vCloud Director

Configuration

Add vCD Cloud From Infrastructure > Clouds

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds

  2. Select + ADD

  3. Select VCLOUD DIRECTOR from the Clouds list

  4. Select NEXT

  5. Populate the following:

    Cloud Configuration

    NAME

    Name of the Cloud in Morpheus

    CODE

    Unique code used for api/cli, automation and policies.

    LOCATION

    Description field for adding notes on the cloud, such as location.

    VISIBILITY

    For setting cloud permissions in a multi-tenant environment. Not applicable in single tenant environments.

    TENANT

    If Visibility is set to Private, select the Tenant the Cloud resources will assigned to.

    ENABLED

    When disabled, automatic Cloud sync is paused and the Cloud will not be selectable for provisioning.

    AUTOMATICALLY POWER ON VMS

    When enabled, Morpheus will maintain the expected power state of managed VMs. Morpheus will power on any managed VMs in the Cloud that have been shut down for unknown reasons (not powered off by Morpheus) to ensure availability of services.

    Note

    When “AUTOMATICALLY POWER ON VMS” is enabled, the power state of managed VMs should be maintained in Morpheus. This setting is not applicable to discovered/unmanaged resources.

    Details

    API URL
    vCloud Director API Url

    Example: https://org.vcd.company.com

    USERNAME

    vCD Organization Administrator or System Administrator User

    • User must have an Organizational Administrator or System Administrator Role

    • Username must be in the format of <name>@<org>

    • When using a user with the System Administrator role, give the username in the format of <username>@system. Additionally, ensure this user has permission set correctly, such as to view objects created by the organization administrator if needed. Otherwise, things like catalogs and vApps created by the Organization Administrator might not be visible to Morpheus

    • In some cases, it may not be advisable to use the system administrator user. This is because some environments will have API access turned off for the system administrator for security reasons as the user would be able to remove key pieces of infrastructure. If your system administrator user does have API access and you understand the risks, you can authenticate Morpheus with this user

    PASSWORD

    Password for the user indicated above

    ORGANIZATION

    Select Organization. Dropdown populates upon successful authorization.

    VDC

    Select VDC. Dropdown populates upon successful authorization.

    API VERSION

    Example. 31.0 Note: Full version required. 31 would not be valid, must be xx.x (vCD API versions are strings)

    CATALOG

    Optionally select a vCD catalog to store Morpheus artifacts or use the default “morpheus_auto” catalog

    Inventory Existing Instances

    If enabled, existing Virtual Machines will be inventoried and appear as unmanaged Virtual Machines in Morpheus .

    Advanced Options

    DOMAIN

    Specify a default domain for instances provisioned to this Cloud.

    SCALE PRIORITY

    Only affects Docker Provisioning. Specifies the priority with which an instance will scale into the cloud. A lower priority number means this cloud integration will take scale precedence over other cloud integrations in the group.

    APPLIANCE URL

    Alternate Appliance url for scenarios when the default Appliance URL (configured in admin > settings) is not reachable or resolvable for Instances provisioned in this cloud. The Appliance URL is used for Agent install and reporting.

    TIME ZONE

    Configures the time zone on provisioned VM’s if necessary.

    DATACENTER ID

    Used for differentiating pricing among multiple datacenters. Leave blank unless prices are properly configured.

    NETWORK MODE

    Unmanaged or select a Network Integration (NSX, ACI etc)

    LOCAL FIREWALL

    On or Off. Enable to managed Host and VM firewall/IP Table rules (linux only)

    SECURITY SERVER

    Security Server setting is for Security Service Integrations such as ACI

    TRUST PROVIDER

    Select Internal (Morpheus) or an existing Trust Provider Integration

    STORAGE MODE

    Single Disk, LVM or Clustered

    BACKUP PROVIDER

    Select a backup provider. Depending on the Cloud type and any currently-configured backup plugins you may select Internal Backups (Morpheus) or another configured backup solution

    REPLICATION PROVIDER

    Sets the default Replication Provider for the Cloud. Select an existing Replication Provider Integration

    GUIDANCE

    Enable Guidance recommendations on cloud resources.

    COSTING

    Enable for Morpheus to sync Costing data from the Cloud provider, when available. For on-prem Clouds, enabling costing activates a costing service designed to mirror the live costing experience of public clouds, including invoicing with line items and real-time cost data (Operations > Costing > Invoices). If your organization utilizes reserved instances and you want to pull in related pricing data, select Costing and Reservations. If this is not relevant, select Costing to save money on additional calls to the AWS Cost Explorer API or similar service for other clouds.

    DNS INTEGRATION

    Records for instances provisioned in this cloud will be added to selected DNS integration.

    SERVICE REGISTRY

    Services for instances provisioned in this cloud will be added to selected Service Registry integration.

    CONFIG MANAGEMENT

    Select a Chef, Salt, Ansible or Puppet integration to be used with this Cloud.

    CMDB

    Select CMDB Integration to automatically update selected CMDB.

    CMDB DISCOVERY

    When checked, any automatically discovered (unmanaged) servers onboarded into Morpheus from this Cloud will also have CMDB records created for them.

    CHANGE MANAGEMENT

    Select an existing Change Management Integration to set on the Cloud. ex: Cherwell

    AGENT INSTALL MODE

    • SSH / WINRM: Morpheus will use SSH or WINRM for Agent install.

    • Cloud Init / Unattend (when available): (DEFAULT) Morpheus will utilize Cloud-Init or Cloudbase-Init for agent install when provisioning images with Cloud-Init/Cloudbase-Init installed. Morpheus will fall back on SSH or WINRM if cloud-init is not installed on the provisioned image. Morpheus will also add Agent installation to Windows unattend.xml data when performing Guest Customizations or utilizing syspreped images.

    API PROXY

    Set a proxy for outbound communication from the Morpheus Appliance to the Cloud endpoints. Proxies can be added in the Infrastructure > Networks > Proxies tab.

    INSTALL AGENT

    Enable to have Agent Installation on by default for all provisioning into this Cloud. Disable for Agent Installation to be off by default for all provisioning into this Cloud.

    Provisioning Options

    PROXY

    Set a proxy for inbound communication from Instances to the Morpheus Appliance. Proxies can be added in the Infrastructure > Networks > Proxies tab.

    Bypass Proxy for Appliance URL

    Enable to bypass proxy settings (if added) for Morpheus Agent communication to the Appliance URL.

    NO PROXY

    Include a list of IP addresses or name servers to exclude from proxy traversal

    USER DATA (LINUX)

    Add cloud-init user data. Morpheus 4.1.0 and earlier assumes bash syntax. Morpheus 4.1.1 and later supports all User Data formats. Refer to https://cloudinit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/format.html for more information.

  6. Select NEXT

  7. Select an existing or create a new Group to add the Cloud to. The Cloud can be added to additional Groups in a Groups Clouds tab.

  8. Select NEXT

  9. Review and then Select COMPLETE

How to create vCloud Director templates for Morpheus

To create a Windows Template

Create a new machine in VMware vCenter and install a base version of your preferred Windows build.

  1. Apply any service packs / updates to the operating system.

  2. Set the Network location to Private the below PowerShell will set the location.

Get-NetConnectionProfile | Set-NetconnectionProfile -NetworkCategory private

  1. Configure WinRM to allow remote management and open the firewall.

    • To do this, under local computer Administrator, open a command prompt and run winrm quickconfig

  2. Install VMware tools

  3. Install .Net at least 4.5

  4. Enable remote PowerShell this can be done in PowerShell.

    Enable-PSremoting

  5. Shutdown the virtual machine and convert to a template.

Note

Do not run sysprep

To create a Linux Centos template

Create a new machine in VMware vCenter and install a base version of your preferred Linux distro build. If you are using cloud init as part of your image you will need to ensure your virtual machine has a cdrom.

  1. Before installing the operating system setup a single ext or xfs partition without a swap disk (This is so that growpart can extend the disk. growpart currently does not support lvm)

  2. Install the distro and apply any updates to the operating system and security updates

  3. Install cloud-init using command yum install cloud-init

  4. Install cloud-utils-growpart using command yum install cloud-utils-growpart

  5. Install vmware tools

  6. Install git by running yum install git

  7. epel-release

  8. selinux set to permissive (enforced can cause problems with cloud-init)

To create a Linux Ubuntu template

Create a new machine in VMware vCenter and install a base version of your preferred Linux distro build. If you are using cloud init as part of your image you will need to ensure your virtual machine has a cdrom.

  1. Before installing the operating system setup a single ext partition without a swap disk (This is so that growpart can extend the disk. growpart currently does not support lvm)

  2. Install the distro and apply any updates to the operating system and security updates

  3. Ensure you have set a root password

  4. Install cloud-init by running sudo apt install cloud-init

  5. Install cloud-utils-growpart sudo apt install cloud-utils

  6. Install desired hypervisor drivers (Virto, Open-VM Tools)

  7. Install git by running sudo apt install git

  8. As Debian 9 includes network manager ensure this is disabled. Change the below file

/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

to the following:

managed=false

We also recommend disabling network manager and setting the network adapter to eth0 rather than the automatically assigned name. See a more detailed guide on VMware image prep here.

To import your template into vCloud director you will need to login as either an administrator or organisation administrator.

Once logged into vCloud director you will then need select Manage Organizations and then select your organization.

From within the organisation click on Catalogues > select an existing catalogue or create a new catalogue.

Note

Please note once you connect Morpheus to your vCD environment, it will create a catalogue called Auto Morpheus. This is a working catalogue and is ignored by Morpheus when searching for images, so any images in the catalogue will not be synced into Morpheus

Open the catalogue and select the import template from vCenter and then browse the data stores for your templates. Select your template and the type in a new name and description then check the copy template into vCloud director.

Once you click ok the import process will begin. When the import has completed the template will appear in Morpheus within Library > Virtual Images

If the image does not appear within the virtual images you may need to use the filters to filter the virtual images by the vmware ( vmdk / ovf / ova) type.

You may also need to refresh the cloud. To do this go to Infrastructure > Clouds > select the vCloud Director cloud > select Refresh.

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