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NTP configuration error while deploying vRSLCM in VMware Cloud Foundation

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In my previous blog post, I laid out the steps involved in deploying vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) using the SDDC Manager UI. There were a couple of issues that I ran into while deploying it and wanted to write up a quick blog post to document the workaround which might help others who run into similar issues.

The major one was the post deployment NTP configuration issue that stalled the deployment for a bit.

The issue : “Failed to configure NTP on virtual appliance <vrslcm-ip>“

I did a bit of google search and ran into the a KB Article that talks about the NTP configuration for vRSLCM post deployment. I tried the steps and they did not help me but I will highlight the steps below as the first option.

Option 1

The timesyncd.conf is present at /etc/systemd. Edit the file, un-comment it if it is commented and then to update the NTP server. You can use the NTP server IP or the FQDN.

Restart the timesync-d service using the command “systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd”

Now run the command “timedatectl status” to get the time sync status. Check and make sure the line “NTP synchronized” says “yes“. If it says “no“, proceed to option 2.

Option 2

If the NTP issue still persists, login into the vCenter, Right click on vRLCM VM, navigate to VM Options-> VMware Tools and check the box “Synchronize guest time with host”

Now go back to the SDDC manager UI and run the task again and it should complete without issues. Hope it helps.

Deploying vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

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In this blog post I will cover detailed step-by-step deployment of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) management domain (learn more about management and workload domains here). This is the first post in the multi blog post series covering the vRealize Suite deployment on VCF.

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) is a tool that automates the lifecycle management of the vRealize suite components. vRSLCM is currently available for the customers who have purchased any of the vRealize suite bundles (Standard, Advanced or Enterprise). Starting from VCF 3.7, we can now leverage the vRSLCM capabilities inside the SDDC Manager to deploy and manage the vRealize Suite components such as vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight. The SDDC Manager calls the vRSLCM APIs to deploy the vRealize suite of products and to perform day 2 lifecycle management tasks such as patching and up-gradation. The vRSLCM and SDDC Manager together cut down the deployment time of the SDDC and vRealize products substantially and this results in faster time to value. Customers can start deploying workloads on the infra on day 1 as the SDDC Manager automates most of the deployment tasks.

To start the deployment of the vRealize components, we first need to deploy the vRSLCM component. This can be downloaded from the “Bundles” section in the SDDC Manager UI. The download components will only show up if an account with the license entitlement is added under the “Repository Settings”.

We can find the install bundle that contains the OVA for vRSLCM. The size of this bundle is around 5GB. We need to make sure we have downloaded the install version that related to the VCF deployment. For instance, there are two files for vRSLCM. One with vRA, vROPS and vRSLCM packed into a single bundle and is of 13GB size. This is only compatible with version 3.5 of VCF.

Once the bundle is downloaded, we move to the deployment process of vRSLCM. The tab to deploy vRSLCM can be found under Administration>vRealize Suite

Click the Deploy button to kick off the deploy process. The UI presents us with a list of pre-requisite checklist that needs to be in place before the actual deployment begins. One of the pre-requisite is to pre-download the OVA which we did in the previous step.

Once we have made sure that we have all the pre-requisites covered, we click “Begin”. We enter the network details in the first page and proceed.

The next set of info we need to provide is the appliance details. Note that we need to only provide the FQDN and the DNS details, it then resolves the FQDN and automatically assigns that IP to the VM.

We review the details we have provided and click “Finish”. This kicks off the vRSLCM deployment process.

This takes anywhere between 30-45 mins to complete. Once complete, the link for the vRSLCM components is shown on the SDDC manager UI.

One thing to notice here is that once vRSLCM is deployed and is up and running, the vRLI which was earlier deployed as part of VCF bring up process and management domain deployment will now be moved under vRSLCM.

We have successfully deployed vRSLCM on VMware Cloud Foundation and we will look at deploying vRA and vROPS using vRSLCM through SDDC Manager UI in the upcoming posts.

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