Tag Archives: vRealize Automation

vRA SaltStack Config Header

Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config – Part 2

The first blog post of this two part series covered getting our vRealize Automation and SaltStack Config environments prepared, a Windows Server template prepared, and a testing a successful deployment that has the SaltStack minion installed.

In this second part, we’ll now focus on setting up out state files to configure the Windows Server to our example requirements and start deploying virtual machines using vRA that are configured by SaltStack Config.

We’ll cover the following areas:

For both blog posts I’ve also recorded an accompanying video detailing the configuration. Below is part two, and you can see the part one video on first blog post.

Configure the SaltStack State Files

The main part of SaltStack is the SLS, or SaLt State file. This is a representation of the state in which a system should be in, contains the configuration information that the system should adhere to, or be configured to. By default, a State file is built using the YAML format.

You can read more about State Files on the official Salt website which gives you a good introduction in getting started, and background information on the configuration I am going to detail below.

As a quick overview, but I really suggest you read the above link if this is your first look into Salt.

# The first line is the ID for the data that follows
my_first_state:
# The second line, two space indented, is state module to be run, in the format {module.function}
  service.enabled:
# The third line, four space indented, are the parameters for the state module
    - name: Spooler

Within a state file, you also have the ability to use a templating language, such as Jinja, which is the default for State Files. This language within a state file is evaluated and computed before the YAML itself, making it useful for writing statements, and computing user inputs or dynamic variables. You can learn more about this templating language in the Salt documentation.

For this blog post example, I am going to configure the following file structure, and explain what is going on in each step. I think the naming makes it obvious which configurations I’ll be passing through to my deployed Windows Server VMs.

Base
- Windows
  - ad-join
  - baseline
  - remote-desktop
  - services
  - software-install
  - users

Each state file will be configured on the SaltStack Config file server, via the UI. The file server, is actually a database on the backend, but looks like a file server configuration within the UI (we won’t dive into how the backend works in this blog post).

To create your folders and file structure: Continue reading Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config – Part 2

vRA SaltStack Config Header

Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config – Part 1

In this two-part blog post series, I’m going to detail what I consider a basic customer use case when deploying new Windows Servers in their environment.

  • Deploy a Windows Server Virtual Machine
  • Add to the Active Directory Domain
  • Install software
  • Configure some system settings

To achieve this, I’m going to use vRealize Automation to deploy the virtual machine, and then the SaltStack Config component to configure the virtual machine once it’s up and running.

vRA SaltStack Config is part of the vRealize Automation product, it comes from the  VMware acquisition of SaltStack (the company). VMware integrated SaltStack Enterprise (the product) into vRA, as either a licence stand-alone component, i.e. you can still buy just SaltStack on its own, or as part of vRealize Automation itself. Additionally, features such as SaltStack Protect+Comply, how now transformed into vRA SaltStack SecOps, an addon licence to the existing product.

You may have previously heard of Salt, the open-source project focusing on the core features of configuration management, but lacks the enterprise features of SaltStack Config, such as (but not limited to) centralised management UI and RBAC. This remains an open-source project, with VMware becoming the guardians of the product.

In this Part 1, we are going to cover the following:

For both blog posts I’ve also recorded an accompanying video detailing the configuration. Below is part one, and you can see the part two video on second blog post.

Preparing the Windows Server Template

For my example, I am using a Windows Server 2019 image. For no other reason than I already had one in my environment.

The following configurations need to be in place:

  • Create a firewall rule for TCP 445 – Allow on all profiles
    • New-NetFirewallRule -Name "SMB445" -DisplayName "SMB445" -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 445
      
      Set-Item (dir wsman:\localhost\Listener\*\Port -Recurse).pspath 445 -Force
      
      Restart-Service winrm
  • Ensure SMB2 is enabled
    • get-smbserverconfiguration | select EnableSMB2Protocol
  • Configure winrm
    • winrm quickconfig -transport:http
  • Set UAC to never notify
    • Select Start > Control Panel 
      
      Click System Security
      
      Under Action Center, choose Change User Account Control settings
      
      Move the slider bar down to the Never notify selection and click OK
      
      Reboot the machine for changes to take effect

These steps should have you fully covered. The best SaltStack resource I could find on configuring your Windows images is here, however most of the information is pointed at examples for Salt running on a Windows image in AWS for example. Which has specific requirements. There is also this VMware Documentation page as well.

vRealize Automation with SaltStack Config integration

Continue reading Deploying a Windows VM using vRealize Automation & configuring with SaltStack Config – Part 1

vRA GKE Header

vRealize Automation – Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh

This walk-through will detail the technical configurations for using vRA Code Stream to deploy Google Kubernetes Clusters (GKE), register them as:

  • Kubernetes endpoints in vRA Cloud Assembly and Code Stream
  • An attached in Tanzu Mission Control
  • Onboard in Tanzu Service Mesh

This post mirrors my other blog posts following similar concepts:

Requirement

After covering EKS and AKS, I thought it was worthwhile to finish off the gang and deploy GKE clusters using Code Stream.

Building on my previous work, I also added in the extra steps to onboard this cluster into Tanzu Service Mesh as well.

High Level Steps
  • Create a Code Stream Pipeline
    • Create a Google GKE Cluster
    • Create GKE cluster as endpoint in both vRA Code Stream and Cloud Assembly
    • Register GKE cluster in Tanzu Mission Control
    • Onboard the cluster to Tanzu Service Mesh
Pre-Requisites
Creating a Code Stream Pipeline to deploy a Azure AKS Cluster and register the endpoints with vRA and Tanzu Mission Control
Create the variables to be used

Continue reading vRealize Automation – Deploying a GKE Cluster with Code Stream, add to Tanzu Mission Control & Tanzu Service Mesh

vRealize Automation Header

vRealize Automation – Property groups deep dive

I had the pleasure of working with a customer who wanted to use property groups within vRealize Automation, to provide various configuration data to drive their deployments. They asked some queries about how to use property groups that went beyond the documentation, so I thought it would also make a good blog post.

What are property groups?

Property groups were introduced in vRealize Automation 7.x and sorely missed when the 8.x version was shipped. They were reintroduced in vRA 8.3.

When you several properties that always appear together in your Cloud Templates, you can create a property group to store them together.

This allows you to re-use the same properties over and again across Cloud Templates from a central construct, rather than replicate the same information directly into each cloud template.

The benefit of doing this, is that if you update any information, it is pushed to all linked cloud templates. Potentially this could be a disadvantage as well, so once you use these in production, be mindful of any updates to in-use groups.

There are two types of property groups. When creating a property group, you select the type. You do not have the ability to change or convert the type once the group has been created.

  • Inputs

    Input property groups gather and apply a consistent set of properties at user request time. Input property groups can include entries for the user to add or select, or they might include read-only values that are needed by the design.

    Properties for the user to edit or select can be readable or encrypted. Read-only properties appear on the request form but can’t be edited. If you want read-only values to remain totally hidden, use a constant property group instead.

  • Constants

    Constant property groups silently apply known properties. In effect, constant property groups are invisible metadata. They provide values to your Cloud Assembly designs in a way that prevents a requesting user from reading those values or even knowing that they’re present. Examples might include license keys or domain account credentials.

Getting Started with a Input Property Group

Ultimately the Input Property Group works the exact same way as Inputs you specify on the cloud template directly. The group option simply provides a way to centralise these inputs for use between cloud templates.

Create an Input Property Group
  • Click on Design Tab
  • Click Property Groups from the left-hand navigation pane
  • Select New Property Group

vRA - Cloud Assembly - Design - Property Groups - New Property Group Continue reading vRealize Automation – Property groups deep dive

DMS - vRA Header

Data Management for VMware Tanzu with vRealize Automation as Custom Resources

In this blog post, we will cover the technical configuration to import the packages that myself and Katherine Skilling (Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog) have created.

This work is to show the possibility of creating custom workflows to integrate other products that are not natively supported within vRA, by exploiting Dynamic Types. A further write-up will detail the technical configurations of how this integration was created.

You can read this blog post on how to create Dynamic Types in vRealize Orchestrator to be used as custom resources in vRealize Automation:

Updated Feb 2022 - Includes edits needed to enable compatability with Data Management for VMware Tanzu v1.1
High-Level Overview

This blog post focuses on integrating “Data Management for VMware Tanzu”, you can read more here about this product:

These packages offer the following capabilities:

  • vRA Cloud Assembly Custom Resource for Data Management with VMware Tanzu
    • Create a database instance
    • Delete a database instance (clean up when a deployment is deleted)
    • Day 2 actions for database instance
      • Scale database instance resources
      • Point in Time Backup of database instance
      • Power-On database instance
      • Power-Off database instance
Pre-Requisites
  • Data Management for VMware Tanzu platform deployed and configured
    • Agent appliance deployed and environment configured.
    • Organisation configured with Org Admin user account.
  • vRealize Automation deployed and configured
    • Using embedded vRO will be fine
    • vRA needs to be able to connect to the DMS system over HTTPs, so appropriate routes and firewalls configured.
  • Grab the files from this location
Recording

Below is a 25 minute recording showing you how to implement the documented steps that follow in this blog post.

Importing & Configuring the vRealize Orchestrator packages

From the downloaded files under the folder “vRealize Orchestrator” there is two files:

  • com.vmware.dms.backup.package
  • dms-dynamictypes-config.package

Open the vRealize Orchestrator UI (https://{vro-url}/orchestration-ui)

  • Left-hand navigation pane > Assets > Packages > Import

DMS - vRO import package

  • Select the file name “com.vmware.dms.backup.package”
  • Select to trust the package and click import

Continue reading Data Management for VMware Tanzu with vRealize Automation as Custom Resources