Making vRealize Automation v8 work

Home Lab, How To 5 Minutes

Update: Lots of changes.  8.0.1 broke the Easy Installer so read though the whole article before you start so you can save time and get things working! I hope that whatever comes after 8.0.1 unbreaks the easy installer so that you can follow the easier path in this article.

BTW, I found the VMware doc’s on this a little less than useful. They seem to have the info I needed for a basic install scattered about in different places. But below is what I used to get things to work so it should work good for you too. This is likely the install that was called Easy Install.  Except not so easy. It failed.  This is the second time through as the first time I learned the Easy installer is broken, so we need to do a different type of install. It turns out we disable a feature during the install and things work.

BTW, you cannot backup vRA or its related components while they are powered on. Yes, really.

Pre-req’s

  • FQDN, both IP and DNS for vRA, vRLCM, VIM
  • NTP info
  • bits - vra-lcm-installer-14878991.iso
  • vRealize Suite 2019 license
  • ISO in Content Library if you use it, handy otherwise.
  • vCenter service account

Install Outline for vRealize Lifecycle Manger

  • Mount the ISO on your desktop.  In my case a Windows VM running Windows 10 in View.
  • Change to the ISO, and access the vdlcm-ui-installer folder.
  • For Windows, you change to the Win32 folder.  There is also Linux and Mac versions.

  • Near the end of the list of files is the installer - installer.exe - double-click on it.

  • I am installing so that is the choice I make.  Migrate is not completely a migrate choice I hear.

  • We read a little, than Next.
  • I now agree to the EULA and I disable the CEIP.  This is of critical importance - if you do this your install will work, and if you don’t it will fail. Not sure if this is fixed in 8.0.1.  Not mentioned in release notes. So I still deselect this when installing 8.0.1.
  • Next is vCenter access - use the service account we prepared.
  • Select the vSphere folder to put the appliances in.
  • Select the compute resource now.
  • Next is the storage location.
  • Now we do the network config for all three VMs.  So that means the general network config like NTP, mask, DNS type stuff.
  • We do the password thing now - root / admin for vRSLCM, root for vRA, and root / admin / sshuser / config user for VIM.

  • You do the Lifecycle Manager network config now.
  • Next is the Identity Manager network config, you need a config name for config work in VIM.
  • Now do the vRA network config AND the license needs to be added here (Update - as of 8.0.1 I disable the vRA part of Easy Install.  More info below).
  • We now see the Summary.

  • We submit as it all looks good!

  • So we watch this screen for a while.  I like how it reminds you of the installer log.  Which when I was troubleshooting it had nothing written to it.
  • Once it has some stuff done, it will let you know that VRLCM is up.

  • It takes a bit but soon you will see something like below.

  • Does that look good or what! It took roughly 30 - 35 minutes.

Troubleshooting (and mitigation)

I recently went to add vRA to my work lab.  It was 8.0.1. I ended up with this.

I guess I should mention I ended up with this twice.

What did I look at to avoid this?

  • Confirm that all your FQDN resolve to the right IP address.
  • Make sure your NTP server is responding.  I tested it by adding it to Log Insight which tested it.
  • You can log into the vRSLCM server and change to the LifeCycle Operations area, and select your environment. You will get a little bit of info on the issue.

  • You can log into the vRA appliance, and change to /var/log and cat deploy.log.

  • But I don’t see much that could stop the vRA install.  So I am going to delete the VMs, and delete the temp files before I try again.

  • I will delete the vRSLCM and vmware folders. The goal is to make sure there is no info in the wizard and that I have to re-enter it all. BTW, deleting all of the folders files dated 1/12 did not clear the fields in the wizard.
  • So I have hit this issue three times now.  And I am using an NFR license - normal in Tech Marketing so no support.
  • I have heard a few things so I am making a guess.  The info above worked with 8.0.  So it is a problem with 8.0.1 easy installer I think.  A friend suggested I use the Easy Installer to do vRSLCM and VIM, then later use LCM to do vRA.  If this is an issue with easy installer that should work! Update - I did get vRSLCM and VIM installed with no issue.  So log into vRSLCM, and select Lifecycle Operations, and create a new Environment, and you will be able to add the existing vCenter to it, do some prep work, and deploy vRA. Very similar process actually to the Easy Installer but it does have some pre - checks and can easily reuse info so that is pretty cool. BTW, the vra install failed, but I hit retry and it succeed. Log into vRA as your configuration user (mine was config) and do the quickstart (more info on Quickstart is in this article).

Test Time

  • Can we access successfully vRA? Yes, using the configuration admin account (conadmin in my case).
  • Can we access vRSLCM? Yes, using the [email protected] account.
  • We used VIM to access vRA so that is good.

What is Next?

I think this article is finished. I am am already working on the next one.  How do we get vRA working to the point where it is doing VM provisioning. There are many things that lead up to that like SMTP for example.  But that is all in my next article.

Here is the article that helps make vRA useful. I am still working on it and this one.

Links

Updates

  • 1/15/20 - added link to article about making vRA useful.
  • 1/14/20 - added a possible solution in the troubleshooting area.
  • 1/13/20 - added some troubleshooting info, and the password screenshot.
  • 1/12/20 - updated with 8.0.1 install stuff.  Very minor.
  • 10/30/19 - published.

Hope this helps, and don’t hesitate to ask questions, or make comments.

Michael

=== END ===

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