Wednesday Tidbit: Fix missing Puppet attributes on vRealize Automation blueprints

Occasionally you come across an issue which bugs the hell out of you. Despite wanting needing to resolve it badly, you know it’s going to be a case of trial and error, and it’s going to consume a lot of your time. The other day I came across one these issues, and just as I suspected, the majority of an evening would be spent trying to resolve it. Continue reading

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 11: Configure endpoint & fabric/business groups

20150630 - vRAIn part 10 we configured the vRealize Automation default tenant for our lab. We decided against using multiple tenants as the lab is only hosting one organization, and business groups utilizing it will be defined using other means.

In this part, we configure the blueprints which will make up our service catalog. Continue reading

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – temporary stoppage in play

20150630 - vRAIf you have been following my series on vRealize Automation then you will have noticed I have not posted anything in the last week.

This is due to an error I’ve encountered whilst trying to add a licence for the IaaS components. Once I have resolved this (or pulled out all my hair and called VMware!) I will continue on with the series.

Thanks for checking back.

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 9: Deploy and configure the IaaS platform

20150630 - vRAIn part 8 we installed and configured the vRealize Automation Appliance into the lab.

In this part we deploy and configure the IaaS platform.  This will involve building a Windows Server VM and installing the requisite components.  Once done, we will secure the platform with an SSL certificate from our Certificate Authority. Continue reading

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 7: Configure vCenter Server Appliance SSL certificates

20150630 - vRAIn part 6 we installed and configured a vCenter Server Appliance in the lab.  This will manage the various components, plus serve as an endpoint for vRealize Automation.

In this post we replace the default SSL certificates from the vCSA with trusted certificates from our in-house certificate authority. Continue reading

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 6: Deploy and configure the vCenter Server Appliance

20150630 - vRAIn part 5 of this series we created a Windows 2012 R2 Domain Controller to provide our authentication services for the environment.

In this part, we deploy the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) 5.5. This will serve as the backbone to our infrastructure, as well as the endpoint for the majority of our VMware vRealize Automation deployments. Later in the series, we will configure other endpoints such as VMware’s vCloud Air or AWS. Continue reading

Building an advanced lab using VMware vRealize Automation – Part 5: Authentication services

20150630 - vRAIn part 4 of this series we configured two ESXi hosts to host our lab.  In this part we will setup a Windows Server 2012 R2 Core virtual machine and configure it as a domain controller in a separate root domain.  We will then configure a forest trust to our production domain so that our users can authenticate. Continue reading