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VMware vCloud Director (vCD) is deployment, automation and management software for virtual infrastructure resources in multi-tenant cloud environments. VMware vCloud Director provides role-based access to a Web console that allows the members of an organization to interact with the organization’s resources to create and work with vApps and virtual machines.

In this blog we will do a standalone deployment of vCloud Director Appliance

Prerequisites

vCloud Director can be installed on Linux server or you can install as an appliance, in this blog we are doing the appliance installation and configuration

• Verify that you have access to the vCloud Director .ova file, you can download the same from this VMware Downloads.
• Each vCloud Director server must support two different SSL endpoints. One endpoint is for the HTTP service. The other endpoint is for the console proxy service. These endpoints can be separate IP addresses, or a single IP address with two different ports. You can use IP aliases or multiple network interfaces to create these addresses.
• DNS entry for the appliance.

• For compatibility between vCloud Director and other VMware products, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes.
• The vCloud Director appliance includes an embedded PostgreSQL database. The embedded PostgreSQL database includes the Replication Manager (repmgr) tool suite, which provides a high availability (HA) function to a cluster of PostgreSQL servers. You can create an appliance deployment with a database HA cluster that provides failover capabilities to your vCloud Director database, in this blog we are doing the standalone installation.
• Transfer Server Storage, To provide temporary storage for uploads, downloads, and catalog items that are published or subscribed externally, you must make an NFS or other shared storage volume accessible to all servers in a vCloud Director server group, he vCloud Director appliance supports only NFS type of shared storage. The appliance deployment process involves mounting the NFS shared transfer server storage. Please use this link to Preparing the Transfer Server Storage.
• The primary cell is the first member in the vCloud Director server group. The embedded database is configured as the vCloud Director database. The database name is vcloud, and the database user is vcloud. Deploy one or more instances of the vCloud Director appliance as vCD Application cells(optional). The embedded database is not used. The vCD Application cell connects to the primary database.

Plan Installation or Upgradation

You create a vCloud Director server group by installing the vCloud Director software on one or more Linux servers, or by deploying one or more instances of the vCloud Director appliance. During the installation process, you perform the initial vCloud Director configuration, which includes establishing network and database connections.

• The vCloud Director software for Linux requires an external database, whereas the vCloud Director appliance uses an embedded PostgreSQL database.
• After you create the vCloud Director server group, you integrate the vCloud Director installation with your vSphere resources. For network resources, vCloud Director can use NSX Data Center for vSphere, NSX-T Data Center, or both.
• When you upgrade an existing vCloud Director installation, you update the vCloud Director software and the database schema, leaving the existing relationships between servers, the database, and vSphere in place.
• When you migrate an existing vCloud Director installation on Linux to the vCloud Director appliance, you update the vCloud Director software and migrate the database to the embedded database in the appliance.

Installation and Configuration

Login to vSphere Web client and right click on the cluster where you want to deploy the appliance

Here you can either provide the download URL or you can provide the location of OVA local file which is already downloaded.

Select the Virtual Machine Name and Folder

Select the Compute Resource and Click Next

Review the details of vCloud Director

Read and Accept the EULA of vCloud Director and Click Next

Choose the type of deployment according to your infrastructure, you can verify the respective description details of each deployment. Click Next

Note: – Use the Standby option to deploy the secondary node when you configure with High availability

Select the Datastore where you want to store the vCloud Director Appliance and you can select the virtual disk format.

Starting with version 9.7, the vCloud Director appliance is deployed with two networks, eth0 and eth1, so that you can isolate the HTTP traffic from the database traffic. Different services listen on one or both corresponding network interfaces. As we are planning for standalone deployment without database high availability, we will go with same subnets on both interface also this will avoid routing issues.

Note: – Both eth0 and eth1 should be on different network if you design to configure vCloud Director in Primary-Standby mode.

Select the Destination Port Group for the Appliance and Click Next

Configure the Network Settings like IP Address, Subnet Mask, Gateway, DNS, Time zone, Transfer Server Storage etc.

Review the configuration you have done and Click Finish to start the Deployment

In the Recent Task tab, you can see the deployment status

Once the deployment is completed Power On the appliance and wait to completely initialize the vCloud Director

Once you get the above screen the appliance is successfully initialized, and you can access or manage the appliance by https://IP Address of FQDN:5480.

Once you login with the Appliance root password provided during installation, The database appliances currently provides very simple user interface showing the cluster state with the only operation to promote standby node and that only if the primary is failed.

To access the vCloud Director(vCD) use the following link https://IP Address of FQDN/provider

To login to vCD use the administrator username and password provided during installation

Note:- If you face any issue in accessing URL with FQDN, please refer VMware KB

Troubleshoot the Installation

To troubleshoot the installation failure, you can refer the below logs

Navigate to /opt/vmware/var/log.

• The /opt/vmware/var/log/firstboot file contains logging information related to the first boot of the appliance.
• The /opt/vmware/var/log/vcd/ directory contains logs related to the Replication Manager (repmgr) tool suite setup and reconfiguration and appliance synchronization.
• The /opt/vmware/var/log/vcd/pg/ directory contains logs related to the backup of the embedded appliance database.
• The /opt/vmware/etc/vami/ovfEnv.xml file contains the deployment OVF parameters.
• The /opt/vmware/var/log/vami/vami-ovf.log contains the appliance logs

Also, while powering up the appliance for the first time, it should populate the contents on the NFS Transfer Server Storage.

To Start, stop and reload configuration of vCloud director or database service on a node use the below commands

#systemctl status vpostgres.service
#systemctl start vpostgres.service
#systemctl stop vpostgres.service
#systemctl reload vpostgres.service
#systemctl status vmware-vcd.service
#systemctl start vmware-vcd.service
#systemctl stop vmware-vcd.service
#systemctl reload vmware-vcd.service

Backup and Restore

The backup of the appliance is very easy, the restore less so. The backup is triggered from the primary node with the command:

#/opt/vmware/appliance/bin/create-db-backup

It creates single tar file with database content and additional data to fully restore the vCloud Director instance.

In upcoming blogs, we will discuss more on VMware vCloud Director. To make this vCD series more understandable, I am splitting this into multiple blogs

Part 1 – What is VMware vCloud Director

Part 2 – VMware vCloud Director Standalone Installation

Part 3 – VMware vCloud Director Installation with High Availability

Part 4 – VMware vCloud Director – Install and Configure RabbitMQ Cluster

Part 5 – VMware vCloud Director Cell Certificates & Load Balancing

Part 6 – VMware vCloud Director Cell Role Switchover

Part 7 – VMware vCloud Director Basic Configuration

Part 8 – VMware vCloud Director Org vDC Configuration

Part 9 – VMware vCloud Director Virtual Data Center

Part 10 – VMware vCloud Director Branding

Thanks,

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I hope this article was informative, and don’t forget to buy me a coffee if you found this worth reading.

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