We are now going to configure the vCO and Advanced Blueprinting service. This is really where we can extend the capabilities of vCAC to do almost anything. vCenter Orchestrator will be the main focus here.
At this point you should have finished the previous 6 steps:
Part 1: Deploy and Configure the Identity Appliance
Part 2: Deploy and Configure the vCloud Automation Center Appliance
Part 3: Installing IaaS Components
Part 5: Agent, Endpoint, and Group Configuration
Part 6: Create and Publish Blueprints
Before we start we need to login to the vCAC Appliance as root: ssh vcacappliance.mycompany.com -l root
Start the vCO Configurator by typing service vco-configurator start and you will see the following show on the screen.
After that has completed navigate to the vCAC appliance at port 8283 https://vcloud_automation_center_appliance_ip:8283 or in my case https://vcac-appliance.kendrickcoleman.c0m:8283/ and you are presented with the vCO configuration login page. The default username and password is vmware.
enter a new password containing atleast 1 special character
Now we are presented with the vCO Configuration page. Everything should be green and there is a slew of plug-ins installed for us already. However, we aren't going to be doing anything inside this screen. So you can close out this tab.
**** UPDATE 5/9/14 ****
Make sure you have an appropriate vCO license or you will end up having errors. Please follow this blog article to add a license: vCAC Error Connecting to vCO API - Fixed
To access the vCO Client go to https://vcac-appliance.mycompany.com and click on the vCenter Orchestrator Client. I've only been able to get this to open on Windows, so good luck on trying to get it to work on the mac. This will be the best interface for developing workflows that you can set as catalog items in vCAC. To login, you must use your SSO un/pw for vCAC. un: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Now lets configure some EndPoints!
Active Directory
This will give you the ability to interact with users and containers in your AD domain.
Navigate to Administration -> Advanced Services -> Endpoints. Click the green + sign and Select Active Directory from the dropdown box and click next
Give it a name and a description
fill in the details for the active directory host, the BaseDN structure as well as the fqdn username to connect to the AD instance
Click finish and you're done
HTTP-REST, SOAP, and PowerShell
This is going to be used if you have something you want to talk to that can speak these protocols. I don't have anything to configure so I'm going to skip that part.
vCenter
From the documentation "the steps for configuring the vCenter Server plug-in distributed with the embedded vCenter Orchestrator instance are not available. The configuration workflow of the default vCenter Server plug-in is modified because of the limitations of the vCloud Automation Center UI"
Navigate to Administration -> Advanced Services -> Endpoints. Click the green + sign and Select vCenter from the dropdown box and click next
Give it a name and a description
type in the fqdn for the host. click next
type in the username and password to connect to vCenter and click on Add
Installing Advanced Services
Cool. Now we need to make this available to us in the vCAC UI. Navigate to Administration -> Groups (or Users) and give a group the "Service Architect" role and click Update.
Log out and log back and you will see an "Advanced Services" tab.
From here you can create Service Blueprint, Custom Resources, and Resource Actions. I don't know much about the Custom Resources and Resource Actions but we can easily create ourselves a new blueprint using a single vCO instance.
Click on the Service Blueprints and Click on the green +
Drill down into vCenter and click on Create resource pool. Click Next.
Give it a name
From here we can change the form that will be used to accept any inputs. Since we don't need to create anything custom, click next.
I dont know why it says "No Provisioning" but click on Add.
After it's created, go to the dropdown arrow on the right side and click on publish so it's available to our catalog view.
Go to Administration -> Catalog Management -> Catalog Items and click on the drop down arrow and configure the workflow.
Change the Service to one that will allow us to see it from the catalog instance and click update.
Now go to your Catalog tab and it will be available in there. Click on request
Give it a description click next
Click on Add, drill down and scroll until you find a checkmarkable box. and give it a name and click on submit
If we look inside of vCenter, we have a new resource pool created. Eureka!
Up Next:
Part 8: Amazon AWS Configuration
Part 1: Deploy and Configure the Identity Appliance
Part 2: Deploy and Configure the vCloud Automation Center Appliance
Part 3: Installing IaaS Components
Part 5: Agent, Endpoint, and Group Configuration