vCloud Director

Introduction

VMware vCloud Director is a cloud service platform that delivers secure, isolated, elastic virtual data center, compute, network, storage, and security in a self-service model. This enables customers to build secure, multitenant hybrid clouds by pooling infrastructure resources into virtual datacenters and enabling those resources to be consumed by users on-demand. vCloud Director pools datacenter resources, including compute, storage and network, along with their relevant policies into virtual data centers.

vCloud Director is a layer above vCenter, and abstracts all the resources vCenter manages. All these resources are combined into large pools for your customers - i.e., tenants - to consume. VMware vCloud Director not only abstracts and pools resources it also adds a self service portal.

The VMware vCloud Director Cluster is a cluster formed by multiple vCloud Director servers or “cells” as they are commonly referred to. The cells are responsible for the abstraction of the resources and the portal.

Key Use cases

Discovery Use cases

• It discovers the vCloud Director components.
• Publishes relationships between resources to have a topological view and ease of maintenance.

Monitoring Use cases

• Provides metrics related to job scheduling time and status etc..
• Concern alerts will be generated for each metric to notify the administrator regarding the issue with the resource.

Pre-requisites

• OpsRamp Classic Gateway 13.0.0 and above.
• API calls need to be made on all the vCloud appliances separately, so the same credential should be configured on all vCloud appliances.

Hierarchy of vCloud Director resources

VCLOUD DIRECTOR
      - VCLOUD DIRECTOR CELL
      - VCLOUD DIRECTOR ORGANIZATIONS
      - VCLOUD DIRECTOR PROVIDER vDC
      - VCLOUD DIRECTOR VCENTER SERVER

Default Monitoring Configurations

vCloud Director has default Global Device Management Policies, Global Templates, Global Monitors and Global Metrics in OpsRamp. You can customize these default monitoring configurations as per your business use cases by cloning respective Global Templates and Global Device Management Policies. OpsRamp recommends performing the below activity before installing the application to avoid noise alerts and data.

1. Default Global Device Management Policies

   OpsRamp has a Global Device Management Policy for each Native Type of vCloud Director. We can find those Device Management Policies at Setup -> Resources -> Device Management Policies, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Device Management Policy follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: vCloud-director VCLOUD DIRECTOR - 1 (i.e, appName = vCloud-director, nativeType =VCLOUD DIRECTOR, version = 1)

2. Default Global Templates

   OpsRamp has a Global Template for each Native Type of vCloud Director. You can find those templates at Setup -> Monitoring -> Templates, search with suggested names in global scope. Each template follows below naming convention:

   {appName nativeType 'Template' - version}

   Ex: vCloud-director VCLOUD DIRECTOR Template - 1 (i.e, appName = vCloud-director , nativeType = VCLOUD DIRECTOR, version = 1)

3. Default Global Monitors

   OpsRamp has a Global Monitors for each Native Type which has monitoring support. You can find those monitors at Setup -> Monitoring -> Monitors, search with suggested names in global scope. Each Monitors follows below naming convention:

   {monitorKey appName nativeType - version}

   Ex: vCloud Director Reachability Monitor vCloud-director VCLOUD DIRECTOR 1 (i.e, monitorKey = vCloud Director Reachability Monitor, appName = vCloud-director , nativeType = VCLOUD DIRECTOR 1 , version= 1

Configure and install the integration

1. From All Clients, select a client.

2. Go to Setup > Integrations and Apps.

   Notes:

   • If there are already installed applications, it will redirect to the INSTALLED APPS page, where all the installed applications are displayed.
   • If there are no installed applications, it will navigate to the ADD APP page.

3. Click + ADD on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. The AVAILABLE INTEGRATIONS AND APPS page displays all the available applications along with the newly created application with the version.

   Note: You can even search for the application using the search option available. Also you can use the All Categories option to search.

4. Click ADD in the VMWare Cloud Directorss application.

5. In the Configurations page, click + ADD. The Add Configuration page appears.
6. Enter the below mentioned BASIC INFORMATION:

Notes:

• By default the Is Secure checkbox is selected.
• App Failure Notifications: if turned on, you will be notified in case of an application failure that is, Connectivity Exception, Authentication Exception.

7. In the Custom Attributes section, select the custom attribute key and value from the dropdown boxes.
   Note:
   • The custom attribute that you add here will be assigned to all the resources that are created by the configuration.
   • You can add a maximum of 5 custom attributes (key and value pair).
   • The custom attribute that you add should be created at the client level.
8. In the RESOURCE TYPE section, select:
   • ALL: All the existing and future resources will be discovered.
   • SELECT: You can select one or multiple resources to be discovered.
9. In the DISCOVERY SCHEDULE section, select Recurrence Pattern to add one of the following patterns:
   • Minutes
   • Hourly
   • Daily
   • Weekly
   • Monthly
10. Click ADD.

Now the configuration is saved and displayed on the configurations page after you save it. From the same page, you may Edit and Remove the created configuration.

11. Click Next.
12. In the Installation page, select an existing registered gateway profile, and click FINISH.

The application is now installed and displayed on the INSTALLED INTEGRATION page. Use the search field to find the installed application.

Modify the Configuration

• See Modify an Installed Integration or Application article.

  Note: Select the VMWare Cloud Directors application.

View the vCloud-director details

The vCloud-director integration is displayed in the Infrastructure > Resources > VMWare Cloud Directorss. You can navigate to the Attributes tab to view the discovery details, and Metrics tab to view the metric details for vCloud-director.

Resource Type Filter Keys

VMWare Cloud Director application Resources are filtered and discovered based on below keys

Supported Alert Custom Macros

Customize the alert subject and description with below macros then it will generate alerts based on customisation. Supported macros keys:

                                ${resource.name}

                                ${resource.ip}

                                ${resource.mac}

                                ${resource.aliasname}

                                ${resource.os}

                                ${resource.type}

                                ${resource.dnsname}

                                ${resource.alternateip}

                                ${resource.make}

                                ${resource.model}

                                ${resource.serialnumber}

                                ${resource.systemId}

                                ${Custome Attributes in the resource}

                                ${parent.resource.name}

Supported metrics

Risks, Limitations & Assumptions

• Application can handle Critical/Recovery failure notifications for below two cases when user enables App Failure Notifications in configuration
  • Connectivity Exception
  • Authentication Exception
• Application will not send any duplicate/repeat failure alert notification until the already existing critical alert is recovered.
• Using metrics for monitoring the resources and generating alerts when the threshold values are breached.
• Application cannot control monitoring pause/resume actions based on above alerts.
• This application supports only Classic Gateway and NextGen Gateway. Not supported with Cluster Gateway.
• Component level thresholds can be configured on each resource level.
• No support of showing activity log and applied time.
• There are chances that duplicate resources may arise after integrating the vCloud director on the OpsRamp environment if those resources are discovered through any other integration or agent earlier. The reason is that API response from vCD is not providing enough attributes to reconcile on OpsRamp platform.