This post was originally suppose to be for using the new silent installer in vRA 7.1, but since I have not been able to get the IaaS prerequisite fixes to apply successfully, without some tweaking and using external scripts, I thought I would start from the beginning with the UI installer. I do have a case open with VMware GSS and hope to get a solution some time soon, and when I do I will create a new post and provide detailed information on my findings.
There are already many blog posts out there for step by step guide on the vRA installation wizard so I will keep this short and will only provide the necessary from my distributed installation notes.
Firstly here is a list of all the new features in vRA 7.1:
- Streamlined installation process using a silent installer.
- Agent and prerequisite command line interface.
- Migration tool to move data from a source vRealize Automation 6.2.x environment to a fresh vRealize Automation 7.1 environment while preserving the source environment.
- IPAM integration framework with ability to deploy machines and applications with automated assignment of IP addresses from leading IP address management systems, with the first integration with Infoblox.
- Integrated support for Active Directory policies.
- Custom property dictionary controls to improve property definitions and vRealize Orchestrator actions.
- Reconfigure life-cycle events by means of event broker workflow subscriptions.
- Additional vSphere provisioning options and data collection improvements.
- Ability to manually conduct horizontal scale in and scale out of application environments deployed by vRealize Automation, including the automatic update of dependent components.
- Customizable message of the day portlet available on the home page.
- Additional information and filter options on the Items page.
- Discontinued support for PostgreSQL external database.
Prerequisites:
I am not going to go into too much detail here but VMware does a great job of explaining everything in the online documentation:
Couple of important prerequisites which I want to highlight:
- SQL server AlwaysOn availability groups is now supported but only for SQL 2016
- 4 VIPS required for vRA appliance, vRA Manager, vRA Web, vRO
- For initial installation and configuration you don’t want the VIPs load balanced so use a DNS A-Record and once everything is done, flip over to your VIPs.
- Recommend using a vRA service account
- Add this service account to your IaaS Windows Local Administrator group
- Recommend using a vRO and SQL service account as well.
- Configure NTP on windows hosts and appliances with at last 2 NTP servers.
Lastly the prerequisites for the Windows IaaS can be daunting but since vRA 7 the prerequisites checker/fixer is build into the installation wizard making this process super easy.
My Enterprise Environment and virtual machines that was deployed:
| lljvra01 | vRA 7 Appliance #1 |
| lljvra02 | vRA 7 Appliance #2 |
| lljvramgr01 | vRA 7 manager #1, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvramgr02 | vRA 7 manager #2, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvraweb01 | vRA 7 web #1, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvraweb02 | vRA 7 web #2, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvradem01 | vRA 7 DEM #1, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvradem02 | vRA 7 DEM #2, Windows 2012 R2 |
| lljvro01 | vRO Appliance #1 |
| lljvro02 | vRO Appliance #2 |
Install the Management Agent on Windows IaaS servers.
Management Agents are stand-alone IaaS components that register IaaS nodes with vRealize Automation appliances, automate the installation and management of IaaS components, and collect support and telemetry information.
Management Agent must be installed on each Windows server hosting IaaS components.
- Open browser
- Click Management agent installer, which will download the installer
- Run the installer by clicking the .msi file
- Click Next on the Welcome page.
- Accept the EULA and click Next
- Accept the path
- Click Next
- Enter the management site service details
- vRA appliance address
- Enter username root
- Enter password
- Click Load for SHA1 fingerprint to be populated
- Check the box to confirm fingerprint match.
- Click Next
- Click Finish
- Verify that the service is running. (image below)
Start the VRA installation wizard
Open browser and enter the vRealize Automation Appliance address
- https://vra_appliance_fqdn:5480
- Login as root
- Accept the EULA
- Select Enterprise deployment
- Check box to Install Infrastructure as a service
- Click Next
- Select radio button for VA time sync. Recommend at least 2 NTP servers.
- Verify all the IaaS host that have the management agent installed is visible and last connected is not showing an extended time, like the image below for llvramgr02 which shows 28 hours. For this IaaS host I would reinstall the agent.
- Also verify the time offset is as low as possible and if over 600 seconds the installation wizard will not continue.
- Image of IaaS Host showing correct metrics.
- Click Green plus to add an additional vRA virtual appliance
- Enter hostname
- Enter admin user = root
- Enter password
- Click Next
- Confirm the certificate.
- Check the server roles for each IaaS host.
- Screenshot of my selections below:
- Click Run to start the prerequisite checker
- After the Run is complete it will show you the failed prerequisites.
- Click Fix
- Image showing all IaaS host with OK status after fix.
- Enter the vRA appliance load balancer address. This will be the FQDN for the vRA Appliance VIP which is created on the your load balancer. As mentioned make sure to disable the health checks and only connect to primary server during installation.
- Enter the SSO administrator password
- Enter the IaaS Web address of load balancer
- Enter the IaaS Manager Service address of load balancer
- Enter Database security passphrase.
- Enter SQL server name
- Enter SQL database name
- Select radio button to create a new database or select and existing.
- Specify the website name and port
- Enter username and password for Web role IaaS hosts.
- Enter username and password for Manager service role IaaS hosts.
- Check the box to select which IaaS host will be active.
- Enter username and password for Distributed Execution manager IaaS hosts.
- Enter Agent and Endpoint name for IaaS hosts.
- A good practice is the keep the names the same for both agent and endpoint and use the same name as that of your vCenter server. Just a suggestion 🙂
- Verify Agent Type
- Enter username and password for IaaS Hosts
- Select to either import your own vRA appliance certificate or leave on Generate Certificate
- Enter the ORG info
- Enter the OU info
- Enter the Country Code
- Click Save Generated Certificates
- Information should get populated as below
- Click Next
- Select to either import your own Web certificate or leave on Generate Certificate
- Enter the ORG info
- Enter the OU info
- Enter the Country Code
- Click Save Generated Certificates
- Information should get populated as below
- Click Next
- Select to either import your own Manager certificate or leave on Generate Certificate
- Enter the ORG info
- Enter the OU info
- Enter the Country Code
- Click Save Generated Certificates
- Information should get populated as below
- Click Next
- Verify Load Balancer information
- Validation will start and provide information on command status
- Validation succeeded
- The installation wizard recommend you take snapshots of your vRA appliances and IaaS hosts
- Take snapshots and verify that it successfully completed
- Click Next
- On the installation details you have the opportunity to collect logs if installation failed, or you can retry the installation of failed components
- Click Install to start
- Review the command status
- The installation completed successfully
- Enter the vRA license key
- Click Next
- Uncheck if you do not want to participate in VMware CEIP.
- Click Next
- Enter password for the configurationadmin user.
- Installation successfully completed. yeah!
JohannStander 