Category Archives: VMware

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CloudHealth – Configuring vRealize Operations cost visibility for your private datacenters

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In this blog post, we are going to synchronise our vRealize Operations costing information with CloudHealth, to provide the ability to have true multi-cloud cost reporting, that includes our on-premises VMware Datacenter.

Configuring the CloudHeath Integration
Pre-Requisites

Your vRealize Operations instance will need to have the basic cost settings configured, I have written a deep dive post on this here.

  • vROPs no longer has to be set to USD for this integration
    • If you are integrating multiple vROPs instances, and they all have the same currency, this is also supported for non-USD
    • If you are integrating multiple vROPs instances, and they have differing currencies settings, CH will default the platform to the instance that was first configured for integration.
  • vROPs must be version 8.2 of higher
  • vROPS FIPs mode is not supported

Ensure that the vROPs instance (or collector) can reach CloudHealth Graphql endpoint:

You can find the official documentation here and the vROPS Integration FAQ here.

In the CloudHealth interface, when you go to the vRealize Operations Accounts page under setup, you’ll see that this page points you to the documentation and the VMware Marketplace. As this configuration is initiated by the vRealize Operations Management Pack.

  • Data Center Tab > Setup > Accounts > vRealize Operations

vRealize Operations - CloudHealth Integration - CloudHealth vRealize Operations Account Page

Download the Management Pack

Start by downloading the management pack from the VMware Marketplace.

vRealize Operations - CloudHealth Integration - Download Management Pack

  • Accept the EULA

vRealize Operations - CloudHealth Integration - Download Management Pack - Accept EULA

Your download will start.

Generating a CloudHealth API Key

We need to generate an API key from our CloudHealth account, that will be used by vROPs to send data to CloudHealth. These APIs are generated against your account.

  • Log into your CloudHealth Account.
  • Click your username in the top right-hand corner
  • Click your username on the navigation pane that appears
  • At the bottom of your profile information, copy the API Access Key for later use
    • by default an API key will not be present, they can generate one (or a new key) by clicking Generate New API Key

Continue reading CloudHealth – Configuring vRealize Operations cost visibility for your private datacenters →

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Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Upgrading a Management and Workload Cluster deployed to vSphere

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In this blog post, I am going to walk through how to upgrade both your Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Management and Workload clusters. I’ll cover the Tanzu CLI options, as well as how you can leverage the features of Tanzu Mission Control for upgrades as well.

For my example use cases, I’ll be upgrading from TKG 1.4.2 to 1.5.4. Although the process should be similar for other upgrade paths, I do recommend you consult the official documentation before attempting any upgrade in case there are any changes.

Caution: VMware recommends not installing or upgrading to Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.0-v1.5.3, due to a bug in the versions of etcd in the versions of Kubernetes used by Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.0-v1.5.3. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.5.4 resolves this problem by incorporating a fixed version of etcd. For more information, see Resolved Issues in the TKG v1.5 Release Notes.
Pre-requisites

To upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG), you download and install the new version of the Tanzu CLI on the machine that you use as the bootstrap machine. You must also download and install base image templates and VMs, depending on whether you are upgrading clusters that you previously deployed to vSphere, Amazon EC2, or Azure.

Download the Tanzu CLI and Kubernetes OVAs

On the VMware Customer Portal download both the Tanzu CLI and OVA files as necessary.

I’ve highlighted in the below screenshot; your Management Cluster will always need to run the latest Kubernetes version.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid - Upgrade - Download Product files - Tanzu CLI - Kubernetes OVAS

Upload Kubernetes OVAs to vCenter

Continue reading Tanzu Kubernetes Grid – Upgrading a Management and Workload Cluster deployed to vSphere →

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vRealize Automation – Active Directory Integration – Configure LDAPS

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In this blog post, I am going to cover the setup of the Active Directory integration with vRealize Automation using LDAPS.

Cloud Assembly supports integration with Active Directory servers to provide out of the box creation of computer accounts in a specified Organizational Unit (OU) within an Active Directory server prior to provisioning a virtual machine.

Note: to join to AD within the Guest OS, you can use CloudConfig properties or vSphere CustomizationSpec.

The VMware official documentation doesn’t really call out LDAPS configuration, only LDAP. So after helping a customer configure this, I thought I’d quickly write something up.

To get started, login into vRealize Automation and select Cloud Assembly.

  • Select the Infrastructure Tab
  • Select Integrations under the Connections header
  • Click the Add Integration button
  • Select Active Directory

vRealize Automation - Configure LDAPS - Cloud Assembly - Integrations - Active Directory Continue reading vRealize Automation – Active Directory Integration – Configure LDAPS →

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Tanzu Mission Control – Upgrading attached Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters fails with error “updates to immutable fields are not allowed”

VMware, Kubernetes, ,
The Issue

When trying to upgrade an attached Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Cluster via Tanzu Mission Control (TMC), that is either created by a Tanzu Management Cluster, or via the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service (vSphere with Tanzu), the console gives you an error message similar to:

API Error: Failed to upgrade cluster: (target=mc:01G4BGAVKHHB6C3JJ5R0WA44NM, intentId=01G4CMP025ZHEBQ000E4SM996H): admission webhook "default.validating.tanzukubernetescluster.run.tanzu.vmware.com" denied the request: updates to immutable fields are not allowed (invalid argument)
I’ve captured some screenshots below of the process.
Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrade vSphere with Tanzu Cluster - Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service  Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrade vSphere with Tanzu Cluster - Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service - Upgrade Cluster
Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrade Cluster - Error Message - admission webhook default.validating.tanzukubernetescluster.run.tanzu.vmware.com denied the request

The Cause

Tanzu Mission Control doesn’t keep information about the Tanzu Clusters CNI configuration. Today, TMC doesn’t support upgrading clusters that are provisioned using Callico. This is not documented in the TMC Documentation.

If you provision a cluster using TMC, it will use the Antrea CNI, and you cannot change this.

Below you can see that my cluster was provisioned using the Callico CNI.

Tanzu Mission Control - Upgrade Cluster Fails - kubectl get tanzukuberntescluster

The Fix

Upgrade the Tanzu Cluster outside of Tanzu Mission Control.

Regards

Dean Lewis

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vRealize Operations – Costing Setup and Configuration Deep Dive

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In years gone by, costing of your technology platforms was covered in a product called vRealize Business for Cloud. Since the move to the 8.x code based, this product was EOL’d.

The main functions where customers saw value, to provide costings for your datacenter and virtual machines, was wrapped up into vRealize Operations.

This blog post is going to deep dive into the costing capabilities within vRealize Operations across your on-premises datacenters, and what happens when you start to consume VMware on Hyperscaler solutions, such as VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC).

Configure the Global Currency Setting

The first action is setting the global currency for the vRealize Operations instance. There are two important things to note when undertaking this configuration:

  • This can only be set once
  • This setting cannot be changed once it is set

To configure:

  • Click on Administration
  • Click on the Global Settings Tile
  • Click on the Cost/Price heading
  • Click to “Set currency”

vRealize Operations - Costing - Administration - Global Settings - Cost Price - Set Currency

Select your currency from the list and click “Set Currency”.

vRealize Operations - Costing - Administration - Global Settings - Cost Price - Set Currency 2

You will get a dialog to say the configuration has taken place.

vRealize Operations - Costing - Administration - Global Settings - Cost Price - Set Currency - Currency Successfully Set

Now below you can see that this setting is in place and there is no button/clickable option to change it.

vRealize Operations - Costing - Administration - Global Settings - Cost Price - Set Currency - Currency Successfully Set 2

Configuring Cost Settings

Now that the global currency is configured, we can start configuring all the cost settings for our Datacenter platforms.

Financial Account Model

Continue reading vRealize Operations – Costing Setup and Configuration Deep Dive →