Category Archives: VMware

VMware Aria Hub Header

VMware Aria Hub and AWS Setup: A Guide to Getting Started

VMware, , , , ,

In this blog post, I am going to take you through how to get started with VMware Aria Hub, and connect your first public cloud account, in this example, AWS.

What is VMware Aria Hub?

Before we dive into the technical pieces, what is VMware Aria Hub?

If we take the marketing definition:

VMware Aria Hub is a transformational multi-cloud management solution unifying cost, performance, and config and delivery automation in a single platform with a common control plane and data model for any cloud, any platform, any tool, and every persona

To make this simple, VMware Aria Hub is one of the key SaaS based services which sits at the center of the new VMware Aria Cloud Management platform. In which it gives you a single control plane to be able to access and interrogate data across the previously named vRealize Suite of products, now rebranded as Aria [insert product name], store metadata from all of your Infrastructure platforms (VMware, AWS, Azure, Google) and in the future, bring in data from third party systems.

This centralization of data is key. That part in VMware Aria, is called “Aria Graph”, which uses an Entity Datastore, a component derived from an existing VMware product, CloudHealth SecureState product (now VMware Aria Automation for Secure Clouds). This unique component, which is based on GraphQL, provides the product a unique way to store data, query into other products, and enable the consumer to write new data into the platform as well.

Let’s take this practical example, I have my application which is made up of the typical three tier app standards:

  • Load Balancer – AWS
  • 2 x Web Servers – AWS
  • App Server – AWS
  • Database Server – On-Prem DC – vSphere

All these components are deployed by Aria Automation (vRealize Automation), monitored by Aria Operations (vRealize Operations), with application logs sent to Aria Operations for Logs (vRealize Log Insight). The AWS environment is further secured by Aria Automation for Secure Clouds (CloudHealth SecureState), which ensures a number of specific resource tags exist, and they conform to the appropriate CIS benchmark.

Now If I need to query the following information for my application; App owner (who deployed it), Cost Centre, Resource Sizing, and active security alerts. I will need to pretty much either browse the UI or query the API for each of the products mentioned.

By leveraging the new capabilities of VMware Aria Hub, I can browse a single interface to reference all the components of my application, and where this data is stored into the other Aria products, it will pull that data through for me. This would be the same if I am querying for information via the VMware Aria Graph as well, for my programmatic access.

Watch the recording!

As a growing trend is video content, I’ve also produced a recording of the same content of this blog post! So, you can follow along below!

Getting Started with Aria Hub

First, you should have an email from VMware welcoming you to the VMware Aria Hub Free Tier. Below I’ve provided a sample email, there are three things to note;

  • You need to click on the links in step 1 + 2 to activate the VMware Aria Hub product within the VMware Cloud Services Portal, and enable the Free Tier for VMware Aria Automation for Secure Clouds, which provides the Public Cloud Security Features into the Aria Hub UI
  • To setup your VMware Cloud Services Portal organisation and enable the product, there is a PDF attached to the email showing the step-by-step instructions and screenshots if needed (shown in the green box).

VMware Aria Hub - Getting Started with AWS - Welcome Email

Once enabled, in the VMware Cloud Services Portal, click the VMware Aria Hub tile (as in the above email screenshot, step 3).

This will present you with the below opening page.

To get started, you only have one option here:

  • Click the “Connect your first data source” blue button.

Continue reading VMware Aria Hub and AWS Setup: A Guide to Getting Started →

Tanzu Blog Logo Header

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.6 – Management Cluster deployment failure – unable to patch the cluster object

VMware, Kubernetes, , , , ,

The Issue

When deploying a brand new Tanzu Kubernete Grid Management Cluster to a vSphere environment we kept hitting failures like the below. The deployment was very vanilla with the default settings, no extra metadata inputted into the build.

!! [1223 15:26:17.84239]: init.go:732] Failure while deploying management cluster, Here are some steps to investigate the cause:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84256]: init.go:733] Debug:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84262]: init.go:734] kubectl get po,deploy,cluster,kubeadmcontrolplane,machine,machinedeployment -A --kubeconfig /home/michael/.kube-tkg/tmp/config_Qd01VhPd
!! [1223 15:26:17.84272]: init.go:735] kubectl logs deployment.apps/ -n  manager --kubeconfig /home/michael/.kube-tkg/tmp/config_Qd01VhPd
!! [1223 15:26:17.84278]: init.go:738] To clean up the resources created by the management cluster:
!! [1223 15:26:17.84283]: init.go:739] tanzu management-cluster delete
✘ [1223 15:26:17.84291]: init.go:91] unable to set up management cluster, : unable to patch cluster object: unable to patch optional metadata under labels: unable to patch the management cluster object with optional metadata: unable to patch the cluster object: error while applying patch for "&TypeMeta{Kind:,APIVersion:,}" tkg-system/tkg-mgmt-vsphere-20221223151757: Cluster.cluster.x-k8s.io "tkg-mgmt-vsphere-20221223151757" is invalid: [metadata.labels: Invalid value: "": name part must be non-empty, metadata.labels: Invalid value: "": name part must consist of alphanumeric characters, '-', '_' or '.', and must start and end with an alphanumeric character (e.g. 'MyName', or 'my.name', or '123-abc', regex used for validation is '([A-Za-z0-9][-A-Za-z0-9_.]*)?[A-Za-z0-9]')]

The Cause

The tooling creates an erronous value in the cluster config file, which causes the build error.

The Fix

Search for the latest yaml file created in:

~/.config/tanzu/tkg/clusterconfigs/

and comment out the following line:

CLUSTER_LABELS: :,

# The line will now look like this:

#CLUSTER_LABELS: :,

Now re-run the creation of your cluster using the CLI

tanzu mc create --file {file_name.yaml}

Regards

Dean Lewis

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cilium Header

How to Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster using the Cilium CNI

VMware, Kubernetes, , , , ,

In this blog post I’m going to dive into how you can create a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster and specify your own container network interface, for example, Cilium. Expanding on the installation, I’ll also cover installing a load balancer service, deploying a demo app, and showing some of the observability feature as well.

What is Cilium?
Cilium is an open source software for providing, securing and observing network connectivity between container workloads - cloud native, and fueled by the revolutionary Kernel technology eBPF

Let’s unpack that from the official website marketing tag line.

Cilium is a container network interface for Kubernetes and other container platforms (apparently there are others still out there!), which provides the cluster networking functionality. It goes one step further than other CNIs commonly used, by using a Linux Kernel software technology called eBPF, and allows for the insertion of security, visibility, and networking control logic into the Linux kernel of your container nodes.

Below is a high-level overview of the features.

TKG Cilium - Features

And a high-level architecture overview.

Cilium Architecture

Is it supported to run Cilium in Tanzu Kubernetes cluster?

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid allows you to bring your own Kubernetes CNI to the cluster as part of the Cluster bring-up. You will be required to take extra steps to build a cluster during this type of deployment, as described below in this blog post.

As for support for a CNI outside of Calico and Antrea, you as the customer/consumer must provide that. If you are using Cilium for example, then you can gain enterprise level support for the CNI, from the likes of Isovalent.

Recording

How to deploy a Tanzu Kubernete Cluster with Cilium

Before we get started, we need to download the Cilium CLI tool, which is used to install Cilium into our cluster.

The below command downloads and installs the latest stable version to your /usr/local/bin location. You can find more options here. Continue reading How to Deploy a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid cluster using the Cilium CNI →

vRA SaltStack Config Header

vRSLCM – SaltStack Config upgrade fails – LCMUPGRADEVSSC10103

VMware, , , , ,
The Issue

When upgrading to vRA SaltStack Config 8.9 using vRealize Suite LifeCycle Manager, I found I hit an issue stating that the upgrade failed as the VAMI version of the appliance was already at the build number to be expected.

Below is a copy of the error message:

LCMUPGRADEVSSC10103

Error Code: LCMUPGRADEVSSC10103
VAMI upgrade for vRealize Automation SaltStack Config failed. Check vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager logs for more information.
VAMI is already at the version provided for upgrade. Retry the request by passing skipTask as 'true' to skip the VAMI upgrade and proceed further to RAAS upgrade. Check upgrade logs at /var/log/lcm-vami-upgrade.log on the vRealize Automation SaltStack Config host for more details.

com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.vsse.common.exception.VsscUpgardeException: VAMI is already at the version provided for upgrade. Retry the request by passing skipTask as 'true' to skip the VAMI upgrade and proceed further to RAAS upgrade. Check upgrade logs at /var/log/lcm-vami-upgrade.log on the vRealize Automation SaltStack Config host for more details.	at com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.vsse.core.task.VsscVamiUpgradeTask.execute(VsscVamiUpgradeTask.java:96)	at com.vmware.vrealize.lcm
The Fix

Rather than follow the error message, and retry the task by skipping the failure. I instead performed a inventory sync on the environment this part of. Then retried the task without skipping the failure.

This proved successful, leading me to think that maybe vRSLCM missed a collectiong point of information during the upgrade.

  • Go to your environment with SaltStack Config installed
  • Click the options to trigger the inventory sync

vRSLCM - Trigger Inventory Sync

Keep an eye on the requests, and once the inventory sync is completed, now click on your failed upgrade request.

vRSLCM - Requests

Within the request , click to retry.

vRSLCM - Request Details - Retry

And after that you should hopefully see a successfully completed request.

vRSLCM - Request Details - Completed

Regards

Dean Lewis

Tanzu Observability vRealize Operations Cloud Header

Tanzu Observability – Configuring vRealize Operations Cloud Integration

VMware, , ,

In this blog post, I am going to cover the configuration and consumption of the Tanzu Observability integration with vRealize Operations Cloud.

  • As this is blog post is released during VMware Explore, under the announcement of the VMware Aria brand for Cloud Management tooling, these products will become
    • vRealize Operations Cloud > VMware Aria Operations
    • Tanzu Observability > VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Recording

Below is a recording I put together, covering the same content as this blog post in 10 minutes or less.

Create a Cloud Services Portal API Token

The official documentation for this integration can be found here.

First, we need to create an API token that provides the following access:

  • Organisation Member
  • vRealize Operations Cloud > vROPs ReadOnly

Go to My Account in the CSP by clicking on your name in the top right-hand corner, then My Account. Select the API Tokens tab and generate an API token.

Save the API Token to a safe space for use in the next step. Continue reading Tanzu Observability – Configuring vRealize Operations Cloud Integration →