Browse Month

May 2021

Changing passwords for the vRealize suite via vRSLCM (vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager)

In this guide i will go over one of the Locker feature in vRealize Lifecycle Manager specifically the password management.

As a reminder vRSLCM can manage the following:

Type of Password ChangevRealize Product Name
Admin Password ChangevRealize Automation, vRealize Operations Manager, vRealize Network Insight, vRealize Log Insight, VMware Identity Manager
Root Password ChangevRealize Automation, vRealize Operations Manager, vRealize Network Insight, vRealize Log Insight, VMware Identity Manager
Support Password ChangevRealize Network Insight
Console User Password ChangevRealize Network Insight
SSH User Password ChangeVMware Identity Manager

The first step is to create a new password. We can do so by going to Locker from the welcome screen or the menu on top right

Once in Locker, we can check to see where a specific password might be used. In my case i had just deployed most of the vRealize products and i used in the InstallerPassword reference

Once we clicked on InstallerPassword we can see some details about the password. Click on References to see where the password is used

Next we can go back a level by clicking on password and click add to add a new password to the inventory

Complete the required fields and click add

Now that we have the password created we can go to the Lifecycle Operations service to update the password for the vRealize products. Click on the Menu on the top right and select lifecycle operations

Go to environments and click on view details on the environment where we want to update the password. In my case i will update my vRealize environment

Im going to update my vROPS instance. On the menu under the product select the node on the left side and click on change password towards the right

On the next screen we need to pick the current password for the environment and the new password that were changing to

Lifecycle manager went though and updated the password and its associations

Trying to log in using the root user confirms that the password has been changed

Upgrading vRA (vRealize Automation) to 8.4

In this post i will go over upgrading my 8.x vRA appliance to 8.4. As a pre requirement we do need to have vRSLCM (vRealize Lifecycle Manager) upgraded to 8.4. Instructions can be found here

To get started we can go to vRealize Lifecycle Manager -> Lifecycle Operations -> Settings -> Binary Mapping. (If you havent added your My VMware credentials you will need to do that first by going to vRealize Lifecycle Manager -> Lifecycle Operations -> Settings -> My VMware)

Click on Add Binaries under Product Binaries

Select My VMware and click on Discover

We can see a list of binaries that have been discovered. We can select what we need and click on Add

This will create a request and start downloading the package. To view the progress we can click on the Click Here hyperlink

Click on the in Progress button to view the details

We now have to wait for the download to complete

While the download is going check hardware requirements for vRealize Automation 8.4.0 here. If the VMware Identity Manager hardware needs to be resized refer to the documentation: Re-Size Hardware Resources for VMware Identity Manager

After the download is complete we can go to Environments -> View Details on the environment that includes vRA

Click on Upgrade

An Inventory sync is recommended if the environment has changed since LCM performed the last sync. We trigger the sync from the UI or click on Proceed to continue

Select product Version 8.4.0 and click Next. We can also review the compatibility matrix to make sure the environment is compatible.

Since we already checked the sizing while the download was occurring we can check the check box for I took care of the manual steps above and am ready to proceed and click on run precheck

Run the Precheck to make sure there are no errors

Once the check is complete, click on Next. Review the upgrade details and click on Next. We are taken to the progress screen where we can follow the progress.

The system will get rebooted and once its back up we will be on 8.4

Disable vCLS (vSphere Cluster Services) in vSphere

While doing maintenance on my vSAN cluster recently i had the need to disable the vCLS in order to fully shut down the cluster. Doing some reasearch i found kb article 80472 that talk about temporarily disabling the service in order to perform maintenance. The steps are fairly easy

First we need to get the Cluster id from vSphere. To do so all we need to do is select the cluster and look at the url. For example

 https://<fqdn-of-vCenter-server>/ui/app/cluster;nav=h/urn:vmomi:ClusterComputeResource:domain-c8:eef257af-fa50-455a-af7a-6899324fabe6/summary

In the case above all we care about is the 8 number in domain-c8.

Next we need to navigate to the vCenter server -> Configure -> Advanced Settings example:

Click on edit Setting to the right:

Add a new key. Replace the <number> with the number found in the previous step

config.vcls.clusters.domain-c<number>.enabled and value False

It would look like this:

Click on Add and click Save

vCLS monitoring will initiate a clean-up of the VMs and we should notice that all of the vCLS VMs are gone.

After the maintenance is complete dont forget to set the same value to True in order to re enable the HA and DRS services.

Upgrading vRSLCM (vRealize Lifecycle Manager) to 8.4

In this guide i will go over the steps of getting an existing 8.x vRSLCM appliance upgraded to the latest 8.4 release. The release notes can be found here

The first step is to lo in to vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager under the Lifecycle Operations section

Go to settings -> System Upgrade

Click on Check for Upgrade

We can see that the check found a new version available for 8.4

Click on Upgrade

This will fire up the upgrade process and start upgrading packages. The system will automatically reboot on 8.4 once completed. We can check the version by going to Settings -> System Details

If you get the below error clear the browser cache and try again