Holodeck Toolkit - Installing Cloud Assembly Lab Guide

Configuring VMware Cloud Assembly 8.11.2 On Prem for Use in VLC Holodeck

Overview

This section details configuring VMware Cloud Assembly 8.11.2 On Prem for use in the VLC Holodeck 2.0 nested lab environment. 

Prerequisites

This lab procedure has the following prerequisites:

1. VCF 5.0 or 4.5 is deployed in the VLC-Holo-Site-1 configuration
   1. No changes were made to the configuration, including changes of the host names, domains, IP addresses, or other information.
   2. AVN and Edge Cluster were deployed as part of VLC deployment.
2. vRealize Automation 8.10 vra-lcm-installer-21471040.iso is available.  
3. Verify that the Holo-Template created earlier is present.
4. License key for vRealize Automation 8.x Advanced or Enterprise

Task 1: Deploy VMware Cloud Assembly On Prem using the Easy Installer

This task configures VMware Cloud Assembly On Prem using the VMware vRealize Easy Installer from the Holo-Console VM.

[Step 1] Launch Easy installer

1. Double click the installer ISO file in windows file manager. This will mount the ISO image to drive letter D: as a DVD.

2. Navigate to D:\vrlcm-ui-installer\win32 and double click on the installer file to start the installation

3. Select Install

4. Click Next

5. Check the checkbox to accept the license agreement and clear the checkbox for joining the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)
6. Click Next

7. Enter vcenter-mgmt.vcf.sddc.lab for the vCenter Server FQDN, administrator@vsphere.local for the username and VMware123! for the password. Click Next

 

8. Click Accept the certificate warning
9. Select location mgmt-datacenter-01 and click Next

10. Select compute resource mgmt-cluster-01 and click next

11. Select storage location vcf-vsan and set Enable Thin Disk, then click Next

12. Use the dropdown box for Network to select xregion-seg01 and leave IP Assignment  as static . Enter the values below for each of the following attributes:

Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway = 10.60.0.1

DNS Servers = 10.0.0.221

Domain Name = vcf.sddc.lab

NTP Server = 10.0.0.221

13. Enter VMware123! For the Password and Confirm Password fields. Click Next

14. Enter 10.60.0.150 for the IP Address value.
15. Enter vrslcm.vcf.sddc.lab for the Hostname value
16. No additional changes need to be made in the Optional Configuration
17. Click Next

18. We are going to install a new VMware Identity Manager. Provide the following values for the Identity Manager Configuration attributes listed below

Virtual Machine Name =VIDM

IP Address = 10.60.0.151

Hostname = ws1.vcf.sddc.lab

Default Configuration Admin = configadmin

Default Configuration Email = configadmin@vcf.sddc.lab

19. Click Next

20. Provide the following values for the vRealize Automation Configuration attributes listed below

 

vRA Environment Name =VLC-Holodeck

License Key = <any valid license key>

Virtual Machine Name = VRA

FIPS Compliance = Off

Node Size = medium

IP Address =10.60.0.170

Hostname =vra.vcf.sddc.lab

 

21. Leave the Advance Configuration for Internal Pods and Service Configuration with Use Default selected
22. Click Next

23. Review the summary information and then click Submit

24. The deployment process takes approximately two hours to complete
25. Wait for the installation to complete, then click Close to quit the installer

Task 2: VMware Cloud Assembly 8.11.2 On Prem initial configuration with Quickstart

This task configures VMware Cloud Assembly On Prem to work with resources in the VLC-Holo-Site-1 Management Domain. This task assumes VMware Workspace One Access and VMware vRealize Automation have been successfully installed in the Holodeck configuration.

 

[Step 1] Login to vRealize

1. Open a new Chrome browser tab
2. Click on the Holodeck 2.0 bookmarks folder, then Holo-Site-1, then vRealize, and then vRealize Automation

3. At the certificate warning, click Advanced, then click Proceed to vra.vcf.sddc.lab (unsafe)
4. Click on Go To Login Page

5. At the certificate warning, click Advanced, then click Proceed to vws1.vcf.sddc.lab (unsafe)
6. Login as the user configadmin with the password ofVMware123!

 

[Step 2] Use vRealize Automation Quickstart wizard

1. Click on Launch Quickstart

2. Click Start on VMware Cloud Foundation

3. In the Add a new SDDC Manager section and provide the values for the following attributes:

SDDC Manager FQDN = sddc-manager.vcf.sddc.lab

SDDC Manager admin = administrator@vsphere.local

SDDC Manager password = VMware123!

4. Click Validate

5. Accept the untrusted certificate

6. After the validation completes, the Workload domain section updates. Select the mgmt-domain, then Create and Go To Next Step

7. Enter the value of VLC-Holo-Site-1-Mgmt for the Cloud Account Name attribute
8. Do NOT check Automatically Create Service Credentials
9. Enter administrator@vsphere.local for the username and VMware123! for the password. Click Validate

10. Accept the Untrusted Certificate
11. Under NSX Manager, enter admin for the username and VMware123!VMware123! for the password. Leave NSX Mode set to “Policy” Click Validate

12. Accept untrusted certificate
13. Notice Credentials validated successfully and mgmt-datacenter-01 is checked for allow provisioning
14. Click CREATE AND GO TO NEXT STEP

15. Select the checkbox for VM Templates

16. Click Select Templates
17. Select the Holo-Template
18. Click Save

19. Verify that one template is selected.
20. Click Next Step

21. Create a new project called VLC-Holodeck
22. Search for con in the Administrators field to locate the configadmin user
23. Select configadmin and click Next Step

24. Click Edit for Lease
25. Set lease to 1 month
26. Click Save

27. Click Edit on Machine name
28. Select the dropdown for the machine name prefix.
29. Select Resource-001 then click Save

30. Click Next Step

31. Review the details and click Run Quickstart

32. Click Close when complete

Task 3: Review and customize VMware Cloud Assembly On Prem configuration

In this task the VMware Cloud Assembly configuration deployed by the quick start wizard is reviewed and customized as needed.

[Step 1] Login to Cloud Assembly

1. Open a new Chrome browser tab
2. Click on the Holodeck-2.0 bookmarks folder, then Holo-Site-1, then vRealize, and then vRealize Automation

3. Click on Go to Login Page

4. Login as the user configadmin with the password ofVMware123!

 

5. Click Cloud Assembly

 

[Step 2] Review/Customize Cloud Account settings

1. Click Infrastructure
2. Scroll to bottom of the left-hand side menu and click Cloud Accounts

3. Click Open on the VLC-Holodeck-Mgmt domain Cloud Account

4. Note that Cloud Assembly recognizes the environment as connect to VMware Cloud Foundation and shows the Workload domain name and SDDC Manager FQDN. The vCenter Server service account credentials for the Management domain vCenter instance and the NSX Manager account details are also shown (VCF uses NSX user “admin” for connecting)

 

 

5. Scroll down
6. Note this Cloud Account is authorized to provision workloads to the mgmt-datacenter-01 datacenter

 

[Step 3] Review/Customize Cloud Zones settings

1. On the left-hand side menu, click Cloud Zones.

In simple terms, a Cloud Zone maps to an instance of vCenter Server when connecting to a vSphere-based environment.  With VMware Cloud Foundation, one Cloud Zone per Workload Domain is used for VMware Cloud Assembly

2. Click Open on the VLC-Holo-Site-1-Mgmt Cloud Zone

3. Click on Folder and select the Holodeck folder previously created

4. Add a new Capability tag called env:vsphere 
5. Add a new Capability tag called DeploymentType:Holodeck
6. Click Save

7. Observe the UI resembles the following:

[Step 4] Review Project settings

1. Click on Projects on the left-hand side menu
2. Click Open on the VLC-Holodeck project. 

Projects map specific users and/or templates to specific Cloud Zones.  Projects essentially allow for separation of different sets of templates and users to different areas of capacity.

3. Note that the Summary page shows this project maps to one Zone

4. Click Users.  The configadmin user has full Administrator rights

5. Click Provisioning. Note the capability tags of the VLC-Holodeck-Mgmt Cloud Zone are displayed

6. Scroll to bottom of the provisioning screen
7. Note the Custom Naming Template.  This will show up later when deploying resources from VRA

8. Click Cancel to exit this screen

[Step 5] Set Flavor Mappings

Flavor mappings map CPU and Memory sizing for virtual machines deployed by VMware Cloud Assembly. These mappings can be specific to a given Cloud Zone (account/region)

1. Click on Flavor Mappings from the left-hand side menu
2. Click New Flavor Mapping

3. Set Flavor name to small and Account/Region to Holodeck/mgmt-datatcenter-01
4. Set CPU and Memory Value to 1 and 2 respectively, then click Create

5. Repeat B through D for Flavor Mapping medium, with CPU and Memory values of 2 and 4 respectively

6. Repeat B through D for Flavor Mapping large, with CPU and Memory values of 4 and 8 respectively

7. Observe the UI resembles the following:

[Step 5] Set Image Mappings

1. Click on Image Mappings on the left-hand side menu
2. Click New Image Mapping

3. Set Image name to ubuntu and Account/Region to Holodeck/mgmt-datacenter-01
4. Click on Search for Images and select the Holo-Template template configured during the VRA quickstart
5. Click Create

6. Observe the UI show the new Image Mapping called ubuntu

[Step 6] Tag NSX uplinks 

1. Click on Networks from the left-hand side menu
2. Filter for VCF-Edge with properties Any

3. Click on the first VCF-edge uplink network. Notice the keyword uplink in the name

4. Provide the values for the following attributes:

Domain = vcf.sddc.lab

IPv4 CIDR = 172.27.11.0/24

IPv4 default gateway =172.27.11.1

DNS Servers = 10.0.0.221

DNS Search domain = vcf.sddc.lab

5. Click Save

6. Filter for VCF-Edge with properties Any
7. Select the second VCF-Edge uplink

8. Provide the values for the following attributes:

Domain = vcf.sddc.lab

IPv4 CIDR = 172.27.12.0/24

IPv4 default gateway =172.27.12.1

DNS Servers = 10.0.0.221

DNS Search domain = vcf.sddc.lab

9. Click Save