DailyHypervisor

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Using the vCAC Test Agent

April 30, 2013 by sidsmith Leave a Comment

If you have installed the vSphere Proxy agent when connecting vCAC to vCenter you may have seen the option to select the “Test Agent”. The test agent is extremely useful if you are developing custom workflows, modifying workflow stubs in the designer, or just don’t have enough resources to test against.

How does the test agent work?

It’s pretty simple once you install the test agent you can create a fictitious host. You can then create reservations from your fictitious host. The test agent is designed so that when a requested machine is deployed against a reservation that is backed by fictitious host it steps through the machine lifecycle with a successful response for each state. So essentially it makes vCAC think the machine was provisioned and customized etc. This allows you to still execute your custom workflows and if they fail, it will throw back a failure, but you don’t have to worry about waiting for a machine to clone.
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Filed Under: Cloud Computing, vCAC, vCAC Tutorials Tagged With: Automated Deployment, automation, Cloud, Cloud Automation Center, Cloud Computing, Custom Properties, DCAC, DELL, DynamicOps, Installation, Script, scripting, vCAC, Virtual Center, virtualization, VIS Creator, VMware, VRM, vsphere

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Automating the vCAC installation

April 29, 2013 by sidsmith Leave a Comment

Wow this one is currently a really hot topic. I must have been asked how to automate the installation of vCAC 50 or more times in the last week and I can’t even count over the last month, so here it is. As I’m sure everyone has learned there area a number of components to vCAC. When installing from the command line you will need to install each of them independently. What you will see in this post may be a bit confusing and it’s understandable as I’m merely sharing the commands without much explanation. I plan to go through my step by step tutorials and inject the options to the relevant steps in them. Hopefully I will find time to round back to this article and put much more time into explaining each option. For now I hope this helps anyone trying to do an automated installation.

Each of the examples is for performing an https install, however can change from https to http if you like. I should also point out in the vCAC 5.2 release this is much more simplified and much less complex. Please post any questions you have regarding this topic in the forum under the thread “vCAC Automated Installation Questions“.
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Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Uncategorized, vCAC, vCAC Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Automated Deployment, automation, Cloud, Cloud Automation Center, Cloud Computing, Custom Properties, DCAC, DELL, DynamicOps, Installation, Properties, Script, scripting, vCAC, Virtual Center, virtualization, VIS Creator, VMware, VRM, vsphere

DailyHypervisor Forums are online.

April 29, 2013 by sidsmith Leave a Comment

We have just launched our DailyHypervisor Forum located at http://dailyhypervisor.com/forum. Stop by, contribute and be a part of our community. The DH Forum is intended to be for all things cloud. Currently we have forums created for vCAC, vCD, vCO, Cloud General, and Openstack. More forum categories will be coming based on demand. If you have a category you would like to see shoot us a note and let us know.

Our goal is to create a common place where anyone can come to learn, get help, share ideas, or just about anything that will help foster knowledge regarding cloud computing. Considering this very blog is the announcement of our forum you could image there isn’t a whole lot happening yet so what are you waiting for, be the first. Go ask a question, post an issue, share a thought and let’s get things rolling.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, Uncategorized, vCAC Tagged With: Automated Deployment, automation, Capacity, Cloud, Cloud Automation Center, Cloud Computing, Custom Properties, DCAC, DELL, Desktop Virtualization, Disaster Recovery, DynamicOps, ESX, ESX 3.5, ESX4, ESXi, green technology, HA, Hyper-V, Installation, installtion, kickstart, Linux, Microsoft, networking, PowerShell, Properties, Script, scripting, Security, service console, storage, vCAC, vCenter, Virtual Center, virtualization, VIS Creator, VMware, VRM, vsphere

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC – Training

April 28, 2013 by sidsmith Leave a Comment

I have received a good amount of requests for structured training on vCAC. I shrugged off the for few requests, but after receiving over two dozen request I started thinking maybe there is something there. So I am now contemplating building a vCAC deep dive training course that would be self paced and consumed online. The training would consist of the following:

Instructor lead video sessions
Complete training manual
Training Labs

The training would cover all of vCAC’s out of the box features from start to finish. I would then build a follow on training for integration. I’m considering releasing three flavors of the training. One for users, one for re-sellers, and one for developers. If you or someone you know would be interested in this training please respond to the poll on the right side of the page. The results of the poll will determine if I will decide to take on building this or not.

Filed Under: Cloud Computing, vCAC, vCAC Demystified, vCAC Tips & Tricks, vCAC Tutorials Tagged With: Automated Deployment, Cloud, Cloud Automation Center, Cloud Computing, DCAC, DynamicOps, vCAC, vCenter, Virtual Center, virtualization, VMware, VRM, vsphere

vCloud Automation Center – vCAC 5.1 – Custom Property Overrides

April 24, 2013 by sidsmith 2 Comments

In my article Custom Properties Demystified I reference a chart I put together that defines the override order of custom properties based on where they are defined. The document is available in the downloads section. This document is a list of my findings based on testing I performed.

While delivering a vCAC 5.1 training class today I shared the document with my class and one of the attendees was kind enough to look over the chart and determine a definitive override order based on the data. This is great as I never took the time to review the data to determine a definitive override order. So here you go.
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