VMware is the pioneer and leader in SDDC with its various tools; VCM is responsible for policy-driven compliance management and the patching of infrastructure.
VCM helps in maintaining the compliance of infrastructure by automatically collecting data and analyzing it against industry standards such as VMware and Microsoft Hardening Guidelines, CIS Benchmarks, PCI DSS, and FISMA, to name a few. It helps you patch your machines with the latest patches released by OS vendors and automate software provisioning. You can see your compliance score on the vROps console after integrating both of them.
This book provides recipes for installing VCM and then the initial configuration, moving ahead with integration to another VMware tool. After this, it continues with configuring compliance and patching for Linux and Windows machines. We have a chapter that will help you configure VCM in order to deploy software from VCM.
You can use this book as a guide to completely explore all the features of VCM, and in the troubleshooting section, you can take a look at the issues you might face while working on VCM every day.
Chapter 1, Installing VCM, discusses the components of vRealize Configuration Manager (VCM), various options to install VCM; including the prerequisites; and ends with fine-tuning the database server used by VCM.
Chapter 2, Configuring VCM to Manage Your Infrastructure, discusses more about VCM configuration, and we start adding virtual infrastructure elements, installing agents, and configuring discovery.
Chapter 3, Linux Patching, shows you how to install the Software Content Repository (SCR), used to download and distribute patches, then follows all the steps required to configure, and distribute patches to managed Linux/Unix servers.
Chapter 4, Windows Patching, shows you how to configure VCM to synchronize patches with Microsoft servers, check the status of managed Windows machines, and finally install patches on demand or on schedule.
Chapter 5, Software Provisioning for Windows, discusses how VCM can be used to distribute software on managed Windows machines; whether servers or desktops, the process will be the same.
Chapter 6, Compliance Management, teaches you how to import and export compliance configurations, create compliance rules for Windows and Unix/Linux, and perform virtualization.
Chapter 7, Maintenance of VCM, discusses how to upgrade VCM, make changes in Service accounts, upgrade agents after the VCM upgrade, decommission managed machines, and offers some naming conventions to use.
Chapter 8, Integration with vROps and Scheduling, gives us more details of integrating VCM with vROps, and then using the scheduling feature of VCM to schedule reports, compliance, data collection, and so on.
Chapter 9, Troubleshooting VCM, is the final chapter and discuss various issues to troubleshoot in VCM, such as agent communication and agent upgrades. We list the basic tools used to troubleshoot, such as the job manager history and EcmDebugEventViewer.exe.
If you are planning to go along with your practices as per the recipes in the book, which is highly recommended, you will need a good lab to work in. As VCM works with multiple VMware components, and you will want to test integration as well, then you will need a machine with at least 32 GB of RAM, supported by a minimum of a quad-core processor, 1 TB HDD, and 256 GB SSD. You can install your favorite OS and on top of it either VMware Workstation or Virtual box. You need to create a small lab that will include a Windows Domain controller, and a few Windows servers hosting SQL, vCenter, VCM, and so on. You can install other components such as vCloud Director, vROps, and vCNS. Sometimes, 32 GB of RAM may not be sufficient, so power on only those VMs that you will need. Basic functionalities can be tested with a portable lab on your laptop with 16 GB RAM, which excludes vCD, vROps, and VCNS.
Here are the specs for my lab:
Lab 01: This is a desktop I have at home with 32 GB DDR3 RAM, AMD FX6300 6 core processor, 256 GB SSD, and 1 TB HDD
Lab 02: This is my portable lab on my laptop with 16 GB DDR3 RAM, Intel i5 quad-core processor, and 256 GB HDD
If you are a system administrator who is eager to provide better administration with VCM and are familiar with managing network users and resources, along with performing system maintenance, then this book is for you.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The agent is available at X: \Program Files (x86)\VMware\VCM\Installer\Packages\CMAgent.5.8.2.linux
on the VCM Collector server."
A block of code is set as follows:
*** Installation Started 03/03/2016 3:57 *** Title: EcmComSocketListenerService Source: C:\windows\TEMP\GLB90C6.tmp | 03-03-2016 | 03:57:04 | 71680 Rem Wise Error Number: 141 Rem Function Name: EcmCreateService Rem Error Message: Caught an exception from wise : Call to EcmCreateService for service CSI Socket Listener failed with error code of 1072 : error code 141 141
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
cd "PatchRepo/Repos"/unix
rm SystemId*.xml
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on Add to start the wizard."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at [email protected], and we will do our best to address the problem.