In this multi-part series we will deploy the Identity Appliance, the vCAC Appliance, the Windows IaaS components, ITBM standard, Application Services, and a basic tenant setup.
- Part 1 – Identity Appliance
- Part 2 – vCAC Appliance
- Part 3 – Windows IaaS Install
- Part 4 – Initial Tenant Configuration
- Part 5 – License, Endpoint, Group, Reservation, Blueprint, and Entitlement
- Part 6 – ITBM
- Part 7 – Basic Application Services
Here in Part 5 we will walk through the tenant management. This will be a lengthy post and as an alternative you could use the “My Goals” which is represented by the >> in the upper left hand corner under the logo.
- Add a tenant specific license
- Add your vCenter endpoint
- Configure a fabric and a business group
- Set reservations
- Build a basic blueprint
- Entitle that blueprint
Again we will spend this entire post in a web browser of your choice
Navigate to https://fqdn.of.vCAC.Appliance/vcac/org/url, in my example http://vcac-va-ng.biteback.records/vcac/org/biteback
You will login with the administrator account that you gave permissions to Tenant and Infrastructure Admin roles to.
In my screenshots follow my bread crumbs between the tabs and the UI. For example you need to add a license so you will go to
Infrastructure Tab -> Administration -> Licensing
Click add license.
This is what a complete license should look like.
Add endpoint you go to
Infrastructure Tab -> Endpoints -> Endpoints
Click the … to enter your credentials, this must be an administrative user (we are creating and destroying things in vCenter).
Notice the name THIS MUST MATCH YOUR ENDPOINT CASE SENSITIVE IN PART 3!!!
Address will be https://vcenter.fqdn/sdk
Only check the box if you have a registered vCNS Manger registered with vCenter
It should look like this once complete
Assuming everything worked you will now be able to add those vCenter resources to a fabric group. You can think of these as cloud resource admins who will carve up the access to specific resources. Many different resources can all be configured under a single fabric group.
Infrastructure Tab -> Groups -> Fabric Groups
Define the resource admins and select the resources you wish to distribute. You should see your clusters from the vCenter data collection as an option to check.
Now define the business groups or consumers of those resources. This could be a functional silo (Developers), a project (Siebel), or a group such as sales and marketing, since marketing is important for any business . What works best for your organization will be unique!
Infrastructure Tab -> Groups -> Business Groups
Add a hostname you wish to user for standard naming conventions for this group.
Add the Name and then the user roles.
This is what the final business group should look like.
Add a network profile this will be used to in order for static IP management. Add an external profile.
Infrastructure Tab -> Reservations -> Network Profiles
Name and configure your specific network settings.
Define the IP range for your provisioned machines to take advantage of.
This is what the complete range should look like.
This is what the complete network profile should look like.
Now we build the initial reservation for the first business group we defined.
Infrastructure Tab -> Reservations -> Reservations
Name and configure the appropriate settings.
Move on to the resources tab in that your New Reservation and define the disk *Must be shared disk or you will get some interesting failures during request time.
Define the RAM.
Move on to the Network tab in your New Reservation, select the network for deployment and the profile.
This is what the complete reservation should look like.
Next we will build our first blueprint, you can think of this like a template but with much more configuration flexibility and policy that governs it.
Infrastructure Tab -> Blueprints -> Blueprints
Name your blueprint (this is what the user will see during request time)
Describe it (again users will see this)
Define any of the policies you want to apply to this specific blueprint.
Now define the type of build, I will select linked clone but a basic clone can be used for this particular first use case.
Things to consider if using linked clone, you must have a VM with a snapshot ready for use, if using a clone, you must have a template ready for use. If you go to vCenter and take a snapshot it will not appear to vCAC until the next data collection!
Select the VM I’m going to use.
Select the snapshot.
Confirm you want to proceed.
Set the min and max policies, if you don’t have a max set it will only allow the minimum during request time.
This is what a completed blueprint should look like.
Now the benefit of vCAC is the multiple layers of possible abstraction. In thise case we have the ability to play with the blueprint all we want until we are ready to publish.
Confirm.
For the next level of abstraction, we have published but this particular blueprint has not yet been entitled to any users or groups. So now we go to the administration and providing entitlements.
First we define a service category
Administration Tab -> Catalog Management -> Services
Add the service and set the status to active. You can choose to set your own icon for this service if you would like.
Configure the catalog items
Administration Tab -> Catalog Management -> Services
Again you can choose to configure the logo, set the status to active, and associate with the service you just built.
Go to entitlements and add
Administration Tab -> Catalog Management -> Entitlements
Name the entitlement, set status to active, and eadd a specific user. Note this user must be defined within the business group.
Now you can offer an entitlement at the service or the catalog item granularity. You can also add very specific actions to this entitlement.
First we add the service entitlement.
Then add the actions you want to have enabled on this blueprint.
This is how it should look once you have configured the entitlements.
This is how the complete entitlement will appear.
Now go to your catalog and verify you can see the entitlement (assuming you entitled the user you’re logged in as)
Catalog Tab
Time to start the provisioning!!! Next step we will walk through installing and configuring ITBM.
