At work in some of our presentations, we talk about Lifecycle Manager, and since I have been interested in it for a while I thought I would get it going. But I did not find many blogs about it so I thought I would blog it.
I think that this article will be pretty long so I am going to do a few.
- Installing vRealize Lifecycle Manager - this article
- Patching vRealize Lifecycle Manager - find it here
- Configuring vRealize Lifecycle Manger - find it here - cancelled
- Deploying with vRealize Lifecycle Manager - find it here - cancelled
I will do these articles pretty quick.
Prep
- Bits - here
- docs - here
- release notes - here
- License - It is not required! It is however required for any of the applications you install via vRLCM.
Once you download the bits, which is an OVA so that will help the install process. Also have the bits handy for things you are going to download - yes this tool can download things for you but it seems to be faster if you have the things you need local. Later in the article series we will install vROps, Log Insight and vRealize Automation.
BTW, I am doing this on vSphere 6.7 U2 with all outstanding patches applied.
Install Process
Ok, we are going to install this fancy tool now.
- We use the Actions \ Deploy OVA at the cluster level to select our OVA file.
- We select the file - VMware-vLCM-Appliance-2.1.0.11-13273278_OVF10.ova.
- Next you select where in the inventory to put it. I have an Appliances folder I use.
- Now you select the cluster.
- You see the details now.
- And we next accept all the license details. We always do that - right? And who reads them?
- Next we are prompted about enable / disable Content Management. The disable uses 2x vCPU and the enable uses 4x vCPU. I check the install doc, and it does not say what this is!
- Since this is my home lab, I will leave this as disabled, but I suspect that will be a problem. When I figured this out I will update my article. Update: this can be enabled in the UI after install. It is for code stream type of activities.
- Next is the storage choice.
- Now to select the destination network, and the IP protocol.
- Next is a lot of config.
- So we do the FQDN and the NTP. The Customer Experience is already done. I believe in that so leave it checked.
- In our next config I add the appliance name to the Common name and leave the rest of the cert stuff as it is.
- I start the networking config off with default gateway and domain name.
- I do the last of the networking stuff and time for next.
- I get an immediate unable to deploy template and I see in Recent Tasks that the operation expired. It is my wife’s fault as she came in to visit with me. I do it again and it deploys fine.
- Once the appliance is deployed you will need to power it on.
- Once it is up we need to confirm we can access it!
- Lets access the console and see what we see.
- So lets access the UI. In my case:
- And what do we see?
- So our install worked.
- BTW, if you want to log on now use the following credentials - [email protected] / vmware.
Updates
- At VMworld I saw they announced v8 of this tool. And it looks different too. Since I don’t think it is that far off I will not finish this article series.
So we have this interesting tool working, and it is time for the next article.
Michael
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