Tag Archives: vRealize

Living the cloudy life… #cloudlife

A few people asked me recently why some of us are using the hashtag #cloudlife and what it means. This came out of the Ahead Tech Summit presentation I was preparing for and worked with Nick Rodriguez on in June. I was explaining to Nick my concept and he created this great image.

Pasted image at 2016_08_08 08_27 AM

So what does it mean?

Ultimately, it comes from a belief that Cloud is about creating a true experience. This means not just changing the way customers of IT consume services via a catalog, but going that extra mile.

I’ll get on to roles and more Cloud Design topics in a future post .The one thing I want to stress over and over is that our goal in creating a Cloud is to create this place people come to for IT services and leave feeling like they got something more.

If you’re an IT person, you must put yourself in the developers shoes and try to think of the pain and annoyance they actually go through when submitting a form.  They wait weeks for their server to come and they then still have to go to subsequent teams to get various pieces of software installed such as:  DR options approved, extra storage and so on. Then, they have to make sure that everything they did in Dev works in QA and finally Production. A sysadmin might push a patch out or a VM template that doesn’t work as it did the previous month because someone else made a change.

Follow this up with the sheer amount of Public Cloud PaaS services and other external services the teams wish to consume.  Many of these services require security approvals and perhaps additional firewall and networking configurations.

It all adds up to a frustrated customer and in turn ultimately affects the businesses ability to innovate and grow.

dev_journey_0

The opposite is the #cloudlife experience..

Happy Customer A: “Wow, I came to this catalog and got everything I needed. BAM! Now I can create something awesome today while my idea is hot.”

Happy Customer B: “This Cloud is better than just the AWS or Microsoft Cloud. I get those features and more. Everything I want is here!”

Happy Customer C: “I think…I love this Cloud… #cloudlife”

Happy Customer D: “If I had a Cloud, it would be just like this cloud. I’m telling my friends about DevOps and #cloudlife.”

happy_customer

It’s not about just having the best programmer and engineering the best back end services but the full end to end experience. How you design the front end menu, how you guide every decision the user makes, and how you can get them what they need to be successful and grow the business are front and center. It takes a combination of people and skills to execute on this successfully.

What does it mean in practice?

Take an example of a Developer that has deployed an environment of SugarCRM, an Open Source CRM tool. Great they deployed it from their request catalog but what if they want to synchronize data from one environment to another for testing? Previously, they would have had to put in a request for someone to backup and restore the database to the new environment. This could then involve a piece of paper being handed around between teams until the task is completed.

The alternative is an option like the screenshot below in vRealize Automation. We add an Action which is visible in the items list that gives them the ability to execute this operation with one click.

vRA Day 2

Clicking the “vRA-DevOpsTeamX-SyncData” Button initiates a vRealize Orchestrator workflow. This workflow in turn connects to a Tintri Storage Array to initiate a Sync VM. The workflow will create all the appropriate change controls, shutting down of VMs, storage array tasks etc. Again, think of everything that you need to do to complete the task and provide it as a self service option.

Essentially, the workflow would look something like this:

Screen Shot 2016-08-09 at 8.55.24 AM

Other Examples…

Time permitting, some of these will turn into blog posts as well, but here are some examples of clear services you can offer to make peoples lives easier.

  • Complex Environment Deployments (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS mixes)
    • This means getting everything they need. Not just a VM deployed.
  • Event Based Orchestration – e.g. AWS Lambda to SNOW, Orchestration systems etc.
  • Automated Redeployment of Environments on Schedule
  • Self Service Disaster Recovery CheckBox
  • Self Service Backups and Restores
  • Business Discovery Mapping via Parent/Child Relationships created in blueprints
  • Automated Service Account creation and deletion
  • Automated Snapshots before Patching of Systems
  • Automated Firewall Rule creation and deletion

These are just a handful of ideas.  Remember, with each one, we’re taking out the additional paperwork by automating the tasks you’d typically do in your ITIL tool like ServiceNow.

What is #cloudlife…?

It’s certainly also become a #hashtag we use whenever we are working on Cloudy stuff (e.g. creating a cloud proposal while in the dentist chair…wasn’t me) or thinking about a new innovative Cloud idea while drinking a Tim Carr Starbucks Iced Green Tea (#notpropertea). Essentially, it’s a way of thinking beyond our Infrastructure roles and what the requester is asking for to create something more.

#cloudlife is about reaching for the best possible user experience. One that doesn’t feel like it’s forcing you into a box but instead feels refreshing end enjoyable.

 

vRealize Orchestrator Appliance – Guest File Operations Part 1 – (Copying a file to guest VM)

One of the things you will often find you need to do with vRO is to get a file to a guest VM, or just run a file from inside the VM. Now for Windows you can use Powershell remote features in many cases, but what if your server isn’t on the network yet? Until version 5.1 we had to rely on VIX as a way to do this, but now VMware has added a number of new workflows under “Guest Operations” which are much more reliable.

vCO Guest Operations

vRO Guest Operations

“Copy file from vCO to guest” is the one I’m going to be using in this example.

First of all copy the workflow into a sandbox area. This way you can move a bunch of the inputs to attributes and not have to key them in each time (e.g. The local administrator username, password, and test VM).

In my example, I’m going to create a text file called test.txt in a new folder under /opt called “vcofiles”.

My target machine is a Windows 2008 R2 server, where I will copy the file and place it in the C:\temp\ folder with the name “testcopy.txt”

If you run the workflow then these are my input parameters:

GuestFileOperations-Run

The problem is that if you run this you will get an error similar to this:

“No permissions on the file for the attempted operation (Workflow: Copying files from vCO appliance to guest/Scriptable task…”

GuestFileFailure

GuestFileFailure

In order to fix this you first need to give the correct rights to the folder and file on your vCO Appliance.

1. Login as root onto the appliance
2. Give Read/Write/Execution rights to the new folder

FolderRights

3. Give Read/Write rights to the Text file you made

Filerights

Unfortunately we aren’t quite done yet. You also need to tell orchestrator which locations it can read/write/execute from. This involves editing the “js-io-rights.conf” file located in “/opt/vmo/app-server/server/vmo/conf”

Java-FolderRights-2

Add the line “+rwx /opt/vcofiles/” as shown above.

If anyone isn’t too sure on the linux commands to do this:

  • Type “cd /opt/vmo/app-server/server/vmo/conf” and press enter.
  • Type “vi js-io.rights.conf” and press enter.
  • Use the arrow keys to move the cursor where you want and press the insert key
  • Press Enter and type in the line “+rwx /opt/vcofiles”
  • Press ESC
  • Type “:wq” and press enter.

4. Now, there’s one more thing. You need to restart the vCO service for this to take effect.

Login to the vCO configuration manager, go to startup, and click restart service.

ServiceRestarted

5. Now run your workflow and see if your text file copied across.

Success

You can see a quick video demo of this on youtube. (apologies for the mouse pointer issue..)

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

vRealize Orchestrator Workflow: Change VM Port Group for VM on Standard vSwitch

*Note: This is a repost due to moving my posts from SystemsGame.com to 2ninjas1blog.com”

I was surprised recently to find that no builtin workflow existed for changing the backing information for a VM if you aren’t using a VDS. Now, before I go any further, I’m a big fan of moving to a vSphere Distributed Switch mode, but there are certainly cases where you might encounter a standard vSwitch environment which you need to automate port group changes upon.

The Approach:

Essentially when it comes to changing NIC settings on a VM, you have to change the “Backing” information for the NIC associated with the VM. In my case this was for VMs which were just built as part of an overall automation process, and had only one NIC.

Step 1: Create Action Item.

I created an action item which has 2 inputs.

“vm” of type VC:VirtualMachine – This is basically so you can select the VM in vCO that you want to modify

“vSwitchPGName” of type String – This is so you can pass in the string value of the portgroup name for the vSwitch.

Code:

The code I then used is below. I’ve commented it but please let me know if you have any questions.

var spec = new VcVirtualMachineConfigSpec(); // Initialize a Virtual Machine Config Spec first
var myDeviceChange = new Array(); // Create an array to hold all of your changes
var devices = vm.config.hardware.device;

//Find devices that are VMXNET3 or E1000
for (var i in devices)
	{
		if 	(
				(devices[i] instanceof VcVirtualVmxnet3) ||
				(devices[i] instanceof VcVirtualE1000) 
			)
		{
			System.log("The device we are going to modify is: " + devices[i]);
			var nicChangeSpec = new VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpec(); //This is the specification for the Network adapter we are going to change
			nicChangeSpec.operation = VcVirtualDeviceConfigSpecOperation.edit; //Use edit as we are going to be modifying a NIC
			nicChangeSpec.device = new VcVirtualE1000;
			nicChangeSpec.device.key = devices[i].key; 
			System.log("NicChangeSpec key is : " + nicChangeSpec.device.key);

			nicChangeSpec.device.addressType = devices[i].addressType;
			nicChangeSpec.device.macAddress = devices[i].macAddress;

			System.log("Adding backing info" ) ;
			//Add backing information

			nicChangeSpec.device.backing = new VcVirtualEthernetCardNetworkBackingInfo();
			System.log("Backing info for nicChangeSpec is : " + nicChangeSpec.backing);
			nicChangeSpec.device.backing.deviceName = vSwitchPGName; //Change the backing to the portgroup input
			System.log("Backing info for deviceName on nicChangeSpec is : " + nicChangeSpec.device.backing.deviceName);

			//Push change spec to device change variable
			myDeviceChange.push(nicChangeSpec);

		}
	}

spec.deviceChange = myDeviceChange;
System.log("DeviceChange Spec is: " + spec.deviceChange);
return vm.reconfigVM_Task(spec);

Step 2:

I created a simple workflow which calls this action item and then has a vim3WaitTaskEnd so we can be sure the task is completed before moving on to any other workflows. This is useful if you are going to be incorporating this action into a larger process.

Update Port Group for vSwitch

Running the workflow gives you this simple presentation.

vSwitchPG 2

And that’s basically all there is to it. Select your VM, type in your PortGroup name, and voila!

For a vDS, VMware included a workflow out of the box in vCO so there is no need to create any of the above.

Enjoy!

Server Name Generator – Final

Now that we have our partial name creator and our workflow to check for the next available name, we can bring it all together for a complete server name workflow.

Complete Server Name Workflow

General Attributes:

  • partialName: Type = String

 Inputs:

  • appType: Type = String
  • location: Type = String
  • network: Type = String
  • envLevel: Type = String
  • OS: Type = String
  • domainSuffix = string

Outputs:

  • vmName: Type = String
  • fqdnOut: Type = String

The Workflow:

completeWorkflow

As explained in Server Name Generator – Part 1, we create the partial name based on datacenter location, network, operating system and environment.  We now append that with a number and check if the name exists in DNS using the worfklow from Server Name Generator – Part 2.

Now the output you will see is something similar to this in the logs:

[2016-04-18 15:01:08.930] [I] Entering Generate Partial Name Worfklow
[2016-04-18 15:01:08.935] [I] The datacenter shortname is AKL
[2016-04-18 15:01:08.948] [I] The network shortname is P1
[2016-04-18 15:01:08.981] [I] The OS shortname is W
[2016-04-18 15:01:08.994] [I] The environment shortname is 1
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.013] [I] The shortname of the application is APP
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.028] [I] The partial name of the VM is AKLP1W1APP
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.030] [I] Leaving Generate Partial Name Workflow
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.072] [I] Your partial name is: AKLP1W1APP
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.073] [I] Starting loop --- 
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.075] [I] Server Name: AKLP1W1APP01 found in master list - Incrementing with next number and starting over
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.078] [I] Server name: AKLP1W1APP02 not found in master list. Recording new name and continuing.
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.079] [I] Checking host for existing DNS record: AKLP1W1APP02.tritech.local
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.086] [I] Check complete for FQDN: AKLP1W1APP02.tritech.local Found IP address of: null
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.588] [I] 
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.591] [I] The vmName to pass as output is: AKLP1W1APP02
[2016-04-18 15:01:09.592] [I] The FQDN to use is: AKLP1W1APP02.tritech.local

AKLP1W1APP01 already existed so our loop went to the next number 02 and found that it didn’t exist.

This concludes the Server Naming series. You can download the complete workflow here.  If you have any questions, or found this content useful, let us know with a comment.