ubuntu

VUM UMDS Docker Container for vSphere 6.5

12/07/2016 by William Lam Leave a Comment

Early last week, I had published an article on how to automate the deployment of VUM's Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) in vSphere 6.5 for an Ubuntu 14.04 distribution. The interesting backstory to that script is that it started from a Docker Container that I had initially built for the VUM UMDS. I found that being able to quickly spin up UMDS instance using a Docker Container purely from a testing standpoint was much easier than needing to deploy a full VM, especially as I have Docker running on my desktop machines. Obviously, there are limitations with using a Docker Container, especially if you plan to use UMDS for a longer duration and need persistence. However, for quick lab purposes, it may just fit the bill and even with Docker Containers, you can use Docker Volumes to help persist the downloaded content.

You can find the Dockerfile and its respective scripts on my Github repo here: https://github.com/lamw/vum-umds-docker

Below are the instructions on how to use the VUM UMDS Docker Container.

Automating the installation of VUM Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) for Linux in vSphere 6.5

11/28/2016 by William Lam 10 Comments

One of the most highly requested feature from customers with regards to the adoption of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is to have vSphere Update Manager (VUM) available as a Virtual Appliance. With the vSphere 6.5 release, this is now a reality as VUM is now embedded within the VCSA. The VUM service is also automatically enabled and associated with the vCenter Server instance which means from a customer standpoint, it is zero touch to get VUM up and running!

In addition to VUM being part of the VCSA 6.5, there is also the VUM Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) that can be installed on a separate Linux system. You can find the UMDS installer within the VCSA 6.5 ISO under the umds directory. To install UMDS, there are several pre-requisites that you must meet, some of which are documented here. The other requirements which are not documented are the additional OS package dependencies required to run the UMDS installer. While going through this by hand the first time, I found the following packages were required to install on an Ubuntu 14.04 distribution:

perl
tar
sed
psmisc
unixodbc
postgresql
postgresql-contrib
odbc-postgresql

For those of you who know me, if I have to perform something manually once, I might as well automate it for the future 🙂 I decided to create this quick shell script called install_umds65.sh which will allow you to easily deploy UMDS on an Ubuntu LTS 14.04 distribution. This can be useful for automated deployments or quickly standing up a lab environment.

Instant Clone community customization script repository

08/04/2015 by William Lam Leave a Comment

I am sure many of you are probably anxious to get your hands on the new VMFork aka Instant Clone PowerCLI Extensions Fling that was recently released! While using the Instant Clone cmdlets to help provide feedback and improvements, I have found that I spent the majority of my time on developing and fine-tuning the pre and post-customization scripts. Instead of having others hit similar issues that I ran into, I wanted to see how I could easily share some of the leanings but also incorporate collaboration?

After thinking about this for a bit, I realized this was a great opportunity to create a community Github repository of Instant Clone customization scripts that anyone can either use and/or contribute back to. I have already added a few OS customization scripts to the repo to start with like ESXi 6.0, Ubuntu 14.x and VMware Photon. To access the repository, simply visit https://github.com/lamw/vmfork-community-customization-scripts

The Instant Clone community customization script repository is broken up by series of OS directories which contain the relevent set of pre/post-customization scripts for that OS and any additional scripts that might be required. It may also contain further instructions on how to use the script as well as an example "driver" script which calls into the Instant Clone cmdlets demonstrating how to use the scripts.

Here is an example for ESXi 6.0 OS:

esxi60
├── post-esxi60.sh
├── pre-esxi60.sh
├── prep-esxi60.sh
└── vmfork-esxi60.ps1

For those that wish to contribute back, just fork the repository and send me a pull request. I am really looking forward to seeing what the community comes up with!

How To Quickly Get Started With The New VMware Puppet Modules

03/01/2013 by William Lam 5 Comments

Yesterday, VMware Automation gurus Nick Weaver and Nan Liu just announced the release of four awesome new VMware Puppet modules that can help you manage and configure vCenter Server (including ESXi) and vCloud Networking & Security (vShield). You can read all about the details here and here and if you were lucky enough to have attended PEX (Partner Exchange) you might even have caught the demo given by Nick in his session.

I have used Puppet in the past, but it was pretty limited and specifically in How to Deploy ESXi 5 Using Razor & Puppet. I thought this might be a good time to revisit Puppet and try out the new VMware Puppet modules. I took a look at some of the examples provided by Nan on his blog but for new users to Puppet, it may not provide enough details to quickly get started (including myself). I thought I document the minimal steps I took to quickly get started (I also ran into a few bugs which Nan has fixed).

Step 1 - Install Ubuntu Precise (Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS - See more at: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/05/how-to-deploy-esxi-5-using-razor-puppet.html

Step 1 - Install Ubuntu Precise (Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS). You can use other distros, I just choose Ubuntu as I had the image lying around.

Step 2 - Download Puppet Labs package repository by running the following commands:

wget http://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-$(lsb_release -c | cut -f 2).deb
dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-$(lsb_release -c | cut -f 2).deb
apt-get update

Step 3 - Install all the necessary packages such as Ruby, Ruby Gems, Puppet, etc. by running the following commands:

apt-get install -y libxslt-dev libxml2-dev ruby rubygems puppet
gem install nokogiri
gem install net-ssh

Step 4 - Install the VMware Puppet modules by running the following command:

puppet module install vmware/vcsa
puppet module install vmware/vcenter
puppet module install vmware/vshield

To start using the VMware Puppet modules, you will need to create what's known as a manifest file that contains the resources which maps to the actions you wish to perform (e.g. configure a newly deployed VCSA appliance or create a Cluster in vCenter Server and add an ESXi host to that cluster). You can find a bunch of example manifest files in each of the Puppet modules, here is the path to each:

/etc/puppet/modules/vcsa/tests/
/etc/puppet/modules/vcenter/tests/
/etc/puppet/modules/vshield/tests/

You will see in some of the examples, they import a file in each directory called data.pp which contains the actual definitions of your VCSA, vCNS and ESXi hosts but you can also just specify that in the main manifest file as well for simplicity. The latter option provides more flexibility as you can easily reference various configurations for different environments. For your convenience, I have created the following manifest files that you can use and you just need to modify them to fit your environment.

Here is what my lab environment looks like and their respective IP Addresses for your reference (these must already be deployed and vCenter & vCNS does not need to be configured but just accessible over network):

vCenter Server = 172.30.0.135
vCloud Networking and Security = 172.30.0.136
ESXi Host = 172.30.0.137

Step 5 - As mentioned by Nan, a custom Rbvmomi was used and we will need to ensure our Puppet management host (Ubuntu system we are on) includes it. To ensure all the necessary packages are downloaded for us, we will use the rbvmomi.pp manifest file for our host and use Puppet to apply the policy. Replace management_server in rbvmomi.pp with the hostname or IP Address of your Ubuntu host and then run the following command:

puppet apply rbvmomi.pp

Note: You can safely ignore the red warnings, it must not have liked something in my environment.

Step 6 - We will start off by configuring the VCSA so we can then perform operations such as adding in Datacenters, Clusters, ESXi hosts, etc. We will use the configure-vcsa.pp manifest file by running the following command:

puppet apply configure-vcsa.pp

Step 7 - Next we will create a Datacenter, Cluster and add our ESXi host by using the setup-vcenter.pp manifest file by running the following command:

puppet apply setup-vcenter.pp

Step 8 - We are now onto configuring vCloud Networking and Security and we will also associate it with our vCenter Server by using the configure-vcns.pp manifest file and running the following command:

puppet apply configure-vcns.pp

Step 9 - After configuring vCloud Networking and Security, we can now deploy a vCloud Networking and Security Edge Gateway to provide various networking services to our vSphere environment using the deploy-edge.pp and by running the following command:

puppet apply deploy-edge.pp

In about 5-10 minutes, you will have a fully configured vSphere environment that contains your vCenter Server, vCloud Networking and Security Manager and Edge Gateway and ESXi hosts all ready to start providing compute and networking services for your virtual machines and applications! I want to stress the above is a very simplistic example of what you can do with the new VMware Puppet modules. There are definitely more advanced capabilities provided in the modules and I would recommend you take a look in the samples directory of each module for more details.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the VMware integration that Nick, Nan and team built with Puppet. This was a great learning experience for myself, I learned quite a bit with just trying out these modules and I think I might have found a reason to dive more into Puppet! 🙂

Big thanks to Nan for helping me out with some of my Puppet questions!