Introduction
UCS director provides comprehensive virtual infrastructure control, management and monitoring via single pane of glass. However, the entire set of documentation may be a bit overwhelming for a beginner to set up some test lab or test their own learning.
So the intent of this document is to provide some assistance to build your knowledge or understand some basic pre-requisite tasks for VM provision process and later hope you can set up your own VM provisioning task or somewhat advance task using the UCS director (AKA Cloupia or CUIC).
So the intent of this document is to provide some assistance to build your knowledge or understand some basic pre-requisite tasks for VM provision process and later hope you can set up your own VM provisioning task or somewhat advance task using the UCS director (AKA Cloupia or CUIC).
Pre-requisite
Virtual Account
- Make sure you have already associated with Virtual Account. This is vCenter association.
Note :
- When you create a Catalog, you will be asked to specify the "Cloud Name"
- Verify vCenter connection is good with "Test connectivity" from Administration > Virtual accounts
Network policy
- IP address range for VM provisioning . This required when you define Network policy.
- When you create a Catalog, you will be asked to specify the "Cloud Name"
- Verify vCenter connection is good with "Test connectivity" from Administration > Virtual accounts
Network policy
- IP address range for VM provisioning . This required when you define Network policy.
Procedure
In order to complete VM provisioning process, I have created 5 major steps and under each step I put other minor steps with screen capture and a small explanation.One thing I should emphasis is some small steps can be very important. All the steps I described here is minimum requirement to complete the VM provisioning.
Step1. Administration menu
The administrator can add groups and users to provide the access to CUIC. The administrator can assign different roles to users in the organisation. In here you will define self service portal user name and user group. This particular user will allow to create a service request for VM provisioning task via the service portal.
User Group tab
+ Add user group : Make sure to add contact email
Note : This "user group" will be called at Catalog creation.
User tab
+ Add user : Service type should be Service End-User
Note : This self portal user should be added into the user group.
Step2. Policies menu
UCS director provides a self-service portal where virtual machines are provisioned from a pool of assigned resources using predefined policies set by admin. So in the Policies menu you can define four policies in order to provision VMs later from the self service portal. These include Computing, Storage, Network and System Policies.
1- Catalog
Users can self-provision virtual machines (VMs) using predefined catalog items created by the system administrator. A Catalog item is created by the system administrator, defining certain parameters like Cloud Name, Policies, Cost Model and Group Name etc., to which the VM will be bound.
• Select Policies > Catalogs
• Click on Add.
+ catalog name, catalog type, Group, Cloud name, Image
+ Application detail such as OS type
+ user credential
+ customisation including cost
Note : image template must be available in vCenter beforehand. Otherwise, you will not see the Image when you create the Catalog.
Specify OS but I did not specify any application here.
You can specify the cost computation or other customisation action here
Verify Catalog name, Cloud, Image, User Group.
2- Computing Policy : VMware Computing Policy
+ In here we define policy name, cloud name, host node, ESX type, Min condition, resizing option (vCPUs, memory). Fairly self explanatory.
• Select Policies > Computing > VMware Computing Policy
• Click Add
Note : We will associate "Cloud Name" from the pre-requisite task.
3- Network Policy
The Network Policy defines resources like network settings like DHCP or Static IP and option to add multiple vNICs for VMs provisioned using this policy.
• Select Policies > Network > VMware Network Policy tab
• Click Add.
Note :
- remember IP address range in the pre-requisite task.
- If you decide to use "Static IP Pool", this IP address pool will be assigned to VM when the VM provision is performed.
4- Service Delivery policy (aka System Policy)
This is somewhat confusing. It is because in the configuration guide, it is often referred as System Policy and sometimes referred as Service delivery policy. They are basically the same thing.
The System Policy defines the system specific information like Template to be used, Time Zone, OS specific information etc. So if you browse some other menu, this might shows as "System policy". They are basically the same thing.
• Select Policies > Service Delivery > VMware System Policy tab
• Click Add.
+ In here we define VM template name, Hostname policy, timezone, fns suffix, vm image type
2- Computing Policy : VMware Computing Policy
+ In here we define policy name, cloud name, host node, ESX type, Min condition, resizing option (vCPUs, memory). Fairly self explanatory.
• Select Policies > Computing > VMware Computing Policy
• Click Add
Note : We will associate "Cloud Name" from the pre-requisite task.
3- Network Policy
The Network Policy defines resources like network settings like DHCP or Static IP and option to add multiple vNICs for VMs provisioned using this policy.
• Select Policies > Network > VMware Network Policy tab
• Click Add.
Note :
- remember IP address range in the pre-requisite task.
- If you decide to use "Static IP Pool", this IP address pool will be assigned to VM when the VM provision is performed.
4- Service Delivery policy (aka System Policy)
This is somewhat confusing. It is because in the configuration guide, it is often referred as System Policy and sometimes referred as Service delivery policy. They are basically the same thing.
The System Policy defines the system specific information like Template to be used, Time Zone, OS specific information etc. So if you browse some other menu, this might shows as "System policy". They are basically the same thing.
• Select Policies > Service Delivery > VMware System Policy tab
• Click Add.
+ In here we define VM template name, Hostname policy, timezone, fns suffix, vm image type
5- Storage policy
In this exercise we will skip this storage policy.
• Select Policies > Storage > VMware Storage Policy tab
• Click Add.
Step 3. VDC
A Virtual Data Center is an environment that combines virtual resources, operational details, rules and policies to manage specific group requirements. So this task will be found under the Policies menu.
One important configuration task is in here you will define "Approval User" which is specific to a vDC. So later this user will access to the self service portal to do the approval task while doing the VM provisioning process.
• Select Policies > Virtual Data Centers.
• define a following :
+ Group, cloud name
+ approval user name and contact detail (Make sure to note down the username for the approval. This user will be used when you access to the service portal for the approval process)
+ policies : system policy (service delivery policy), compute policy, network policy, storage policy + cost model
+ End user self-service options (VM power mgmt, resizing, deletion, etc)
During VDC creation you will associate all the policies you created in earlier steps.
Note : later you can do the test and see if the self service portal user can perform the End user self-service options.
Step 4. Organization
1. Create Service Request
Either admin user or self portal user can perform this task.
1.1. Self Portal User
Login as Service End-User
Service tab > Create Request
1.2. Catalog selection (make sure to select a right catalog. If not, you cannot see the SR for approval later)
1.3. Select VDC and provision type
1.4. Custom specification such as CPU core and memory
1.5. Verify summary
2. Login to Admin GUI as Admin user
2.1. Verify Service Request Submitted
2.2. Service Request Status
Step 5. Self Service Portal
1. Service Request approval
Go back to Self Service Portal to perform the approval process. You should login as user having approval responsibility
Note : We define this user in Administration and associate this responsibility when we create the VDC.
+ Organization > Service Request tab
+ My approval : check the SR and click Approval button.
1.5. Verify summary
2. Login to Admin GUI as Admin user
2.1. Verify Service Request Submitted
2.2. Service Request Status
Step 5. Self Service Portal
1. Service Request approval
Go back to Self Service Portal to perform the approval process. You should login as user having approval responsibility
Note : We define this user in Administration and associate this responsibility when we create the VDC.
+ Organization > Service Request tab
+ My approval : check the SR and click Approval button.
+ Provision
2. Check your email to see if you get the provisioning email.
3. Go back to Service portal and check the log to understand how this is proceeding.
4. Looks good. Go back to the Service request and verify the request status.
5. You will be also notified when it completes as below :
Result
Verify from vCenter and UCS director Admin GUI
1. Login to the vCenter and verify VM is provisioned properly as per the policy definition.
- We can see the VM creation completed successfully at vCenter.
2. at CUIC we can see VM status is power on
- We can see the VM creation completed successfully at vCenter.
2. at CUIC we can see VM status is power on
