Tag: aria

Cloud Management, vCenter Server, VCF Operations

Re-registering & Upgrading the Aria Operations vSphere Remote plugin

sargonkhizeran

vSphere plugins have always been a touchy subject with engineers, as many plugins in the past might’ve impacted the performance of the vSphere UI. Local plugins are deprecated in vSphere 8.x and future releases at this time. You can read more about that in the VMware By Broadcom article; vSphere Client Local plugins are deprecated.

Recently it caught my eye that vSphere was not capturing the correct version of Aria Operations, the functionality of the plugin still works. I’ve upgraded my version of Aria Operations to 8.18.1, however the plugin shows an older version

From the vSphere Client >> Go to the stack menu >> VMware Aria Operations, from the drop-down menu in that interface for the instance, you should see a version number. In our case, we’re at 8.16.0.0

I’ve found no clear way of upgrading the client, when you go back to vSphere Client >> stack menu >> Administration >> Solutions — Plugins, you should see the ‘VMware Aria Operations’

We have options where we can click on the plug-in, select to Remove it and then re-deploy it using Aria Operations console.

An additional option is simply re-registering the plugin using Aria Operations. From Aria Operations Console go to Administration >> Integrations >> click on one of the vCenters

Scroll to the bottom of the vCenter integration settings and click ‘Manage Registrations’

You can select the box to use ‘Use collection credentials’ and click Register

You should receive the following message

vCenter will display the following banner

When you go back into Aria Operations within vSphere, you should see the new version

Cloud Management, VCF Automation

Zero to Hero Automation – VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Quickstart…Part 2 of 3

sargonkhizeran

In the first part of the blog I cover the simple steps of completing the Quickstart, you can jump to that here. The following will be to deploy a single vSphere machine using Aria Automation

[Optional] The first thing I want to do for my lab is add my second vCenter (that is in Enhanced Linked Mode)

Throughout this blog series, I will be working primarily out of Assembler which contains the configurations for projects, resources, mappings, design, and much more.

From Assembler >> Infrastructure >> Cloud Zones >> + Add Cloud Account

Select vCenter

Configured the information of my second vCenter and click ‘Create’

This is a prerequisite that can be done before getting started, creating a VM Template in vCenter, I will make this a template basic (not on a Content Library…for now) Once that is completed proceed.

Back into Aria Automation >> Assember >> Infrastructure >> Cloud Accounts >> Open the Cloud Zone where my template is and perform a ‘Sync Images’ because I want to expedite it a little bit.

Back under Infrastructure >> Resources >> Images we will find our template is available now

Next step I will want to create a Flavor Mapping..Small, Meduim, Large deployments as an example

Assember >> Infrastructure >> Configure – Flavor Mappings click +New

Next will be Image Mapping

Assembler >> Infrastructure >> Configure – Image Mappings, customize and click ‘Create’ You may repeat this step for the different sizing options you want to offer.

I chose to do all 3 sizes per the VMware documentation for testing purposes and made all sizes available for both regions (vCenters)

Now that we have our templates in vSphere we want to map them as an Image. I’m creating a mapping for my Windows Server 2022 template, leaving a lot of defaults.

For the next step we want to create a Network Profile under Assembler >> Infrastructure >> Configure >> Network Profiles

Click ‘Networks’ and +Add Networks and click Add

Before we can add a range a network range and in this lab there is NO IPAM integration, I have to manually add some CIDRs to my network.

Click on the Hyperlink of the network

Fill out the information and click Save.

Now that a CIDR is defined, we can add some IP ranges

Configure the range and click ‘Add’ and continue to Save until you’re back in Assembler.

For now, I believe I have enough to get a VM provisioned..please continue to Part 3 of this blog.

Cloud Management, VCF Automation

Zero to Hero Automation – VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Quickstart…Part 1 of 3

sargonkhizeran

“Fresh out the frying pan and into the oven..” Just got Aria Automation in the homelab upgraded to 8.18.1 and I FINALLY want to deploy a single VM.

Please also follow VMware documentation Tutorial on Deploying a virtual machine in Automation Assembler

The following steps will demonstrate going through the Quickstart

I will be integrating vCenter instances

Adding a single vCenter for now

For NSX, I will select ‘None’ and click ‘Next Step’

I have no content for now, so will just move to next step

For now assigning my Active Directory account as an owner for the following project

Leaving ‘Policies’ as default

Please continue to Part 2..

Cloud Management, Home Lab, VCF Operations

What datastore is your VM running on? – Alerting using Aria Operations

sargonkhizeran

I had a customer reach out regarding VMs being deployed accidentally on local ESXi datastores or when a backup solution mounts a temporary datastore, the VM continues to run on it leaving it at risk.

Using Aria Operations 8.18.1, this was a multi-step process. We will create a Recommendation, Symptom & an Alert. An additional option after this is configuring the alert to be sent out as a notification.

Creating a ‘Recommendation’

From the Aria Operations homepage navigate to Operations >> Configurations >> ‘Recommendations’

Click ‘Add’

This is where you can type out a message to give specific instructions to recipients of the alert to give guidance on resolving. Once completed, click ‘Save’

When creating a ‘Recommendation’ you have the option to create a hyperlink to point to any external sites or internal systems, such as an ITSM link.

Creating a ‘System Definition’

From the Aria Operations homepage navigate to Operations >> Configurations >> ‘Symptom Definitions’

Click ‘Add’ under Metric/Property

For the first part, we will filter for a Property (see purple box) Select the Base Object Type as ‘Virtual Machine’ then Property and search for ‘datastore’ You should have a ‘Datastore(s)’ available. Click-Hold Property and drag it into the left side (see Green Box) to begin configuring with a name, you can then select a pre-populated datastore name or use a keyword such as ‘local’ or anything custom. Click ‘Save’ to completed this portion.

Creating an ‘Alert Definition’

From the Aria Operations homepage navigate to Operations >> Configurations >> ‘Alert Definition’ You can customize these options to reflect the severity of your symptom.

For the ‘Symptoms/Conditions’ section, we want to add the custom Symptom we created and drag-drop it to the left box.

On the next screen, you can add the recommendation we created earlier. Search for it on the right-side and drag-drop into the left and click Next.

Assign it to the desired policy, the following is the default policy, click ‘Create’

As a test, I migrated 3 VMs and found that alerts appeared.

I hope these instructions were helpful and can even be used as guidance for other symptoms you want to create or even modify out-the-box alerts and symptoms.