Hello all, this was a difficult journey but we have vRA working now (see this article). But we need to make it useful. For me that means provisioning virtual machines by non admin users.
Connect to your vRA server.
You need to log in as your configuration user. Mine was config. The password is the standard one assigned to a few accounts during the install.
Once you logged in you have some options!
Now what I am trying to do is have the ability to provision - by non - admins - virtual machines. So the quick start looks interesting. It will only be seen by the config user I believe. You will need to be prepared with a bunch of your vSphere environment info.
The first step of Quick Start is to define your connection with vCenter.
Once filled in we go to the next step.
The next step is for NSX which I do not have so I select None. Which encourages me to go to the next step.
In our next step we are doing what they say is the Basic Config. It is selecting template info and basic info with it.
I really like how we can use the magnifying glass to select template or datastores. Much better, and safer than typing it from memory.
In our next step - Policies - we make decisions on default lease and machine name.
The Edit button gives minimal amount of config so I am going to stick with the defaults.
Our next screen is a Summary.
It is a good summary and it is nice to see what I did to make sure I agree and in fact spelled things right. Curious about the automatic deploy of the template option (it executes the project and deploys a VM for 7 days). So we hit Run Quickstart.
So now we have a connection from vRA to vSphere so provisioning of VMs can occur.
I have no AD in this lab, so I need to create a local user - Doug - so they can provision.
BTW, if you were a AD shop, then you could log into vRSLCM and select User Management and Directories and connect to AD so you could use the credentials that people are used to using.
But we need to log into our VIM server so we can define a local user.
I did not have to authenticate with it as I was already logged into vRSLCM so I just had to open the URL. Use the Add User button to start adding a local user.
I get an error about no activation email could be sent but in my case that is correct, and good. VIM seems to be very powerful. I see a lot of functionality that could be really useful in it.
We need to move back to our vRA UI. Once their we need to open up Service Broker.
Once in Service Broker, we need to change to the Infrastructure tab, and select Open on the Quickstart project.
Once open change to the Users tab.
You can see that I have added my local user Doug to the list as a member. Lets Save and log out now. I cannot find a log out option so I close the browser.
I log in as the config user and in the Identity & Access Management I give my doug account organization member access.
Now, it turns out my doug user cannot log in. Of course, that makes sense. I did not give it a password, and that email that was sent when I created it had a click to activate section in the email. So you need SMTP in your lab even if you are going to do local accounts as that is what makes them usable.
I believe that what we did above would allow doug to provision a workload if he could log in.
I will try and get AD, and SMTP into either my work lab, or do this in my personal lab, to flesh out this article a little more.
Michael
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