Part 3 – vCloud Air OnDemand – vCloud Connector

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In Part 1 – vCloud Air OnDemand – Special Promo, I have covered the sign-up process including some special promo. Part 2 – vCloud Air OnDemand – Deploy your first VM, covered the deployment of VMs and how easy it is to use.

Today, I will cover how to make use of the vCloud Connector. vCloud Connector links your local cloud/private cloud with vCloud Air and provides you with an easy-to-use interface. vCloud Connector is fully integrated into vSphere vCenter and once configured, you’ll be able to manage all your clouds through it.

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Note: Only vCloud Air and local vClouds are supported. No AWS, Azure etc.

 

The following steps will cover the steps to get your private and public cloud connected.
Before we get started, make sure you have downloaded the vCC Server and vCC Node from here.

  1. Deploy both OVFS to your local vCenter instance and power them on.Capture3
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  2. Connect to the vCloud Connector Node . The default credentials are admin/vmware.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.25.45 AM
  3. Click on the “Node” tab and go to “Cloud”. Select vSphere as your Cloud Type and specify your local vCenter Server.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.37.06 AM
  4. Once the Cloud Registration was successful, go to your vCloud Connector Server . The default credentials are admin/vmware.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.23.57 AM
  5. Click on the “Server” tab and go to “vSphere Client”. Specify your local vCenter credentials and click on “Register”. This will register the vCloud Connector extension to your vCenter.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.25.10 AM
  6. Once the registration has completed, go to the “Nodes” tab and click on “Register Node”. Fill in all the details your local vSphere environment and click “Update”. You should now see two Nodes configured. The Local Content Library of your vCC Server and your local vCenter instance.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.38.16 AMScreen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.38.21 AM
  7. Next, let’s add your vCloud Air OnDemand to the mix. Click on “Register Node” again. The Node URL will depend on the location of your vCloud Air OnDemand setup. You can find the URLs listed here.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.48.20 AM
    Note: Your VCD Org Name can be found when you login to https://vca.vmware.com and open the vCloud Director -> Administration -> General. It’s a little hidden.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.47.51 AM
  8. Once your local vSphere environment and your vCloud Air OnDemand setup are configured, go to your local vCenter and open the vCloud Connector.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 12.29.22 PM
  9. You should now be able to see both setups and manage them from here.Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.50.07 AM

Screen Shot 2015-04-29 at 11.50.17 AM

 

Part 2 – vCloud Air OnDemand – Deploy your first VM

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In Part 1 – vCloud Air OnDemand – Special Promo, I have covered the registration process and a special promo code which gives you $500 instead of $300.

This part will cover the installation of your first Virtual Machine with VMware vCloud Air OnDemand.

Get your first VM installed in just 9 steps:

  1. Login to https://vca.vmware.com
  2. Select Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 3.55.00 PM
  3. Select where you would like to host your first VM.
    Currently Australia, Germany, UK and US are available locations.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 3.56.24 PM 1
  4. Once you’ve selected your location, vCloud Air will set-up a virtual data center, gateway and a routed network. This will take a few minutes.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 3.57.17 PM
  5. Click on Create your first virtual machine.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 4.36.24 PM
  6. Select a VM template or create the VM from scratch. In this article, I have chosen a Ubuntu Server template.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 4.48.40 PM
  7. Next, set the hardware settings for your VM and see the costs per day or per months for it.
    SSD-Accelerated storage is double the price of the Standard storage.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 4.50.02 PM
  8. After the VM has been created, it will automatically be powered-on.Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 5.03.47 PM
  9. Click on the VM name and open the remote console.

Screen Shot 2015-04-28 at 5.07.39 PM

 

That’s it with Part 2 of my vCloud Air OnDemand series..

Note: Do not forget to use promo code “Influencer2015” for a free $500 instead of $300. This promo code works only for new vCloud Air users.

Thwack Ambassador May 2015

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For the month of May, I have been asked to be a Thwack Ambassador for the Systems Management forum within the Solarwinds Thwack Community. I will post a series of four posts over the next four weeks.

thwack1

The Thwack community is different from other communities by encouraging their members to talk about technology and not just about their products. While being an Ambassador for the Systems Management space, I will focus on monitoring and managing virtualized environments.

So, if you like virtualization and you fight every day with your systems, come and join us. I’ll be posting on the Geek Speak Blog and look forward to have many people jump in and get a great discussion started.

My posts:

There must be a better way to manage virtualized systems!

What is saving you on a regular basis?

How to right-size your VDI environment

Part 1 – vCloud Air OnDemand – Special Promo

Jan2 Replies

As VMware vCloud Air gets more traction, I think it is time to look into it and provide some details around it. For the folks, who do not know what VMware vCloud Air is, vCloud Air is a public cloud platform fully integrated in your VMware vSphere environment.

vCloud Air currently supports over 5,000 application and more than 90 different Operating Systems. vCloud Air makes it easy to migrate your VMs from a vSphere environment to a public cloud or from a public cloud back to your local vSphere environment.

Looking at some blog post by VMware from August 2014, vCloud Air has 2x the compute power as Microsoft Azure and 3x the storage performance of AWS for less money.

 

The registration for vCloud Air is easy and takes only a few minutes. Click here to get to the sign-up page.
Note: Do not forget to use promo code “Influencer2015” for a free $500 instead of $300. This promo code works only for new vCloud Air users.

For further information, checkout the vCloud Air website.

Installing vCenter Appliance 6

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I got finally my head around installing vCenter Appliance 6. What an adventure… Everyone who has previously installed a vCenter Appliance is used to some easy and quick process via an OVA file. A quote from VMware about vSphere 6

With more than 650 new features and innovations, VMware vSphere 6 will provide customers with a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application. – See more at: http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/Introducing-VMware-vSphere-6—The-Foundation-for-Hybrid-Cloud/1920294#sthash.nM9LvQcJ.dpuf

650 new features and innovations? Sounds promising and you would expect things to work even easier and better than before. There are certainly some promising features but also some not so promising ones. In the case of vCenter 6, I’m not sure what happened.

So what has changed about vCenter 6? I would say almost everything, at least in regards to the install:

  • No OVA
  • No port 5480 admin page anymore
  • Requires a Windows system to deploy the vCenter VCA 6 which is Linux based. How ironic, right?
  • The installation is split in two parts
    • VMware Client-Integration Plugin
    • vCenter Server Appliance

Just the fact that I need to have a Windows system to deploy a Linux based VM sounds and feels wrong.
Since the setup isn’t straight forward anymore, below are the steps to get started:

  1. Login to www.myvmware.com and download the vCenter 6 ISO.Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.27.44 PM
  2. Connect the ISO to a Windows VM or use a tool like DEAMON Tools to connect the ISO to your local Windows system.
  3. Navigate to the VCSA folder on the ISO and run VMware-ClientIntegrationPlugin-6.0.0.Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.55.27 PM Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.55.35 PM Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.55.41 PM Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.55.46 PM Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 4.56.18 PM
  4. Open vca-setup.html, located in root directory of the ISO and start the installation.Capture01Capture02
  5. Specify the ESXi where you want to run the vCenter Appliance Server on.Capture03
  6. Specify a VM name and the OS password for the vCSA 6Capture04
  7. With vCenter 6, VMware introduced the Platform Service Controller which is required for every vCenter 6 instance. Multiple vCenter instances can share the same Platform Service Controller. The Platform Service Controller is used so share services like Single-Sign-On between multiple vCenters.Note: In this example, I’ll use the embedded Platform Service Controller within the vCenter Server Appliance.Capture05
  8. Select whether you want to join an existing SSO domain or create a new one. I have chosen to create a new one.Capture06
  9. Select the size of your vCenter Server instance.
    Tiny – 10 hosts & 100 VMs
    Small – 100 hosts & 1000 VMs
    Medium – 400 hosts & 4000 VMs
    Large – 1000 hosts & 10,000 VMsCapture07
  10. Chose the datastore where you want to place your vCenter Service Appliance on and select “Enable Thin Disk Mode” to make the disk thin provisioned.Capture08
  11. Select if you want to use the embedded vPostgres or use an external Oracle DB.Capture09
  12. Next, configure the network settings.Capture10
  13. Review the summary of your configuration and click Finish.

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Once you clicked Finish, the actual installation will start.
The deployCapture12ment and startup of the appliance will take roughly 10-15 minutes.

 

 

 

After the appliance is started you can login through either the vSphere Web-Client or the Windows Client with your SSO credentials. Make sure to login as administrator@ and not as root.

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