRO instance
  4. Replacing the Package Signing Certificate in vRO 7

Replacing the Certificate

This is the second post in a series tackling the extra certificates you may want to replace once you have deployed vRealize Automation.

After a quick look around the VMware Documentation Center and I found the article for replacing the VAMI certificate ( https://vra.fqdn:5480 ). The VAMI certificate can be replaced using the same SAN certificate used for the vRA Virtual Appliance during the installation wizard, but it will need to be converted to Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) format to do so.

VMware vRealize vRealize Automation Certificates

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 5, 2016 .

So we all know that generating SSL certificates are something out of the Dark Arts and unforgivable spells akin to the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

So the following is a quick post on how to take the certificate (.cer or .crt file) from the Certificate Authority CA, combine it with the RSA Private Key (.key file) and the Root CA Chain (another .cer/.crt file) to firstly create the intermediate Personal Exchange Format (PFX) file and finally create the Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) File.

SSL Certificates VMware vRealize Automation vRealize Orchestrator

Written by Christopher Lewis on November 4, 2016 .

OK so you’ve finally deployed vRealize Automation 7.x and you’re pretty chuffed with yourself because it only two 2 rollbacks on the Windows VMs, a new VA deployment and some on the fly configuration tweaks to get it working… You’re #Awesome.

You’re following VMware best practice and you have your embedded vRealize Orchestrator instance on your vRealize Automation Virtual Appliance(s). You #RockThisWorld

You’re on a role. but now you now have to install a new plugin for vRealize Orchestrator (lets say for Infoblox IPAM or F5 LTM), so you try https://vra.fqdn:8281/vco like you did on the vRO 6 appliance but get a “this site cannot be reached” message. You then remember, configuration was on 8283, so you try https://vra.fqdn:8283/vco-confg again with no luck and a “this site cannot be reached” message.

VMware vRealize vRealize Automation vRealize Orchestrator