Another customer, another project – again the need to deploy a couple of vRealize components (Log Insight, Network Insight, Operations Manager, Automation & more).
Why not use the same helper tool the VMware Cloud Foundation uses to deploy “vROPS” and “vRA”?
VMware describes this management appliance as follows:
vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager automates install, configuration, upgrade, patch, configuration management, drift remediation and health from within a single pane of glass, thereby freeing IT Managers/Cloud admin resources to focus on business-critical initiatives, while improving time to value (TTV), reliability and consistency. Automates Day 0 to Day 2 operations of the entire vRealize Suite, enabling simplified operational experience for customers.
https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2018/09/vrealize-suite-lifecycle-manager-2-0-whats-new.html
Download and deployment of the appliance’s OVA file is pretty straight forward as with most of VMware’s current products. After starting the newly created VM in the vCenter client you can log in with the default credentials “admin@localhost” / “vmware”, as described in the documentation.
Some patches are available and can be downloaded from my.vmware.com and applied to the VM via the web GUI pretty easily.
For being able to use the current versions of “vRA” and “vRLI” you also need to install a product support pack available on the VMware marketplace. For downloading you need to click the “Try” button on the right hand side. The screenshot on there shows how to install the “.pspak” file.
After the pack is applied the product versions shown in the following screenshots are supported:
The vRealize Suite LCM first needs to import the binaries of the products which are supposed to be deployed. If you are at a site with internet access you can use the integrated “My VMware downloads” option.
At an isolated site however the easiest way for me was to upload the required OVA files into the LCM VM, e.g. with WinSCP. After connecting with the “root” user (needs to set a password first) change into the “/data” folder and create a new directory (e.g. called “binary_import”) and copy everything into there.
Afterwards import the binaries from the web GUI as described in the documentation (local location type, base location = “/data/binary_import”, discover, add).
When the LCM is finished with discovering and mapping the product binaries and importing the patches the GUI should look like this:
After the holiday break the next steps will be to deploy and manage the vRealize Suite components needed…