VMware Cloud Foundation 

vRealize Operations Installation

The capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 (VCF) can be extended by the addition of optional software components, such as vRealize Operations (vROps).

Customers can use vROps to provide for continuous performance optimization, capacity and cost planning, intelligent remediation, and compliance.

This demonstration will show the process involved with the automated installation of vRealize Operations in a VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 environment.

We begin at the SDDC manager dashboard page:

1. Click [vRealize Suite]

Here you can see the vRealize products that have been installed. In this example, both the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) and Workspace ONE Access have been already deployed.

Before beginning, we need to ensure vRSLCM is successfully deployed.

2. Click [Scroll bar]

At the bottom of the page, you will see the products that are available to be installed. This includes vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and vRealize Automation.

3. Click [Deploy vRealize Operations]

This will begin the process of deploying vROps and will redirect you to the vRSLCM login page.

4. Click [Username]

Provide the appropriate information to login to the vRSLCM user interface.

5. Click [Login]
6. Click [Locker]

Prior to installing vROps, we will import the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate for vRealize Operations we created earlier using the CertGenVVD PowerShell script.

7. Click [Import]
8. Click [Enter Cert Name]

We will provide a name that will identify this SSL certificate and set the pass phrase.

9. Click [Browse File]

Here we select the SSL certificate chain file required for deploying vROps.

10. Click [Open]
11. Click [Scroll bar]

Verify the private key and SSL certificate chain information is present.

12. Click [Import]

With the SSL Certificate imported into the vRSLCM, we can now begin the process of deploying vROps into the environment

13. Click [Dots Services Menu]
14. Click [Lifecycle Operations]
15. Click [Create Environment]

First, we will define the environment where we will deploy vROps into.

16. Click [Environment name]
17. Click [Default Password]

You can select which password you would like to use from the list of passwords previously defined in vRSLCM.

18. Click [root]
19. Click [Select Datacenter]

Select the vCenter datacenter where you want to deploy vROps. In this example, we will deploy it into the management domain.

20. Click [Mgmt-Datacenter]
21. Click [Next]

Once the environment is created, we will see the products that can be deployed into the environment.

22. Click [Scroll Bar]

Scroll down to see the vRealize Operations window.

23. Click [Check Box]
24. Click [Node Count]
25. Click [3]

In this demonstration we will deploy a three-node configuration. Other configurations are available based on your availability and performance requirements.

We will leave the other settings at the default values. This includes specifying this is a new installation of vROps 8.1.1 with a medium deployment type.

26. Click [Next]
27. Click [Scroll bar]
28. Click [I agree to EULA]

Before continuing, you will have to accept the End User License Agreement (EULA).

29. Click [Next]
30. Click [Select]

We will need to select a valid license key in order to deploy vROps.

31. Click [Check box]

We will select the vRealize Suite 2019 license key that has previously been added to vRSLCM.

32. Click [Update]
33. Click [Validate Association]
34. Click [Next]
35. Click [Select Certificate]

We will now select the SSL certificate that we entered earlier.

36. Click [vRealize Operations]
37. Click [Next]

At this point, you will notice that vRSLCM communicates with the SDDC Manager to automatically obtain various information needed to complete the installation process.

This integration ensures that the information provided is correct and limits deployment errors. It is also significantly accelerating the process by automatically populating the information it can.

38. Click [Next]

You’ll notice the network information is also automatically pre-populated.

39. Click [Scroll bar]
40. Click [Next]

On the product page, various options are available to be selected, such as security related options, enabling affinity and anti-affinity, and time synchronization options. Note the password that will be used for this deployment, is the root environment default password that was entered when vRSLCM was installed.

41. Click [Scroll bar]
42. Click [Enter FQDN]

We will provide the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for the vROps cluster.

43. Click [Scroll Bar]
44. Click [VM Name]

Next, we will define the name of the first vROps node as well as the associated FQDN and IP address.

45. Click [Scroll bar]
46. Click [VM Name]

We will then define the name of the vROps replica node as well as the associated FQDN and IP address.

47. Click [Scroll bar]
48. Click [VM Name]

Lastly, we will define the name of the vROps data node as well as the associated FQDN and IP address.

49. Click [Next]

Next we will validate the settings that have been entered to ensure the installation will go smoothly.

50. Click [Run Precheck]

After a few minutes the precheck operation succeeds and we can move on to the final review stage.

51. Click [Next]
52. Click [Run Precheck on submit]

This will not run the pre-check again after we submit the information.

53. Click [Scroll bar]

Scroll down and verify the information is correct. (Note: the demo will scroll down and expand some of the details automatically)

54. Click [Submit]

Click submit to begin the deployment.

From the vRSLCM deployment screen we can see the automation steps being perform. This process can take several hours to complete in an actual environment. This process has been accelerated for this demonstration. After a few seconds, you will see the installation has completed successfully.

Let’s return to the dashboard and review the environment details now that vROps is installed.

55. Click [Dashboard]
56. Click [Environments]

Here we can see the environment that we created and the icon for vROps denoting that it was installed within that environment.

57. Click [Browser Tab]

We can also look at the SDDC Manager and see how the information about the new vROps deployment is automatically populated. (Note: We will have to refresh the browser first)

58. Click [Cloud Foundation]
59. Click [vRealize Suite]
60. Click [Scroll bar]

We now see that vROps is listed among the installed products.

61. Click [vRealize Operations]

Through the SDDC Manager we can click on the link to automaticly be redirected to the vROps user interface.

62. Click [Username]

Provide the login information for vROps.

63. Click [Login]

At this point, vROps is installed and ready to be configured as desired.

64. Click [Browser tab]
65. Click [Cloud Foundation]

This completes this demonstration of using VMware Cloud Foundation to deploy the vRealize Operations. This demonstrated the automation provided through the SDDC Manager and also showed some of the integration points between the SDDC Manager and vRSLCM. This two-way integration reduces the complexity of deploying products to deliver your business applications at the speed of business.