An IP address is an integral part of the server architecture and is required by all servers, LB VIPs, NATs etc. Many customers still make use of spreadsheets, which is very difficult to automate when you have to manually enter data, and this eventually leads to inconsistencies due to the file not getting updated when a IP address is assigned, changed or deleted.

What you need is a robust high performance, highly available IP solution that you can manage from a single interface and provides  features like:

• Manage a large pool of IP addresses
• Improve availability, and simplified administration.
• User based roles and permissions.
• Provide vital operational and troubleshooting data:
  • IP address history, MAC address, Owner, Location, OS, etc.
• Reports summarizing IP address resources and utilization.

There are many IPAM solutions out there with SovLabs support for the following:

• Infoblox
• Solarwinds
• Bluecat
• BT Diamond IP
• Microsoft

I will be using the SovLabs Infoblox module in my example but if you have read this far you probably asked yourself “Infoblox has native integration with vRealize Automation, why use the SovLabs Infoblox module?”  I did some research and hopefully this information is useful in your decision making:

Differentiators between SovLabs Infoblox IPAM and Infoblox native integration vRA:

• SovLabs do not require the Infoblox cloud adapter
• SovLabs has different modules, which seamlessly integrates with each other and enhances the IPAM functionality:
  • Separate DNS and IPAM modules to allow each to be driven independently even between different providers.
  • Ability to create multiple independent DNS profiles that can drive DNS for multiple different providers independent of IPAM.  DNS is able to register against multiple domains out of the box and drive host records, CNAMEs, PTR and A records independently.
• SovLabs has pre-validation logic for IP and DNS forward/reverse duplication detection.
• SovLabs Template engine can be used for custom comments, fields in Infoblox based on vRA metadata.
• SovLabs is design for ease of use.  No Infoblox schema changes or lengthy install and upgrade process.
• SovLabs is completely policy driven, no need for custom workflow development.

The SovLabs module also has many other features which can viewed on the website here, but some of the highlights are:

• Obtain and reserve unique IP address(es) and release automatically during appropriate machine lifecycle
• Reserves unique IP address(es) and assigns to the VM NIC(s) based on IPAM profile(s)
• IPAM profiles can span multiple networks, each consisting of a network name, subnet CIDR block and gateway address
• IPAM configurations are interchangeable between endpoint providers; avoid lock-in by easily adding additional IPAM providers with other IPAM modules from SovLabs
• No custom workflows required, completely policy driven
• SovLabs IPAM configurations may also be used with SovLabs network load balancer modules

Prerequisites:

1. Infoblox user on (all) Infoblox appliance(s) with the following permissions:
   • API and GUI access configured
   • Add/remove Host Records, A Records and/or PTR Records
2. Infoblox WAPI version must be 1.2+

   Access https://{infoblox-fqdn}/wapidoc/ and look in the upper-left corner

3. Login to the vRA tenant
   1. Add license for Infoblox IPAM module
   2. Validate the following show up on the Catalog page:
      1. Add Infoblox Endpoint
      2. Add IPAM Profile

Configuration:

1. Add InfoBlox Endpoint
   1. Login to vRA Tenant
   2. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   3. 
   4. Click Request button on “Add Infoblox Endpoint”
   5. 
   6. Infoblox Endpoint
   7. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   8. Enter hostname
      • FQDN of Infoblox server
   9. HTTPS = yes
   10. Port – 443
   11. WAPI version = pick from dropdown box based the version your found through prerequisites
   12. DNS View = optional, which DNS views this endpoint supports
       • Not using Infoblox for DNS in this example
   13. Network View = optional, which Network views this endpoint supports
       • All my networks are crated under the default view
   14. Credential Configuration
   15. Enter username
       • Username should have API access and permissions to add/remove records to/from Infoblox
   16. Enter password
   17. Click Next
   18. Advanced Options
       • These are optional and can be left blank which will populate with default value.
   19. Host record template
   20. A record template
   21. PTR record template
   22. Fixed Address template
   23. Click Submit
2. Add IPAM profile
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on Add IPAM Profile
   4. 
   5. Enter configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   6. Enter Description
      • I like to add the name of the network and subnet information here.
   7. Type = Infoblox
      • Since we are using Infoblox, that is what i picked.
   8. Provider host = select configuration label for previously created Infoblox endpoint
   9. Nic number = 0
      • On which NIC do you want to assign the IP address for the VM
   10. Subnets, Gateways and Network names
       1. The network name should match the vDS port group name.
       2. Enter values subnet, gateway and network name with comma separated and click on green + Sign
   11. Excluded IPs
       1. If you want to exclude some IP address, then enter them here individually.
   12. DNS Configuration
   13. Enter Primary DNS
   14. Enter Secondary DNS
   15. Enter DNS Suffix
   16. Enter DNS search Suffix
   17. Wins Configuration
   18. Enter WINS Server if necessary
   19. Click Submit

Enable the module:

Now we need to enable the custom properties module on our blueprint

1. Login to vRA
2. Click on the Infrastructure -> Reservations -> Network Profiles
3. Edit the network profile that best matches the IPAM profile created above
4. Click DNS tab
   1. Verify that the DNS suffix is set.
5. Click on the Infrastructure -> Reservations
6. Edit the reservation associated with the network profile review above in step 3.
   1. Click network tab
   2. Uncheck the network paths
   3. Also clear out the network paths dropdown value.
7. Click OK
8. Now we need to enable the custom properties module on our blueprint
9. Click on Design -> Blueprint
10. Edit Blueprint
11. Click on the blueprint vSphere machine on the Design Canvas.
12. Click on properties tab
13. In the properties group section click +Add
14. Check the box for:
    • SovLabs-EnableLifecycleStubs
    • Check the appropriate IPAM property group (starts with SovLabs-IPAM- and ends with -nic#)
    • Do not attach more than 1 IPAM profile property group to a blueprint VM object
15. Click OK
16. Repeat these steps for all blueprints that should get an IP address through IPAM.

Now deploy a VM and verify in Infoblox that the IP address is assigned to the network in the default view.

If you are a VMware administrator you know what a pain it is to manage snapshots.  Virtualization makes it easy to snapshot a VM before a patch or an upgrade is applied to an application or OS and gives you that peace of mind that you can revert back if it fails.   The reality is that users never clean up there snapshots and it starts getting used as a backup method in environments which places the burden on VMware admins to manage the clean up efforts.  VMware recommends not using snapshots for more than 3 days since it can cause serious performance, storage and corruption problems in your environment.

So how you do you handle snapshots?  A lot of customers just give up and take the chance of nothing going wrong, or they end up disabling this very valuable feature so users cannot use it all.  None of these methods are good.

SovLabs modules provides policies that control the expiration and deletion of VM snapshots as well as the ability to provide notifications to the VM owner. The VM owner is not given the option to extend the time of how long the snapshot lives and it will be automatically removed based on the lifespan in days set by the vRA administrator.

Configuration:

1. Add SovLabs vCenter Endpoint
   1. This configuration was covered in my previous post which can be viewed here.
2. Add SovLabs vRA CAFE Endpoint
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on “Add SovLabs vRA CAFE Endpoint”
   4. 
   5. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   6. Version and Hostname are  auto-generated and based on querying vRA CAFE, verify that the information is correct
   7. If you have not configure this endpoint module then you need to create credentials.
   8. Click Submit
3. Add SovLabs vRA IaaS Endpoint
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on “Add SovLabs IaaS CAFE Endpoint”
   4. 
   5. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   6. Version, Hostname  and Domain are auto-generated and based on querying vRA CAFE, verify that the information is correct
   7. If you have not configure this endpoint module then you need to create credentials.
   8. Click Submit
4. Add Notification Configuration
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on “Add Notification Configuration”
   4. 
   5. New message server = yes
      1. new fields will appear
   6. 
   7. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   8. Enter message server address
   9. Enable SSL if required
   10. Enter message port
   11. Select message type
   12. Select message server protocol
   13. Select yes from drop down box if your SMTP requires authentication.
       1. Select yes from new credentials
       2. Enter configuration label
       3. Enter username and password
   14. Enable STARTTLS if required
   15. Set network timeout
   16. Since I selected message type as email, you need to setup your email groups.
       1. Select yes to create new group
       2. Enter email group configuration label
       3. Enter To and/or CC and BCC addresses
   17. Click Next
   18. 
   19. Enter notification configuration label
       • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   20. Select type = SNAPSHOT
   21. Select state = Whether or not to send notifications when a new snapshot is found (NEW), when a snapshot is about to be deleted (WARNING), and/or when a snapshot has been deleted (DELETE)
   22. Select format
   23. Enter From address
   24. Enter Title
   25. Enter Body
       • In the documentation they have some notification examples which you can just copy/paste and customize, which is very helpful.
   26. 
   27. Click Submit
5. Add Notification Group Configuration
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on “Add Notification Group Configuration”
   4. 
   5. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   6. Select Type = snapshot
   7. Select Notification = previously create notification configuration.
6. Add Snapshot Configuration
   1. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   2. 
   3. Click Request on “Add Snapshot Configuration”
   4. 
   5. Enter Configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
      • sovlabs_snapshot_config_BG_all_2days
   6. Select SovLabs vRA CAFE Endpoint from dropdown.  This was configured earlier.
   7. Select SovLabs vRA IaaS Endpoint from dropdown. This was also configured earlier.
   8. Select Notification Group.  Make sure you have a notification group of type snapshot define. This was also configured earlier.
   9. Select if you want to manage snapshots for all business groups = yes
   10. Enter snapshot lifespan in days
       1. Per VMware’ recommendation try to stay within less than 3 days
   11. Enter the days before expiration a warning notification should be send out.
   12. 
   13. Click Next
   14. Set the snapshot scheduler.  So the scheduler you set here goes out and checks each VM if they have a snapshot that might be expiring or is expired and needs to be deleted.  Once create, a vRO schedule task is created which runs every 15min to make sure that the snapshot scheduler sends out the notification at the specified time.
   15. 
   16. Leave schedule as active
   17. Set schedule type = daily
       • most customers would pick daily
   18. Set the time to run in military format
   19. Can leave schedule end date blank to run forever.
   20. Click Submit

Enable the module:

1. Based on the set scheduler, an inventory update will automatically run and send notifications.
   • If a snapshot’s age has met the expiration day, it will automatically get deleted.
2. The last SovLabs Snapshot Configuration deleted, deletes the vRealize Orchestrator scheduled task for Snapshot Management.  It automatically creates it again if a snapshot configuration is created and scheduled task is not found.

Disable the module:

1. Login to the vRA tenant
2. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
3. Click Request on “Manage Snapshot Scheduler”
   1. Select Suspend from the Action dropdown list.
   2. Click Submit
   3. (if you want to resume this module again you can perform the same actions as above but select Action “resume” from dropdown list.

This modules allows you to make use of VMware’s DRS to sub-divide your vSphere clusters for consumption by defining DRS groups, affinity and anti-affinity rules. A good use case for this would the deployment of a VM that needs to be tied to specific host due to licensing or hardware constraints, or VMs behind load balancers that you want to make sure run on different ESXi hosts.

The module has many features which can viewed on the website here, but some of the highlights are:

• Create and manage vSphere DRS profile configurations directly in vRA and tie them to existing blueprints to enable affinity or anti-affinity relationships between VMs provisioned and existing DRS host groups.
• Automatic cleanup of appropriate linked VM rules and groups during VM de-provisioning lifecycles
• Allows for VM provisioning into specific pre-defined DRS host groups
• Dynamically creates VM group(s) and rule(s) during VM provisioning based on the corresponding SovLabs DRS profile configuration

Prerequisites:

• vCenter Server is properly configured
• vCenter cluster is properly configured and the host groups defined

Configuration:

1. Add vCenter Endpoint
   1. Login to vRA Tenant
   2. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   3. 
   4. Click Request button for “Add SovLabs vCenter Endpoint”
   5. 
   6. Enter configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   7. Select vCenter version
   8. Enter PSC FQDN
   9. Embedded PSC = yes/no
   10. Enter vCenter Server FQDN
       • this should get populated
   11. Create credentials = yes
       1. This is not the vRA credentials so if you have not set this up through the catalog item request then you have to do so first.
   12. Enter username
   13. Enter password
   14. Click Submit
2. Add DRS Profile
   1. Login to vRA Tenant
   2. Select Catalog -> SovLabs vRA Extensibility
   3. 
   4. Click Request on “Add DRS Profile”
   5. 
   6. Enter configuration label
      • Only AlphaNumeric characters, no spaces or special characters except: - and _
   7. Select vCenter Endpoint
   8. Select Cluster
      • If the clusters do not show up, make sure you have Host groups defined in DRS or that the credentials are entered correctly.  Credentials can be updated through the SovLabs Catalog “Manage Credential Configuration”
   9. Select host group
      • I create 2 hosts groups within the cluster, with separate hosts in each, which will be assignment to each blueprint.
   10. Select Rule
       • I selected should run on hosts in group
   11. Click Submit

Enable the module:

Now we need to enable the custom properties module on our blueprint

1. Click on Design -> Blueprint
2. Edit Blueprint
3. Click on the blueprint vSphere machine on the Design Canvas.
4. Click on properties tab
5. In the properties group section click +Add
6. Check the box for:
   • Check the appropriate vSphere DRS property group (starts with SovLabs-DRS-)
   • Do not attach more than 1 vSphere DRS property group to a vSphere machine blueprint
7. Click OK
8. Repeat these steps for all blueprints that should use this custom naming.