This part of the lab is presented as a Hands-on Labs Interactive Simulation. This will allow you to experience steps which are too time-consuming or resource intensive to do live in the lab environment. In this simulation, you can use the software interface as if you are interacting with a live environment.

The orange boxes show where to click, and the left and right arrow keys can also be used to move through the simulation in either direction.

We begin at the SDDC Manager Dashboard:

1. Click SETTINGS
2. Click VREALIZE
   • Here, under the vRealize tab is where we manage the vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight deployments.  By default, we are at the vRealize Automation tab.
3. Click Deploy vRealize Automation
   • We bein the vRealize Automation deployment by verifying that we have met the installation prerequisites.
4. Click the Active Directory Account box to confirm we have an AD account with permissions to join VMs to the domain
5. Click the Issue Certificate box to confirm we have a certificate and private key generated by a trusted certificate authority
6. Click the DNS Zone Forwarding box to confirm we have a DNS subzone with DNS forwarding enabled
7. Click the scroll bar to scroll down
8. Click the Microsoft SQL Setup box to confirm we have a Microsoft SQL Server instance available
9. Click the Windows OVA Template box to confirm we have a Windows OVA template that is prepared for use with vRA
10. Click the vRealize Automation License Key box to confirm we have a valid vRealize Automation license key   
    • After the prerequisites have been met we are ready to begin the vRealize Automation deployment.
11. Click BEGIN
    • Note, in the section that follows Cloud Foundation prompts you to entering hostnames for the various vRealize components.  To reduce the amount of typing needed in this simulation we have updated the simulation to pre-populate many of these values when you click on the fields.
12. Click vRA Appliance 1 to enter the hostname:  vra-01
13. Click vRA Appliance 2 to enter the hostname:  vra-02
14. Click the IaaS Web VM 1 to enter the hostname:  vra-web-01
15. Click the IaaS Web VM 2 to enter the hostname:  vra-web-02
16. Click on the scroll bar to scroll down
17. Click the IaaS Manager VM 1 to enter the hostname:  vra-mgr-01
18. Click the IaaS Manager VM 2 to enter the hostname:  vra-mgr-02
19. Click the IaaS DEM VM1 to enter the hostname:  vra-dem-01
20. Click the IaaS DEM VM2 to enter the hostname:  vra-dem-02
21. Click the IaaS Agent VM 1 box to enter the hostname:  vra-agent-01
22. Click the IaaS Agent VM 2 box to enter the hostname:  vra-agent-02
23. Click on the scroll bar to scroll down
    • We have already entered the SSL Certificate information in the simulation.  All that is needed is the certificate passphrase.
24. Click the Certificate Password box and enter the passphrase: VMware1!
25. Click the License Key box to enter the vRealize Automation License key
26. Click on the scroll bar to scroll down
    • Next, we provide information for the default Tenant Administrator that will be configured inside of vRealize Automation.
27. Type vcfadmin for the Username
28. Type VMware1! for the Password
29. Click on the scroll bar to scroll down
    • SDDC Manager deploys vRealize Automation in accordance with the VMware Validated Designs.  This includes deploying redundant VMs along with NSX Edge Services Gateways (ESGs) to load balance across them.  Here we enter the short hostnames for the NSX Load balancer virtual IPs (VIPs) for the vRealize Automation servers, IaaS web Servers, and the IaaS manager Servers.
30. Click the vRealize Automation box to enter: vra-lb
31. Click the IaaS Web box to enter: vra-web-lb
32. Click the IaaS Manager box to enter: vra-mgr-lb
33. Click NEXT
    • Here we upload the IaaS Template OVA that will be used for the Windows VMs used to host the vRealize components.
34. Click BROWSE
35. Click to select the Template OVA File
36. Click Open
37. Type VMware1! for the OVA Local Administrator Password
    • Next, we are asked to provide information about our Active Directory and DNS environment.
38. Type 192.168.32.10 in the IP Address
39. Type lassen-ad01 in the Domain Controller Name
40. Type demo.vmware.com in the Domain Name
41. Type lassen.demo.vmware.com in the Sub-domain Name
42. Type demo\administrator in the Username
43. Type VMware1! in the Password
    • Finally, we enter the MS SQL Server information.  Note, the MS SQL VM needs to be set up ahead of time, outside of SDDC manager, as part of the prerequisites.  As part of the vRealize Automation deployment, the SDDC Manager will connect to the DB server using the information we provide to create the vRealize Automation database.
44. Type vra-mssql.demo.vmware.com for the Fully Qualified Domain Name
45. Type vra for the Database Name
46. Type demo\administrator for the Username
47. Type VMware1! for the password
48. Click Next
    • With the required inputs provided, we can now review the settings prior to starting the vRA installation.
49. Click the scroll bar to scroll down, and  review the information that has been entered
50. Click SUBMIT, to begin the fully automated install of vRealize Automation
    • SDDC Manager begins the vRealize Automation Deployment.  
    • We can monitor the deployment progress by clicking the "In Progress" link.
51. Click the In Progress link
    • Here we see the "Bringup Deploy vRA" workflow is RUNNING
52. Click Bringup Deploy vRA to expand the workflow
53. Click on the scroll bar to scroll down
    • There are 21 separate subtasks that make up the workflow.  
54. Click View Sub Tasks
    • SDDC manager begins by reserving resources in the management workload domain and deploying the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager.  It then deploys an NSX Edge Services Gateway, which is used as a load balancer to distribute the user load across the separate nodes and to facilitate the availability of vRealize Automation.  It then deploys the IaaS OVA template and pre-validates the environment for the vRealize Automation install.  It then calls the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, which will  orchestrate the deployment of vRealize Automation.   After vRealize Automation has been installed, the SDDC Manager wraps up the deployment by performing additional configuration steps, to include moving the component VMs into the SDDC Manager resource pool on the management workload domain and configuring log aggregation with Log Insight.
55. Click the scroll bar to scroll down
    • Here we see that all the tasks have completed successfully and vRealize Automation has now been deployed.
56. Click on SETTINGS
    • We now see that vRealize automation has been deployed as indicated by the green vRealize Automation Cloud Icon and the link to the vRealize Automation UI.  
57. Click the vRealize Automation link
    • We are connected to the vRealize Automation appliance where we can access the links to proceed with the configuration of vRealize Automation.
58. Click the vRealize Automation Console link
59. Type vcfadmin
60. Type VMware1!
61. Click Sign In

We are now logged into vRealize Automation where we can begin to configure tenants and define service blueprints.  

This concludes our demonstration on how to leverage the advanced automation capabilities of the VMware SDDC Manager, together with the vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, to quickly and easily deploy vRealize Automation in VMware Cloud Foundation.

To return to the lab, click the link in the top right corner or close this browser tab