VMware vCloud Director Cookbook

Book Image

VMware vCloud Director Cookbook

By : Daniel Langenhan

Book Image

VMware vCloud Director Cookbook

By: Daniel Langenhan

Overview of this book

VMware vCloud Director is an enterprise software solution that enables the building of secure, private clouds by pooling together infrastructure resources into virtual data centers. The tool enables self-service via a web interface to reduce the management overhead and offers amazing possibilities for production and development environments. Thus, the tool will ensure efficient management of resources with data center efficiency and business agility. "VMWare VCloud Director Cookbook" will cover a lot of ground, ranging from easy to complex recipes. It will not only dive into networks, data-stores, and vApps, but also cover vCloud design improvements, troubleshooting, and the vCloud API. "VMWare VCloud Director Cookbook" is split into different sections, each of which deals with a special topic in vCloud - from networks, to vApps, to storage and design. This book contains over 80 recipes with the difficulty levels ranging from simple to very advanced. You will learn how to automate vCloud easily and quickly with the API, and also learn how to isolate a vApp and still fully access it without risking the network. Design considerations that need to be addressed while deploying the vCloud and more will also be looked into. "VMWare VCloud Director Cookbook" will make your life as an admin a lot easier by providing you with some good recipes that have been proven to work in small to large enterprises.

VMware vCloud Director Cookbook

VMware vCloud Director Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Setting Up Networks

Setting Up Networks

Setting up an External Network

Creating 1,000 isolated networks without VXLANs

Making VXLANs work

Integrating the Cisco 1000v into vCD

Giving your networks an Edge

Doing it all(most) without a Distributed Switch

vCloud Networks

vCloud Networks

Deploying a vApp with a vApp router

Forwarding an RDP (or SSH) session into an isolated vApp

Accessing a fully isolated vApp or Organization Network

Using Organization Networks for interconnection between vApps

Using templates with firewall and NAT settings

Connecting a physical device to an isolated network

Sharpening the Edge

Using vApp Network fencing

Creating multitiered vApp Networks

Ensuring no change in IP after redeployment

Automatic IP management for External Network Pools

Creating load-balanced VMs in an organization

Creating a secure connection between organizations (which can be in different vClouds)

Monitoring which network resources have been used where

Better vApps

Proper vApp startup and shutdown

Adding a VM to a vApp

Importing a vApp into vCloud

Exporting a vApp from vCloud

Creating a sandbox environment

Using Guest Customization with pre and post deploy

Using PowerShell or Perl to perform Guest Customization tasks

Joining VMs automatically to domains

Using vApp maintenance mode

Datastores and Storage Profiles

Datastores and Storage Profiles

Adding a new storage profile to vCD

Using a specific datastore for templates

Using storage profiles for storage tiering

Making operations on NFS datastores faster

Working with vApp templates and their Shadows

Reducing the chain length of Linked Clones

Configuring storage alarms

Monitoring storage

The problems associated with the backup and restore of vCloud

Working with the vCloud API

Working with the vCloud API

Using PowerShell with vCloud Director

Accessing REST with Firefox

Accessing vCD via PHP

Using vCenter Orchestrator to automate vCloud

A scripted cell shutdown

Adding ISO files to vCD automatically

Improving the vCloud Design

Improving the vCloud Design

Creating a naming standard

Using service accounts in the vCloud environment

Setting up networks for the vCloud VM

Working with vCloud roles

Keeping your templates under control

Choosing the right Allocation Model

Using OvDCs for compute tiering

Understanding how the different vCloud types impact the design

Retrofitting a shared directory into an existing vCD Cell

Connecting more than one vCloud Cell to the same infrastructure

Creating multiple vCD Cells for the same vCloud

Load balancing vCD

Working with catalogs in vCloud 5.5

Operational Challenges

Operational Challenges

Loading Windows Sysprep packages in vCloud

Exchanging SSL certificates

Bypassing SSO login into vCloud

Backing up vCloud

Recovering the vCloud system

Changing the name of an organization

Shutting down and starting up the vCloud environment

Using metadata to improve provisioning

Using vSphere Host Profiles with vCloud

Using vCloud with vCenter Auto Deploy

Defining a vCloud development cycle

Making the VM BIOS ID (UUID) unique

Importing from Lab Manager into vCloud

Using branding to make vCloud look different

Putting an ESXi host into maintenance

Updating vCloud Cells without interruption

Updating a vCloud with only one cell

Updating a vCenter in vCloud

Expanding vCD resources

Resizing a VM hard disk

Cloning a running vApp

Removing infrastructure from vCloud

Troubleshooting vCloud

Troubleshooting vCloud

Looking for errors in the vCloud GUI

Working with vCloud logfiles

Creating and uploading VMware support files

Setting up and using vSphere Syslog Collector

Troubleshooting vCloud Router traffic

Troubleshooting the Java client

Recovering from an outage

Appendix

Index

Customer Reviews

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Recovering from an outage

The following sections explains the things to look at after your vCloud infrastructure has experienced an outage:

Getting ready

This recipe will prove to be useful in the case of a vCloud environment that is currently down.

How to do it...

Make sure the vCloud service has stopped.
Check the vSphere infrastructure and make sure that all the ESXi servers are running and that the datastores are accessible. If this is not the case, work on these issues first.
Start the vCloud service in only one cell.
Monitor the cell's start-up (tail –f /opt/vmware/cloud-director/logs/vcloud-container-debug.log).
Check if there are any errors while the vCloud Cell starts. If there are errors and the vCloud service isn't starting, fix these issues.
When the vCloud service has started, check if the connection to vCenter is working correctly. Do this by forcing a sync of the vCenter services. Navigating to Manage & Monitor| vCenters. Right-click on your vCenter and then select Reconnect. If...