Step by Step vCenter Deployment 7.x.

Pre-requisites for deployment of vCenter.

1.Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) resolution should be in place with forward and reverse DNS       A records added.

2.vCenter Server 7.0 can only be deployed to, and manage, ESXi hosts v6.5 or later. There is no direct upgrade path for hosts running ESXi v5.5 or 6.0 to v7.0.

3.The ESXi host and all vSphere components should be configured to use Network Time Protocol (NTP.

4.You can use the see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrices.

5.The vCenter Server Appliance requires the following compute specifications, this includes vSphere Lifecycle Manager running as a service on the appliance.

6.Firewall ports should be opened as per the Required Ports for vCenter Server.

Procedure for the installation:

Download and mount the ISO on your computer, then browse to the corresponding directory for your operating system and open the installer file. In my case \vcsa-ui-installer\win32.

 1.Run the installer.exe

2.Once you will run the installer.exe you will get 4 options.

►Install: This option you have to choose when you are going to install new vCenter.

►Upgrade: You have to choose the upgrade option when you are going to upgrade 

   from previous version to latest version. But before that follow the upgrade path as per 

   VMware Product Interoperability Matrices.

►Migrate: This option is applicable when you are going to migrate from windows to 

   appliance vCenter.

►Restore: When you want to restore from previous version of vCenter you have to 

   choose this option.

3. As we are going to install new vCenter choose install option.

4. From 7.0 version external psc with vCenter is depreciated.

5. To Deploy vCenter server Click Next on screen.

6. Accept the license agreement and Click Next .

7. Next screen we need to provide ESXi host on which the vCenter server will deploy,Also                          provide username: root and password : ######

8. You will Get certificate warning, Click Yes to continue.

9. Provie vCenter name and root password which needs to be at least 8 characters, with a number,              uppercase and lowercase letters, and a special character. Click Next to continue.

 

10. Select the deployment size of vCenter server as per you workload requirement. Click Next.

11. Provide Datastore where vCenter server is going to deploy. if you are existing datastore you can choose that datastore.

12. Enter the network settings to be applied to the appliance, including IPv4, DNS, and network adapter settings, then click Next.

13. Once you will provide all IP details Click on Next and you vCenter Deployment will start.

14. It will take 20-25 minute to complete Stage 1 deployment process once it will complete click on

      continue and you can proceed with Stage 2.

Stage 2 Installation

1. Stage 2 will allow to setup VCSA and SSO configuration.

2. Click Next to being vCenter appliance setup. Click Next to Introduction page and provide NTP server details .Make Sure NTP server is configured correctly as part of Pre-requisite.

3.Next page need to configure SSO configuration and password for vSphere.local.
Note : If you want to join current vCenter to existing vCenter choose existing SSO domain 

and provide details existing SSO domain.

4.Click Next and check the box to join VMware customer Experience Improvement program.



5. Last you should review all details provided for VCSA setup and Click Finish.

6.Once you will Click on Finish. vCenter Setup process will start.



7.Once Setup VCSA process will complete we will be able to access vCenter from Browser

   https://<FQDN_vCenter-Name>.

Update VCF and SDDC componets .

 

Update VCF and SDDC Components.

Procedure:

1.Navigate to Inventory and Click on Workload Domain.

2.First MGMT domain need to update. Click On MGMT Domain.

  



3.Once you will Click on MGMT domain, it will show you different options like summary, services, update/patches, update history, host, cluster security.

Summary: You will be able to see version details of all components like VCF, vCenter, NSX and Hosts.

Hosts: Once you will click on Hosts Tab you will be able to see all assigned hosts in domains.

Cluster: In Cluster details you will be able to see all cluster running in domain.

Security: Once you will click on security tab then you will be able to see certificate details for all components.

Update and patches: when you click on Update and patches, you will be able to see Pre-check option in right side.

4.First click on Pre-check, Once pre-check will be green for all components you are good to proceed with update VCF and other components.

 



5. You will be able to see schedule update /update click on update. After that it will start updating VCF to target version.

 


6.Once VCF will be updated to target version you can update the other components as per VCF upgrade sequence in similar fashion.

7.It will populate the next components update option.

Thank You .

Downloading Online Bundles and Update SDDC Components:

You can download the Bundles when SDDC is connected, also you can use the Bundle Transfer Utility to download the bundles to local system and transfer to SDDC appliance.

Let More discuss on Bundle Types:

1.Install Bundles:

Install Bundle includes software binaries to install VI workload domain (vCenter Server and NSX-T Data Center), we can download the install bundle using same process and upgrade bundles.

2.Async Patch Bundles:

For Critical patch bundle you can use the Async patch bundles it will be applicable for SDDC components NSX-T Manager, vCenter server and ESXi).

Download Bundles from SDDC manager:

First you have to connect SDDC Depot using your VMware Customer connect account.

Procedure:

1. Login to SDDC Manager from Web browser in GUI mode.

2.Navigate to Administrator from Left side of page.

3.Go to Repository Setting and Click on Authenticate.

4.Now you must provide VMware Customer username and Password. 

5.Click Authorize.

Note: Once you will connected to VMware Depot, after some time you will be able to see bundles.

1. In Navigation pane, Go to Administrator the click on Repository setting.

2.Click on Bundle on Left side of Page.
   Here you can see Available Bundles which you can download.

  

3.Once you will click Download Now for an immediate download.

   OR

3. You can also schedule Download bundle as per your preference Date and Time.

4. To see download history you can go to Lifecycle Management then Bundle Management.

5.Go to Download History.

   

If you want to use Proxy server, Configure Proxy server to Download Bundles.

1.Take ssh session of SDDC manager appliance as vcf user .

2.using su – switch to root user.

3.copy path /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/

4.vi application-prod. properties file.

5.Add the below line at last of file.

lcm.depot.adapter.proxyEnabled=true

lcm.depot.adapter.proxyHost=proxy IP address

lcm.depot.adapter.proxyPort=proxy port

6.wq! to save file and exit .

7.Restart LCM service using below command.

Systemctl restart lcm.

Hope this blog will help you . In My Next Blog we will see how you update and VCF and other components of SDDC .

Create Network Pool In VMware Cloud Foundation

Create Network Pool In SDDC:

To commission and use ESXi hosts the workload domain, you create a network pool in SDDC Manager to assign IP addresses to the vMotion and vSAN VMkernel ports.

Procedure:

1. Login to SDDC Manager in Web Browser using the user interface.

2. Navigate to Administration > Network settings and click Create network pool.



 3.Click on Create Network Pool .



4.Once you will click on Create Network pool, you must provide below details.



5.Once you check the vSAN Box ,we must fill the vSAN Network Information.



6. In similar way you must provide vMotion Network Information as per the enviorment.



7.Click on ADD and Save from right corner of screen.
8.Network pool will create for new workload domain and can utilize for new ESXi Host
commissioning.

VMware Cloud Foundation

 

VMware Cloud Foundation -

Manage password for VCF components using different option ?

Basically, in VMware Cloud foundation (VCF), You specify the passwords for your VMware Cloud Foundation system's internal accounts as part of the bring-up procedure.

Let Discuss about the different password option which we got in SDDC (Software Defined Data Center) and what are the use case to use that option.

Rotate Password: As a security measure, you can rotate passwords for the logical and physical entities on all racks in your system. The process of password rotation generates randomized passwords for the selected accounts.

Here Selected accounts means for which account you are going to change the password                          like root, backup, admin.

2.      Update Password: You can manually change password for anaccount (root,backup,admin).In Rotate   password system generate random password for you and update.

Note: From VCF 4.1 VMware introduce one addition option is Remediate Password .

3.      Remediate Passwords: This option you can use when any account password is expires and you must reset the password for that component. In this case first you have to reset and then go with remediate password. Password remediation update password in SDDC manager database and workflow of cloud foundation.

   How to use any of the above option in your environment?

1.      Log in to SDDC console from browser.

2.      Once you logged in to SDDC GUI console from browser, On Left Side you will able to see security option.

3.       Click on Security and go to Password Management.

       

4.    On Right Hand-Side you next to component you can choose for which component you want to

 Change password like ESxi, vCenter,PSC.

5.   Once you will choose the component you can apply any of the option to manage password (Rotate, Update and Remediate)

 

Note: Remediate is not visible in above screenshot as my lab environment is on VCF 3.10 but you will be able to see after 4.1.

 

 

Thank you .

            

 

Run DR plan in Vmware Cloud Disaster Recovery-Part3

Test DR plan :

Before Testing DR Plan, need to validate VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery Dashboard and everything should be green.

1.System Health

2.Cloud Backup

3.Data Center Connectivity

You can see in Below screenshot all the parameters are showing Green in my environment.

After Validation of Environment, we will move to DR Plan testing.

1.On VCDR console page, Click on Dashboard and navigate to DR (Disaster Recovery) Plan.




2. Choose DR Plan which we have created in Previous Blog. In My case its Example HOL VM DR 

     Plan .






3. After Choosing DR ((Disaster Recovery) plan it will go to summary page of DR (Disaster 

    Recovery).

On Summary Page check the compliance status of DR (Disaster Recovery) plan it should be Green,

If Compliance report is not green Click on show and see for which parameter, its showing error and
need to remediate the error.





4. Once Compliance report is showing green you are good to Run DR Test Plan .

5. Click on Test Plan.



6. During DR plan failover or test, it is possible to leave the VMs running on the Scale-out Cloud File

    System (SCFS). This approach avoids the storage vMotion to the SDDC vSAN datastore. This can

    speed up DR plan test run completion at the trade-off of not leveraging the full performance and 

    protection of the SDDC vSAN datastore.


7. Once you will Click on Test Plan it will ask you to choose the snapshot using which you want to

    recover virtual machine on recovery Site.



By Default, it chooses the latest snapshot. If you want to proceed with different snapshot, click on USE
DIFFERENT SNAPSHOT.

8. Click on NEXT.

9. In Next screen you will get runtime setting where you can choose different options.

9.1 Ignore all errors.

9.2 Stop on every Error

9.3 Full storage migration to SDDC

9.4 Leave VMs and files in cloud backup.

In test DR run plan it would be great if you will go with Leave VMs and files in cloud backup ,So test plan plan will be more faster .

10. Click Next and Preview all the steps on this page.

11. Once you will complete the preview section. Go to Blank Box on same page and write TEST   

      PLAN  all in Capital Letters.

 


12. Now Click on RUN TEST option to run  Test DR Plan.

13. Once you will Click on Run Test, it will show the Steps which you see in preview section.



14. Once the Plan is successfully completed, Go to Recovery SDDC and Validate the VM from                    vCenter console.

15. After Validation of VM on Recovery Side you must perform cleanup task.

In Cleanup Task It will shutdown the VM which is recovery SDDC side and delete from vCenter
Inventory.

16. Click on CLEAN UP ,It will ask you to type CLEAN UP TEST in Blank box and proceed .

 

17. At Last you must Acknowledge the task.

 


18. At the end, you can download the report in PDF format for audit purpose.





Run Actual Failover Plan:


1. On VMware Cloud Disaster recovery console page, Go to DR Plan on Left Bar.

2. Choose DR (Disaster Recovery plan) and check the status should be ready.

3. Go to DR summary page.

4. On Bottom you will get Failover Option.



5. Next ,screen it will show the compliance status for Protected Site and Recovery Site.



6. As same DR plan you will get option to choose different snapshot.

7. You can choose Run time setting as per your requirement.



8. In Next Steps ,need to preview all the steps which will run during failover and Click NEXT.

9. Type FAILOVER back box in capital letter and Click on Start Failover.



10. After the Failover task will complete, Validate all workloads. If you will see any issue if you have

      option to rollback.

     Else ,you must commit the failover plan.


11. Before Commit you have type COMMIT Failover in Box and click on COMMIT.

Fail Back :

To perform Failback plan you must activate the same DR failover plan which is in in-active state. Once it will activate again it will start the replication from Recovery SDDC to Cloud based File system.

Once you Primary Site /Data center will restore using same steps you can perform failback.



Hope,  Series of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery Blogs will be helpful to understand the Disaster
Recovery replication process, DR Plan and to Failover Plan to recover your workload on VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Data center.

DR Plan and Inventory Mapping in VCDR- Part2

 

Disaster Recovery Plan and Inventory Mapping.

Before we will DR Plan First create Protection Group:

Protection Group: 

Protection Group is grouping of virtual machines which will recovered together.

In VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery supports protecting VM’s which is running on any kind of datastore like NFS,vSAN , VMFS or VVols …

Creating Protection group and grouping Virtual machine is helpful when you want to put the VM’s which is dependent on another server. For example, VM1 application is dependent on VM2 database or talking to VM2. If you want to recover both virtual machine as part of one plan and without any delay, then you can put together VM1 and VM2 in one protection group so during recovery they will power on as part of one Plan under one protection group.

Similar Fashion you can prep the application bundling of all VM’s and basis of that you can create Protection group and put in Specific protection group.

Create Protection Group:

1.        1. Go to VMware Disaster Recovery console Dashboard.

  2. In Navigation Plan you will Protection Group, Click on Protection group.

3.      3.  Right Side Corner you will get option to create Protection group, Navigate to Create                                Protection Group and Click.

4. Provide the Name of Protection as per Company standard or Planned name.Next, you must choose          the Protection Site from where you want to Protect VM’s.

 5. Under Group Member ship you can select the VM on basis of VM pattern, Tag, and folder.

E.g.

5.1.If you have List of VMs which name is starting from WIN01, WIN02, WIN03 then you can put WIN in search bar and it will reflect all VM’s Name starting from WIN.

5.2 If List of VM’s is tag with any security or any special tag example oracle then you can search with Oracle, and it will give you list of ALL VM’s which is tag with Oracle.

5.3 If List of VM’s is part of one specific folder like RHEL or RAC or Windows you can search with name of folder, and it will list down the all VM’s under that folder and you can choose VM’s which you want to protect.

 6.  Next You have schedule Snapshot schedule. Means on which frequency snapshot of Protected                will start.

6.1 Standard-frequency snapshots allow you to set snapshots schedules every hour, 4, 6, 8, or            12 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly.

 
6. 2 For High Frequency snapshot will schedule for every 30 minute.

Note : For High Frequency Snapshot you have to check the compatibility matrix like.If vCenter and Host are not compatible then you can not perform high frequency snapshot for protected VM’s.

7.To Use quiesced snapshot, you must uncheck the high frequency snapshot.
8. Click Preview VMs and FINISH.

Configure Inventory Mapping for DR Plan:

1. Network Mapping

2. vCenter and Folder Mapping

3. Compute Resource Mapping

Purpose of this Mapping is that when you will Perform DR activity VM’s or workload will attach with Pre-defined Mapping and using that it will attach with same resource, network folder in destination End.

vCenter Mapping: We have to Map all source vCenter which contains VMs need to be protected by VCDR.

DR Plan has vCenter mapping for the following components:

vCenter Folder

Compute Resource

Virtual Network

 

1.       Go to VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery Console page.

2.       Navigate DR Plan on Left side Bar and Click on DR Plan.

3.       Once You will click on DR Plan on Top Right Side it will highlight Create DR PLAN option.

4.       Click on Create DR Plan and Name DR as per your industry standard.

5.       In Recovery Site Section you have to choose the existing recovery SDDC which is deployed in Previous discussion.

                                                    

6.     Next section we have to select the Protected Site, we have to choose vCenter or site where VM’s are running which you want to protect. CLICK Next.

7.  Choose the protection group which you want to associate with DR plan.

8.  Now you have to choose the Protected vCenter and Revery vCenter Mapping.

                                    

9. Next is Folder Mapping, Click on Map Folder and choose Folder from Protected site and where 

    you want to recover virtual machine.

    Choose the Folder and Click on ADD .In my case Source Folder is HOL and Destination Folder is

    Workload .

            

10. Click on Map Compute resource and Map resource from Protected and recovery site .

                                            

11. Next We have Map the Virtual Network ,If you are going to use the streched network the it will

      Same subent on source and destination .In case you want to chnage the Network after recovery

      it will be diffrent .

      In My case ,you can see soource network is VM Network and Recovery side network is DR 

      DR Network after failover .

                                          

12. Next is IP address change ,VCDR will not change any ip address ,Recovered VMs Should                    use DHCP or Stretched netwrok .

13. We you want to run any script which you need to be run after failover you can intesrt script 

      using hilighted option using script for VM.

      Select list of VM's where you want to run the insert script .If you do not want

      to run any script the choose do not run any script and Click on Next.

                                          

               

14. If you want to Edit Recovry step the click on EDIT and change in recovery .Like ,Recover all VM's ,if you do not want to power on after recovery you can choose that option also .Its depend on you plan .

                                            

  15. Last you can set alert trigger for every complinace .Click on Configure email alert and

        enter genric mail id .Also from right side check the box for which you want to configure alert.               

                                               

              

 16. Review DR Plan and Click on Finish .

What Next ? :

1.Testing DR Plans and Monitor Failover Process .

2.Failback Plan and Compliance Health Checks .