Using Helm and Dynamic PersistentVolumes with Multi-AZ PKS on vSphere

So, you’ve installed PKS and created a PKS cluster.  Excellent!  Now what?

We want to use helm charts to deploy applications.  Many of the charts use PersistentVolumes, so getting PVs set up is our first step.

There are a couple of complicating factors to be aware of when it comes to PVs in a multi-AZ/multi-vSphere-Cluster environment.  First, you probably have cluster-specific datastores – particularly if you are using Pivotal Ready Architecture and VSAN.  These datastores are not suitable for PersistentVolumes consumed by applications deployed to our Kubernetes cluster.  To work-around this, we’ll need to provide some shared block storage to each host in each cluster.  Probably the simplest way to do this is with an NFS share.

Prerequisites:

Common datastore; NFS share or iSCSI

In production, you’ll want a production-quality fault-tolerant solution for NFS or iSCSI, like Dell EMC Isilon. For this proof-of-concept, I’m going to use an existing NFS server, create a volume and share it to the hosts in the three vSphere clusters where the PKS workload VMs will run.  In this case, the NFS datastore is named “sharednfs” ’cause I’m creative like that.  Make sure that your hosts have adequate permissions to the share.  Using VMFS on iSCSI is supported, just be aware that you may need to cable-up additional NICs if yours are already consumed by N-VDS and/or VSAN.

Workstation Prep

We’ll need a handful of command-line tools, so make sure your workstation has the PKS CLI and Kubectl CLI from Pivotal and you’ve downloaded and extracted Helm.

PKS Cluster
We’ll want to provision a cluster using the PKS CLI tool.  This document assumes that your cluster was provisioned successfully, but nothing else has been done to it.  For my environment, I configured the “medium” plan to use 3 Masters and 3 Workers in all three AZs, then created the cluster with the command

pks create-cluster pks1cl1 --external-hostname cl1.pks1.lab13.myenv.lab --plan "medium" --num-nodes "3"

Logged-in
Make sure you’re logged into the Kubernetes cluster. In PKS, the easiest way to do this is via the PKS cli:

pks login -a api.pks1.lab13.myenv.lab -u pksadmin -p my_password --skip-ssl-validation
pks cluster pks1cl1
pks get-credentials pks1cl1
kubectl config use-context pks1cl1
kubectl get nodes -o wide

Where “pks1cl1″ is replaced by your cluster’s name,”api.pks1.lab13.myenv.lab” is replaced by the FQDN to your PKS API server, “pksadmin” is replaced by the username with admin rights to PKS and “my_password” is replaced with that account’s password.

Procedure:

1. Create storageclass
   • Create storageclass spec yaml. Note that the file is named storageclass-nfs.yml and we’re naming the storage class itself “nfs”:

     kind: StorageClass
     apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
     metadata:
       name: nfs
       annotations:
         storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class: "true"
     provisioner: kubernetes.io/vsphere-volume
     parameters:
       diskformat: thin
       datastore: sharednfs
       fstype: ext3
     

     

   • Apply the yml with kubectl
     

     kubectl create -f storageclass-nfs.yml

     

   • Create a sample PVC (Persistent Volume Claim). Note that the file is names pvc-sample.yml, the PVC name is “pvc-sample” and uses the “nfs” storageclass we created above. This step is not absolutely necessary, but will help confirm we can use the storage.

     kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
     apiVersion: v1
     metadata:
       name: pvc-sample
       annotations:
         volume.beta.kubernetes.io/storage-class: nfs
     spec:
       accessModes:
         - ReadWriteOnce
       resources:
         requests:
           storage: 1Gi
       storageClassName: nfs
     

   • Apply the yml with kubectl
     

     kubectl create -f pvc-sample.yml

     
     If you’re watching vSphere closely, you’ll see a VMDK created in the kubevols folder of the NFS datastore

   • Check that the PVC was created with
     

     kubectl get pvc

     and

     kubectl describe pvc pvc-sample

     

   • Remove sample PVC with
     

     kubectl delete -f pvc-sample

2. Configure Helm and Tiller
   • Create Service Account for tiller with

     apiVersion: v1
     kind: ServiceAccount
     metadata:
       name: tiller
       namespace: kube-system
     ---
     apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
     kind: ClusterRoleBinding
     metadata:
       name: tiller
     roleRef:
       apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
       kind: ClusterRole
       name: cluster-admin
     subjects:
       - kind: ServiceAccount
         name: tiller
         namespace: kube-system
     

   • Apply the service account yml with Kubectl
     

     kubectl create -f rbac-config.yml

     

   • Initialize helm and tiller with
     

     helm init --service-account tiller

     

   • Check that tiller is ready
     

     helm version

     
     Look for a version number for the version; note that it might take a few seconds for tiller in the cluster to get ready.

3. Deploy sample helm chart
   • Update helm local chart repository. We do this so that we can be sure that helm can reach the public repo and to cache teh latest information to our local repo.
     

     helm repo update

     
     If this step results in a certificate error, you may have to add the cert to the trusted certificates on the workstation.

   • Install helm chart with ingress enabled. Here, I’ve selected the Dokuwiki app. The command below will enable ingress, so we can access it via routable IP and it will use the default storageclass we configured earlier.
     

     helm install --name dokuwiki \
--set ingress.enabled="true",dokuwikiUsername=admin,dokuwikiPassword=password \
stable/dokuwiki

     Edit – April 23 2019 – Passing the credentials in here makes connecting easier later.

   • Confirm that the app was deployed

     helm list
     kubectl get pods -n default
     kubectl get services -n default

     
     From the get services results, make a note of the external IP address – in the example above, it’s 192.13.6.73

   • Point a browser at the external address from the previous step and marvel at your success in deploying Dokuwiki via helm to Kubernetes!
     If you want to actually login to your Dokuwiki instance, first obtain the password for the user account with this command:

     kubectl get secret -n default dokuwiki-dokuwiki \
     -o jsonpath="{.data.dockuwiki-password}" | base64 --decode

     Then login with username “user” and that password.

      

     Edit – 04/23/19 – Login with the username and password you included in the helm install command

4. Additional info
   • View Persistent Volume Claims with
     

     kubectl get pvc -n default

     
     This will list the PVCs and the volumes in the “default” namespace. Note the volume corresponds to the name of the VMDK on the datastore.

   • Load-Balancer
     Notice that since we are leveraging the NSX-T Container Networking Interface and enabled the ingress when we installed dokuwiki, a load-balancer in NSX-T was automatically created for us to point to the application.

This took me some time to figure out; had to weed through a lot of documentation – some of which contradicted itself and quite a bit of trial-and-error. I hope this helps save someone time later!

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Configuring NSX Load-Balancer for PCF

There’s not a lot of specific information out there for this configuration.  There’s some guidance from Pivotal and some how-tos from VMware, so with a little additional detail, we should be able to figure this out.

Edit – 2/1/17 – Updated with OpenSSL configuration detail
Edit – 3/20/17 – Updated SubjectAltNames in config

Preparation

1. SSL Certificate. You’ll need the signed public cert for your URL (certnew.cer), the associated private key (pcf.key) and the public cert of the signing CA (root64.cer).
   1. Download and install OpenSSL
   2. Create a config file for your request – paste this into a text file:
      

      [ req ]
default_bits = 2048
default_keyfile = rui.key
distinguished_name = req_distinguished_name
encrypt_key = no
prompt = no
string_mask = nombstr
req_extensions = v3_req

[ v3_req ]
basicConstraints = CA:FALSE
keyUsage = digitalSignature, keyEncipherment
extendedKeyUsage = serverAuth, clientAuth
subjectAltName = DNS: *.pcf.domain.com, DNS:ServerShortName, IP:ServerIPAddress, DNS: *.system.pcf.domain.com, DNS: *.apps.pcf.domain.com, DNS:*.login.system.pcf.domain.com, DNS: *.uaa.system.pcf.domain.com

[ req_distinguished_name ]
countryName = US
stateOrProvinceName = State
localityName = City
0.organizationName = Company Name
organizationalUnitName = PCF
commonName = *.pcf.domain.com


   3. Replace the values in red with those appropriate for your environment. Be sure to specify the server name and IP address as the Virtual IP and its associated DNS record. Save the file as pcf.cfg.  You’ll want to use the wildcard “base” name as the common name and the server name, as well as the *.system, *.apps, *.login.system and *.uaa.system Subject Alt Names.
   4. Use OpenSSL to create the Certificate Site Request (CSR) for the wildcard PCF domain.
      

      openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout pcf.key -out pcf.csr -config pcf.cfg

   5. Use OpenSSL to convert the key to RSA (required for NSX to accept it)
      

      openssl rsa -in pcf.key -out pcfrsa.key

   6. Submit the CSR (pcf.csr) to your CA (Microsoft Certificate Services in my case), retrieve the certificate (certnew.cer) and certificate chain (certnew.p7b) base-64 encoded.
   7. Double-click certnew.p7b to open certmgr. Export the CA certificate as 64-bit encoded x509 to a file (root64.cer is the file name I use)
2. Networks.  You’ll need to know what layer 3 networks the PCF components will use.  In my case, I set up a logical switch in NSX and assigned the gateway address to the DLR. Probably should make this a 24-bit network, so there’s room to grow, but not reserving a ridiculous number of addresses. We’re going to carve up the address space a little, so make a note of the following:
   • Gateway and other addresses you typically reserve for network devices.  (eg:  first 9 addresses 1-9)
   • Address that will be assigned to the NSX load balancer.  Just need one (eg: 10)
   • Addresses that will be used by the PCF Routers.  At least two. These will be configured as members in the NSX Load Balancer Pool.
3. DNS, IP addresses.  PCF will use “system” and “apps” subdomains, plus whatever names you give any apps deployed.  This takes some getting used to – not your typical application.  Based on the certificate we created earlier, I recommend just creating a “pcf” subdomain.  In my case, the network domain (using AD-DNS) is ragazzilab.com and I’ve created the following:
   • pcf.ragazzilab.com subdomain
   • *.pcf.ragazzilab.com A record for the IP address I’m going to assign to the NSX Load-Balancer

NSX

Assuming NSX is already installed and configured.  Create or identify an existing NSX Edge that has an interface on the network where PCF will be / is deployed.

1. Assign the address we noted above to the inteface under Settings|Interfaces
2. Under Settings|Certificates, add the our SSL certificates
   • Click the Green Plus and select “CA Certificate”.  Paste the content of the signing CA public certificate (base64.cer) into the Certificate Contents box.  Click OK.
   • Click the Green Plus and select “Certificate”.  Paste the content of the signed public cert (certnew.cer) into the Certificate Contents box and paste the content of the RSA private key (pcfrsa.key) into the Private Key box. Click OK.
3. Under Load Balancer, create an Application Profile. We need to ensure that NSX inserts the x-forwarded-for HTTP headers.  To do that, we need to be able to decrypt the request and therefore must provide the certificate information.  I found that Pool Side SSL had to be enabled and using the same Service and CA Certificates.
   

   Router Application Profile

    

4. Create the Service Monitor.  What worked for me is a little different from what is described in the GoRouter project page. The key points are that we want to specify the useragent and look for a response of “ok” with a header of “200 OK”.
   

   Service Monitor for PCF Router

5. Create the Pool.  Set it to ROUND-ROBIN using the Service Monitor you just created.  When adding the routers as members, be sure to set the port to 443, but the Monitor Port to 80.
   

   Router Pool

6. Create the Virtual Server.  Specify the Application Profile and default Pool we just created.  Obviously, specify the correct IP Address.
   

   Virtual Server Configuration

   
   

PCF – Ops Manager

Assuming you’ve already deployed the Ops Manager OVF, use the installation dashboard to edit the configuration for Ops Manager Director.  I’m just going to highlight the relevant areas of the configuration here:

Networks.  Under “Create Networks”, be sure that the Subnet specified has the correct values.  Pay special attention to the reserved IP ranges.  These should be the addresses of the network devices and the IP address assigned to the load-balancer.  Do not include the addresses we intend to use for the routers though.  Based on the example values above, we’ll reserve the first 10 addresses.

Ops Manager Network Config

Ops Manager Director will probably use the first/lowest address in range that is not reserved.

PCF – Elastic Runtime

Next, we’ll install Elastic Runtime.  Again, I’ll highlight the relevant sections of the configuration.

1. Domains.  In my case it’s System Domain = system.pcf.ragazzilab.com and Apps Domain = apps.pcf.ragazzilab.com
2. Networking.
   • Set the Router IPs to the addresses (comma-separated) you noted and added to as members to the NSX load-balancer earlier.
   • Leave HAProxy IPs empty
   • Select the point-of-entry option for “external load balancer, and it can forward encrypted traffic”
   • Paste the content of the signed certificate (certnew.cer) into the Certificate PEM field.  Paste the content of the CA public certificate (root64.cer) into the same field, directly under the certificate content.
   • Paste the content of the private key (pcf.key) into the Private Key PEM field.
   • Check “Disable SSL Certificate verification for this environment”.
3. Resource Config.  Be sure that the number of Routers is at least 2 and equal to the number of IP addresses you reserved for them.

 

Troubleshooting

Help! The Pool Status is down when the Service Monitor is enabled.

This could occur if your routers are behaving differently from mine.  Test the response by sending a request to one of the routers  through curl and specifying the user agent as HTTP-Monitor/1.1

curl -v -A “HTTP-Monitor/1.1” “http://{IP of router}”

 

Testing router with curl

The value in the yellow box should go into the “Expected” field of the Service Monitor and the value in the red box should go into the “Receive” field. Note that you should not get a 404 response, if you do, check that he user agent is set correctly.

 

Notes

This works for me and I hope it works for you.  If you have trouble or disagree, please let me know.

Connecting vRealize Automation Gugent in a Distributed deployment – some notes

Configuring a distributed vCAC 6.x or vRealize Automation 6.2 installation, ran into a few issues and thought I’d document them.

• The Gugent points to the vCAC IaaS Manager Service, not the vCAC Web/Model Manager
• Test by browsing to https://[vcacmanager]/VMPS
• If you are using vCNS or NSX as your load balancer, use these settings for the virtual address (these worked for me):
  • Application Profile: TCP, no persistence
  • Pool: IP-HASH algorithm, Monitor: NONE.  One enabled member, port 443, not transparent
  • Virtual Server: TCP 443, Pool and App Profile from above
• Confirm the Gugent is working properly before configuring a template for Application Services

Configuring vCenter Orchestrator Appliance for High Availability

Dunes? Dunes.

UPDATED 09/07/14

This is the third post in my series for building a fully distributed vCloud Automation Center deployment. In this post, we’ll configure vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) for High Availability using two nodes and an vCloud Networking and Security Edge Gateway as a Load Balancer.  I’ll use the vCenter Orchestrator Appliance v5.5.1.0.1617225.  I want to ensure that both vCO nodes return the same, organizationally-trusted SSL certificate, so we’ll configure that too.

Prerequisites

• Database Server (ideally , it should be configured for high availability – I’ll be using a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Failover Cluster)
• Database for vCO
• Credentials for database
• Reserve IP addresses for two nodes and virtual IP
• DNS records for both nodes and virtual IP (I’m using vcvco1 and vcvco2 for the appliance nodes and vcvco as the virtual)
• Appropriate Identity Sources added to SSO
• A vCO administrators security group with appropriate members
• An Active Directory integrated Certificate Authority

Notes

In the steps below, text in red is not meant to be typed verbatim.  You’ll replace the value with something relevant to your environment.

Configure database settings (MSSQL)

To ensure that multiple Orchestrator nodes can use the database without clashing, you’ll need to enable a couple of optional settings.

Thiscan be done through script:ALTER DATABASE [vcvCO] SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON; GO; ALTER DATABASE [vcvCO] SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON; GO;

Or through theSSMS GUI: Enable Miscellaneous options for the vCO database

Deploy and configure the First Orchestrator Appliance

1. Using the vSphere or vSphere Web Client, deploy the appliance from OVF to an available HA cluster.  I named mine vcvco1.
2. Adjust the resources if necessary and power on vcvco1.
3. Browse to https://vcvco1:5480, logon as root
4. Set the timezone, confirm the network settings and hostname.  I set the hostname to the vcvco, the cluster name. Log out of the VAMI.
5. Browse to https://vcvco1:8283, logon as vmware
6. Navigate to the Network section
7. (Optional) on the Network tab, set the IP address to the actual address.  Leave the port numbers at default
8. On the SSL Trust Manager tab, type the URL to your SSO server (eg:  https://vcsso.domain.local:7444) and click the Import button.  Verify that the certificate information is correct and click Import to add it to the trust.  Repeat this for your vCenter Server(s).
9. In the Authentication Section, you can choose LDAP or SSO.  I’m going to configure it for SSO.  Enter your sso hostname (eg: vcsso.domain.local).  Click the Advanced Settings Link to see and verify that the Token service and Admin service URLs are fully populated with the correct port number (7444).  Enter  the user name and password for anSSO administrator (eg: administrator@vsphere.local) in the appropriate boxes.  Click the RegisterOrchestrator button. Wait for it….
   

   Registered with SSO, but not configured

10. After the registration is confirmed, select the correct group in the vCO Admin – domain and group dropdown list. Then, click the Accept Orchestrator Configuration button.
11. In the Database section; again I’m using SQL Server, but you’d select what’s appropriate for your environment.
12. After the connection is made, click the link to Create the database tables, then Apply Changes.
13. On the Licenses section, enter the host name of the vCenter Server and credentials, then click Apply Changes.
14. Install any plugins you need (vCAC, ViPR, Powershell, etc) and restart the service to complete the plugin installation.

Create Package Signing Certificate

1. On the Server Certificate section, click the “Create a certificate database and self-signed server certificate” link.  Enter vcvco.domain.local – that’s the load-balanced name, not the actual hostname – for the Common Name, set the organization, ou and country, then click Create.
2. Still in the Server Certificate section, click “Export a certificate signing request”.  Save the vCO_SigningRequest.csr file to your system.
3. Log into the Microsoft CA certificate authority Web interface. By default, it is http://servername/CertSrv/.
4. Click the Request a certificate link.Click advanced certificate request.
5. Click the Submit a certificate request by using a base-64-encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file link.
6. Open the certificate request (vCO_SigningRequest.csr) in notepad. Copy the content between —–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—– and —–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
7. Paste the copied content into the “Base-64-encoded certificate request” textarea. Select Web Server as the Certificate Template.
8. Click Submit to submit the request.
9. Click Base 64 encoded on the Certificate issued screen. Click the Download Certificate Chain link.
10. Save the package as C:\certs\certnew.p7b.
11. Double-click thep7b to open it incertmgr.  Navigate to Certificates – Current User\C:\Certs\Certnew.p7b\Certificates.
    

    Certs in P7b

12. You’ll see two certificates here (unless you have intermediate certificates, then you’ll have more).
13.  Right-click the one for the vCO server, choose All Tasks|Export.  Save the file as Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) as vco.crt
14. Right-click the one for root CA server, choose All Tasks|Export.  Save the file as Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) to as root.cer .  Close certmgr.
15. Before vCO will accept the CA-signed certificate, we have to import the root certificate.  Launch the Orchestrator Client.  You can use https://vcvco1.domain.local:8281/vco/client/client.jnlp
16. Login to thevCO client as a member of thevCO Admins group
    

    Login to vCO Client

17. In the client, launch Certificate Manager from Tools|Certificate Manager.
18. Under Known Certificates, click the “Import Certificate” button.  Browse to and select root.cer that you saved earlier.  Verify that the certificate details are correct and client the “Import Certificate” button to finish. Close or minimize the vCO Client.
19. Back on the Server Certificate section of the vCO configuration, click “Import a certificate signing request signed by a certificate authority”.  Select the vco.crt file you saved and click import.  If you get an error here, make sure you’ve imported the correct root (and any intermediate) cert into vCO.

Replace vCO Client certificate

Now, if you navigate to https://vcvco1.domain.local:8281/vco, you’ll see that the certificate is still untrusted.  Let’s fix that.  The certificate and key is stored with a specific alias and password, we’re going to replace them, but reuse the alias and password.

1. SSH into vcvco1 as root
2. Navigate to /etc/vco/app-server/security and make a copy of the jssecacerts keystore file
   

   cd /etc/vco/app-server/security
cp ./jssecacerts ./jssecacerts.backup


3. Use keytool to delete the item with the “dunes” alias. The keystore password is “dunesdunes”
   

   keytool -keystore ./jssecacerts -delete -alias dunes -storepass dunesdunes

   

   Delete “dunes” alias

4. Use keytool to create a CSR. The certreq alias must be “dunes”.  Exporting the csr to the fie named vcvvcoreq.csr
   

   keytool -keystore ./jssecacerts -storepass dunesdunes -certreq -alias dunes -file vcvcoreq.csr

   

   Create CSR named vcvco.csr

5. Use filezilla or SFTP again to retrieve the csr
6. Just like we did for the package signing certificate, submit a new request to your CA.
7. This time, just download the certificate (not the certificate chain) in DER format instead of base64.  save the file as vcoDER.cer.
8. Use filezilla or SFTP to copy vcoDER.cer to /etc/vco/app-server/security on vcvco1.  (you can actually place it anywhere, but this makes sense)
9. Using keytool again, import the CA-signed cert into the keystore. The passwords are kept ‘dunesdunes”.
   

   keytool -keystore ./jssecacerts -storepass dunesdunes -importcert -alias dunes -keypass dunesdunes -file ./vcoDER.cer

   

   Import the cert

10. Restart the vCO services
    

    service vco-server restart

Prepare Second Orchestrator Appliance

1.  Shutdown the first vCO appliance (vcvco1) to be safe
2. Clone vcvco1 to a new VM named vcvco2, be sure to update the hostname and IP address in the vApp Properties. (Although it doesn’t affect the guest OS in this case)
3. The cloned VM will retain the original IP address and hostname, so browse to https://vcvco1:5480, logon as root and set the correct IP address and hostname.
4. Once vcvco2 is on the correct IP address, you can power on vcvco1
5. Browse to https://vcvco2:8283, logon as vmware.
6. On the Network area, select the correct IP address and apply changes.

Configure the cluster

Cluster mode, both nodes up

1. Browse to the vCO Configuration web interface, http://vcvco1:8283.  Logon as vmware.
2. Under Server Availability, select Cluster mode
3. Set the number of active nodes to 2, leave the heartbeat values at default unless you have a reason to change them. Click “Apply Changes”.  Note that there will be times when you’ll have to set the number of active nodes to 1.
4. Under Startup Options, restart service.  This may not be necessary, but in my case, the nodes were not listed until after I restarted the vCO service.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 on vcvco2

 

Preparing to load-balance
Note – this worked for me, YMMV

1. Using vCNS Manager, locate the appropriate edge gateway, click Actions|Manage to open it for editing
2. On the Configure Tab, edit the interface that will listen on the virtual IP
3. Edit the Subnet and add the Virtual IP. It’s probably not the primary IP. Save and publish those changes.
   

   Add the virtual IP to the Edge Gateay

4. On the Load Balancer tab, on the Pools page, click “Enable”, then “Publish Changes”
5. Click the green plus to add a load-balancing pool
6. Enter a recognizable Name and Description, click “Next”.
   

   Load Balancer Pool

7. On the Services step, check HTTPS, set Balancing Method to “ROUND_ROBIN” and the Port to 8281.Clck “Next”.
   

   Services (HTTPS:8281)

8. On the Health Check step, set it as shown. Click “Next” when done.
   

   Health Check

9. On the members step, click the green plus to add the IP address of yourvCO servers to the pool. I suggest keeping the weight for each at 1, while both nodes are active.  There are times when you’ll want to make one node active though (details below).  Keep the HTTPS port and Monitor Port at 8281 for each. Click “Next” once all you membersare added.
   

   vCO Members

10. Review the Ready to complete step and click “Finish” if it all correct
11. Click the Publish Changes Button before proceeding
12. Click the “Virtual Servers” link, then the green plus to add a Virtual Server
    

    vCO Virtual Server

13. Enter a meaningful name and description, provide the Virtual IP adddress that you added to the edge earlier, select the Pool created in the steps above and Enable HTTPS on port 8281. Set the Persistence Method to SSL_SESSION_ID and make the “Enabled” box is checked. Click “Add” then “Publish Changes”
14. Test by navigating to https://vcvco.domain.local:8281/vco and verifying that the certificate matches.
15. IMPORTANT UPDATE! – Repeat steps 7-14 above for TCP 8286 and 8287.  Without these undocumented ports, neither the vCO client nor the vCAC appliance will connect to the vCO cluster.

Additional steps
Put the two vCO nodes in a vApp, set them to start a few minutes apart to prevent both nodes from trying to initialize the database concurrently.

Use vApp to stagger the startup of the vCO nodes

 

Notes, Caveats and Warnings

When writing information to vCO, such as designing and importing new workflows, VMware requires that only one vCO node be active.  I suggest that before you connect vCAC to vCO, you take the following steps:

1. Logon to vcvco1 configuration as vmware , set the number of active nodes under Server Availability to 1.  Apply changes.
2. Logon to vcvco2 configuration as vmware , set the number of active nodes under Server Availability to 1.  Apply changes.
3. Watch the Service Availability area, wait for it to indicate that one node is in standby. If you’re impatient as I am, you can restart the service on vcvco2.  It should come up as standby.  Record which node is RUNNING.
4. Logon to vCNS Manager, locate the appropriate Edge Gateway for the vcvco virtual server.
5. Edit the Load Balancer pool, leave the RUNNING node with a weight of 1, set all other nodes’ weight to zero

Once the workflows have been created and edited and you want to resume distribution of vCO jobs among the nodes, just reverse these changes, setting the active nodes to 2 and the weights to 1 for both nodes.

Do not connect the vCO client to the virtual address.  In this case, only TCP8281 is forwarded and the vCO client needs additional ports forwarded to the nodes.  Other load-balancers/NAT devices may not have this issue.

This post may get some edits as I work through the rest on the vCAC distributed build.

I still have no idea why the certificate alias and password is “dunes”.  UPDATE – The company that was bought by VMware that originally developed the product that is now vCO was named “Dunes”.

References 

Work with vCO over SSL

VMKB2058674

vCO 5.5.1 release notes

Configuring Replicated vPostgres for vCAC 6.x

This is the second in my series for building a fully distributed vCAC deployment.  In this part, we’re building the vPostgres database server with replication for use with vCAC 6.x.

I’m using v9.2.6.0. The vCAC 6.0 Support Matrix says 9.2.4 is supported but the PDF version of the Installation and Configuration guide says 9.2.4 or higher is supported.  I originally wanted to use 9.3.2.0 because the documentation includes replication, but I’m unsure whether it’s officially supported with vCAC 6.x yet.  We’ll still configure replication though 🙂  I’m going to front-end the vPostgres nodes with a vCNS Edge Gateway load balancer so that in the case of a failure, we don’t have to reconfigure the vCAC appliance database connection.  Updated documentation shows that for vCAC 6.0, vPostgres v9.2.4 is supported, v9.2.6 and v9.3.4 were untested.  For vCAC 6.1, versions 9.2.4, 9.2.6 and 9.3.4 are supported.
Prerequisites:

• Reserve IP addresses for the appliances and the virtual IP.
• Add DNS entries for the IP addresses.  I used vpostgres1 for vpostgres2 for the appliances and vpostgres as the virtual/load-balanced name/address.

vProgres setup Steps

1. Download the VMware vFabric Postgres Appliance from my.vmware.com.
2. Deploy the vFabric Postgres Appliance from OVF twice.  I named them vPostgres1 and vPostgres2.  vPostgres1 will be the master and vPostgres2 will be the slave.
3. Power on vPostgres1, browse to https://vpostgres1:5480, logon as root using the password you entered during deployment.
4. Configure the hostname (eg: vpostgres1.ragazzi.lab) and timezone
5. Browse to https://vpostgres1:8443, leave the default values, enter your password and click “Connect” to enter the Enterprise Manager (vpgdbem)
   

   Login to vpgdbem

6. Click on localhost:5432/DB Login Users to list the existing users (just “postgres” so far)
7. Click the green plus to add a new DB Login user.  In the properties, enter “vcac” (or whatever you want) as the name, check “Enable login”, do not check “Can create DB login users” and set the password.  Click OK to save.
   

   Create vcac user

8. Click on localhost:5432 to display the overview and list of databases (just “postgres” so far)
9. Click the green plus to Create a new database.  Just enter “vcacdb” (or similar) for the name, set the Owner to “vcac”, add a comment if you wish and click “OK” to save. Click the refresh button (blue ccw arrow) to refresh the list.
   

   Create vcacdb database

10. Expand the Databases item under the treeview and select your new “vcacdb” database.  The database overview should load, displaying the uptime, size and more.
    

    Select the database

11. Toward the right side of the window is a button labelled “Enter SQL”, click it.
12. In the SQL Script area, type the following:
    

    CREATE EXTENSION "hstore";
CREATE EXTENSION "uuid-ossp"

    

    SQL Statements

13. Click “Execute” and check the Output|Messages area for SQL query succeeded
14. Click the X to close the SQL window
15. Complete steps 2-4 for vpostgres2. Do not configure any users or databases on vPostgres2.
16. SSH into vpostgres1, logon as “postgres”, not root.
17. Run this command to create a replication user named “replicate”:
    

    v9.2/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/share/create_replication_user replicate

    v9.3/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/scripts/create_replication_user replicate

    You’ll be prompted for a password and confirmation.

    

    Create “replicate” user

18. SSH into on vpostgres2 as “postgres”
19. Run this command to configure vpostgres2 as a replica:
    

    /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/share/run_as_replica -h 192.168.101.31-b -W -U replicate

    Obviously, replace the red text with the IP address of the master vPostgres server. First you’ll be prompted for the password for the “replicate” user, then you’ll confirm the authenticity of the connection, then you’ll be prompted to enter the password for the postgres user on the master. Next, you’ll confirm that you want to enable WAL archiving on the primary/master by typing “yes” and lastly, you’ll confirm your intention to overwrite the data directory with the databases from the master. It’ll copy the tablespace over.

    

    Configure replica and confirm

20. Run this command on vpostgres1 to verify the replication:
    

    /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/share/show_replication_status

    

    Replication Status

Load-Balancer setup steps
I’m going to use the load-balancer feature in vCloud Networking and Security Edge Gateway. It’s not the most intelligent Load-Balancer ever, but it’s what I have.

1. Using vCNS Manager, locate the appropriate edge gateway, click Actions|Manage to open it for editing
2. On the Configure Tab, edit the interface that will listen on the virtual IP
3. Edit the Subnet and add the Virtual IP. It’s probably not the primary IP. Save and publish those changes
   

   Add the virtual IP to the Edge Gateay

4. On the Load Balancer tab, on the Pools page, click “Enable”, then “Publish Changes”
5. Click the green plus to add a load-balancing pool
6. Enter a recognizable Name and Description, click “Next”
7. On the Services step, check only TCP, set Balancing Method to “ROUND_ROBIN” and the Port to 5432. Click “Next”
8. On the Health Check step, set it as shown. Click “Next” when done.
9. On the members step, click the green plus to add the IP address of you SSO servers to the pool. Add the primary/master vPostgress server with a weight of 1 or higher.  Add the slave/replica with a weight of 0 (zero).  This will ensure all of the traffic goes to the primary until it is changed in the event of a primary failure. Keep the TCP port and Monitor Port at 5432 for each. Click “Next” once all you members are added.
10. Review the Ready to complete step and click “Finish” if it all correct
11. Click the Publish Changes Button before proceeding
12. Click the “Virtual Servers” link, then the green plus to add a Virtual Server
13. Enter a meaningful name and description, provide the Virtual IP adddress that you added to the edge earlier, select the Pool created in the steps above and Enable TCP on port 5432. Make sure the “Enabled” box is checked. Click “Add” then “Publish Changes”

Now, when you configure your vCAC Appliance, provide the host name that resolves to the virtual IP address.

Dealing with a failure
By default, the replica acts like a read-only copy of the database. It has a very short replication delay, so do not count on it to save you if you delete things from the primary.

When to promote a replica:

• You’ve screwed up the network settings on the primary vPostgres node beyond repair; preventing vCAC from using it and replication from occurring
• You’ve applied an update to the primary vPostgres node that broke it; preventing vCAC from using it and replication from occurring

When to NOT promote a replica

• You deleted a bunch of stuff from vCAC. Too late! Those changes have already replicated
• The physical host where the primary vPostgres virtual appliance was running has failed. Just wait for vSphere HA to being it back online
• You want to see it run active/active. It does’t do that. relax

Recovery Procedure

1. See if the primary/master node is up. If it is, stop here.
2. Using the vCNS Manager web interface, edit the load-balancing pool, setting the weight for vpostgres1 (which has failed) to 0 (zero) and the weight for vpostgres2 (which we’re going to promote) to 1. Save and publish changes.
3. SSH into the slave (vpostgres2) as postgres
4. Run this command to promote the slave to master:
   

   /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/share/promote_replica_to_primary

   The response will be “server promoting“

5. If/When vpostgres1 comes back to life, you’ll need to configure it as a replica to vpostgres2. Do this by running the command from step 19 above.
6. Now if you want to make vpostgres1 primary again, I strongly suggest you stop the vcac_service on your vCAC appliances. Then, you’ll just promote it like you did before and make vpostgres2 a replica again.

Configuring Highly Available vCenter SSO with SSL certificates

*** UPDATE 12/18/14 ***
Instead of this blog, I strongly suggest you use and follow the
Configuring VMware vCenter SSO High Availability for VMware vRealize Automation Technical Whitepaper. It is somewhat more comprehensive and authoritative. For VMware documentation, it’s really good.
*** UPDATE ***

I love the simplicity of the vCenter Server Appliance and the VMware Identity Appliance for vCAC, but neither offer a high availability option better than vSphere HA. There are use cases where you’d need your SSO service to offer better uptime and resilience. In addition, there is some SSL certificates to be configured and for that, we’ll follow the instructions in KB2034833,  KB2061934 and KB2034181.

Notes, caveats, warnings
AFAIK, this will only work with vSphere 5.5. v5.1 handles SSO differently. I’m only using two nodes, if you have more, there will be extra steps. I do not have intermediate CAs, if you do, consult the KBs for the additional steps. I’m going to use a vCloud Networking and Security Edge Gateway as my load-balancer.  It does not offer SSL offload like some other load-balancers do, so you may have to take extra steps to configure SSL offload.

Here’s what I have in mind; load-balanced SSO Servers

Prerequisites
Reserve the IP addresses for your actual SSO servers, plus the Virtual IP address.
Add A or CNAME records to your DNS for the SSO servers and the virtual IP.
The DNS name of the virtual IP is what the SSL certificate must match (vcsso in my case)
You should have an edge gateway already configured with an interface in the same networks as your virtual IP and actual SSO servers.

First SSO Server

I’m starting with two freshly deployed Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs, joined to the domain and named vcsso1 and vcsso2.  On vcsso1, install the Single Sign-on service.  Be sure the prerequisites are all ok.

On the deployment mode step, choose “vCenter Single Sign-On for your first vCenter Server” 

Next,next,finish your way through the installation. You’ve set up an SSO server, YAY!

Second SSO Server

On the second server, vcsso, also install the SSO service.  We’re going to make a few different selections than we did on vcsso1 though.  On the deployment mode step, here we’re going to select “vCenter Single Sign-On for an additional vCenter Server in an existing site”.

 

Next, we’re prompted for information about the first, or partner, SSO server.  

 

We have to confirm that the information obtained from the first SSO server is correct, so click Continue.

Then we select the site name configured on the first SSO server.  I named mine “Lab”, but you can leave yours as “Default-First-Site” or whatever makes sense for your environment. 

 

From here, you’ll Next,Next,Finish your way to completion.

Generating the Cert
Prerequisites: Either the VMware ssl-certificate-updater-tool or OpenSSL Win32 v0.9.8

1. Log on to the first SSO server (vcsso1), extract the VMware SSL certificate updater tool to C:\ssltool or similar.  Create folders named “C:\certs\sso“.  Open notepad and paste the following:
   
[ req ]
default_bits = 2048
default_keyfile = rui.key
distinguished_name = req_distinguished_name
encrypt_key = no
prompt = no
string_mask = nombstr
req_extensions = v3_req

[ v3_req ]
basicConstraints = CA:FALSE
keyUsage = digitalSignature, keyEncipherment, dataEncipherment
extendedKeyUsage = serverAuth, clientAuth
subjectAltName = DNS:ServerShortName, IP:ServerIPAddress, DNS:server.domain.com, DNS:ServerIPAddress

[ req_distinguished_name ]
countryName = Country
stateOrProvinceName = State
localityName = City
0.organizationName = Company Name
organizationalUnitName = vCenterSSO
commonName = server.domain.com
2. Replace the values in red with those appropriate for your environment. Be sure to specify the server name and IP address as the Virtual IP and its associated DNS record. Save the file as c:\certs\sso\sso.cfg
3. At a command prompt, navigate to the folder containing openssl.exe (eg: C:\ssltool\tools\openssl). Run this command to create the key and certificate site request (CSR):
   

   openssl req -new -nodes -out c:\certs\sso\rui.csr -keyout c:\certs\sso\rui-orig.key -config c:\certs\sso\sso.cfg

   

   Generate CSR

4. In the same command prompt, run this to change the key to the necessary type.
   

   
openssl rsa -in c:\certs\sso\rui-orig.key -out c:\certs\sso\rui.key

5. Follow the steps in KB2062108 to create the appropriate certificate template in you Active Directory Certificate Authority.
6. Log into the Microsoft CA certificate authority Web interface. By default, it is http://servername/CertSrv/.
7. Click the Request a certificate link.Click advanced certificate request.
8. Click the Submit a certificate request by using a base-64-encoded CMC or PKCS #10 file, or submit a renewal request by using a base-64-encoded PKCS #7 file link.
9. Open the certificate request (rui.csr) in notepad. Copy the content between —–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—– and —–END CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–
10. Paste the copied content into the “Base-64-encoded certificate request” textarea. Select VMware Certificate as the Certificate Template. See KB2062108 if you don’t have the “VMware Certificate” template
11. Click Submit to submit the request.
12. Click Base 64 encoded on the Certificate issued screen. Click the Download Certificate Chain link.
13. Save the package as C:\certs\certnew.p7b.
14. Double-click the p7b to open it in certmgr.  Navigate to Certificates – Current User\C:\Certs\Certnew.p7b\Certificates.
    

    Certs in P7b

15. You’ll see two certificates here (unless you have intermediate certificates, then you’ll have more).
16.  Right-click the one for the SSO server, choose All Tasks|Export.  Save the file as Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) to c:\certs\sso\rui.crt
17. Right-click the one for root CA server, choose All Tasks|Export.  Save the file as Base-64 encoded X.509 (.CER) to c:\certs\root.cer ..  Close certmgr.
18. Generate the pfx by running this command:
    

    openssl pkcs12 -export -in c:\certs\sso\rui.crt -inkey c:\certs\sso\rui.key -certfile c:\certs\Root64.cer -name "ssoserver" -passout pass:changeme -out c:\certs\sso\ssoserver.p12

    Note: The certificate store password must be changeme and the key alias must be ssoserver. Do not change these parameters.

Install and Configure the Certificate

1. While logged on to the first SSO server (vcsso1) as an administrator, make sure this folder exists: C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware vCenter Server – Java Components If it doesn’t, you’ll need to check your SSO installation
2. Open an elevated command prompt (as administrator) and enter the following
   

   SET JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware vCenter Server - Java Components
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VMware\CIS\vmware-sso;%JAVA_HOME%\bin

3. In the command prompt, cd to the folder containing openssl.exe (eg: C:\ssltool\tools\openssl)
4. Generate a subject hash from the certificate using this command:
   

   openssl x509 -subject_hash -noout -in c:\certs\root.cer

   This will return an 8-character hash. Record it, we’ll need it later

5. On both SSO servers, create the folder C:\ProgramData\VMware\SSL
6. On both SSO servers, copy c:\certs\root.cer to C:\ProgramData\VMware\SSL renaming it to ca_certificates.crt
7. On both SSO servers, copy c:\certs\root.cer to C:\ProgramData\VMware\SSL again, this time renaming it to <subjecthash>.0 (replacing <subjecthash> with your hash value from above and appending dot zero)
8. Just on the first SSO server, paste the following into a text file named c:\certs\gc.properties. Replace the red text with appropriate values.
   

   [service]
friendlyName=The group check interface of the SSO server
version=1.5
ownerId=
productId=product:sso
type=urn:sso:groupcheck
description=The group check interface of the SSO server

[endpoint0]
uri=https://SSOserver.domain.com:7444/sso-adminserver/sdk/vsphere.local
ssl=c:\certs\Root64.cer
protocol=vmomi

9. Paste the following into a text file named c:\certs\admin.properties. Replace the red text with appropriate values.
   

   [service]
friendlyName=The administrative interface of the SSO server
version=1.5
ownerId=
productId=product:sso
type=urn:sso:admin
description=The administrative interface of the SSO server

[endpoint0]
uri=https://SSOserver.domain.com:7444/sso-adminserver/sdk/vsphere.local
ssl=c:\certs\Root64.cer
protocol=vmomi

10. Paste the following into a text file named c:\certs\sts.properties. Replace the red text with appropriate values.
    

    [service]
friendlyName=STS for Single Sign On
version=1.5
ownerId=
productId=product:sso
type=urn:sso:sts
description=The Security Token Service of the Single Sign On server.

[endpoint0]
uri=https://SSOserver.domain.com:7444/sts/STSService/vsphere.local
ssl=c:\certs\Root64.cer
protocol=wsTrust

11. Next, we need the service ID for each of the three services SSO uses. To get these, run the following command, replacing the red text with the FQDN to your first SSO server:
    

    ssolscli.cmd listServices https://vcsso1.domain.local:7444/lookupservice/sdk

    

    SSO Services

12. The service ID for each service should be saved to a file. Use quickedit to copy the service id for each and echo it to a file:
    

    Echo service ID to files

13. Update the Group Check service:
    

    ssolscli updateService -d https://ssoserver.domain.com:7444/lookupservice/sdk -u SSO_administrator -p password -si c:\certs\gc_id -ip c:\certs\gc.properties

14. Update the Admin service:
    

    ssolscli updateService -d https://ssoserver.domain.com:7444/lookupservice/sdk -u SSO_administrator -p password -si c:\certs\admin_id -ip c:\certs\admin.properties

15. Update the STS service:
    

    ssolscli updateService -d https://ssoserver.domain.com:7444/lookupservice/sdk -u SSO_administrator -p password -si c:\certs\sts_id -ip c:\certs\sts.properties

16. Copy the new SSL files to C:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\runtime\VMwareSTS\conf on both/all SSO servers:
    

    
copy C:\certs\SSO\ssoserver.p12 C:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\runtime\VMwareSTS\conf\ssoserver.p12
copy C:\certs\Root.cer C:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\runtime\VMwareSTS\conf\ssoserver.crt
copy C:\certs\SSO\rui.key C:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\runtime\VMwareSTS\conf\ssoserver.key


17. Stop and restart the VMware Secure Token Service on both servers

Preparing to load-balance

1. Navigate to http://firstssoserver.domain.local:7444/sts/STSService/vsphere.local notice that the certificate gives an error, but look at the cert. The certificate should return the “common” name (in my case, “vcsso” instead of “vcsso1”. Repeat this for the second and subsequent SSO servers, verifying that they provide the same certificate
2. Using vCNS Manager, locate the appropriate edge gateway, click Actions|Manage to open it for editing
3. On the Configure Tab, edit the interface that will listen on the virtual IP
4. Edit the Subnet and add the Virtual IP. It’s probably not the primary IP. Save and publish those changes
   

   Add the virtual IP to the Edge Gateay

5. On the Load Balancer tab, on the Pools page, click “Enable”, then “Publish Changes”
6. Click the green plus to add a load-balancing pool
7. Enter a recognizable Name and Description, click “Next”
8. On the Services step, check HTTPS, set Balancing Method to “ROUND_ROBIN” and the Port to 7444. Clck “Next”
9. On the Health Check step, set it as shown. Click “Next” when done.
10. On the members step, click the green plus to add the IP address of you SSO servers to the pool. I suggest keeping the weifght for each at 1, unless you have a reason to send more requests to specific nodes. Keep the HTTPS port and Monitor Port at 7444 for each. Click “Next” once all you members are added.
11. Review the Ready to complete step and click “Finish” if it all correct
12. Click the Publish Changes Button before proceeding
13. Click the “Virtual Servers” link, then the green plus to add a Virtual Server
14. Enter a meaningful name and description, provide the Virtual IP adddress that you added to the edge earlier, select the Pool created in the steps above and Enable HTTPS on port 7444. Set the Persistence Method to SSL_SESSION_ID and make the “Enabled” box is checked. Click “Add” then “Publish Changes”
15. Test by navigating to https://ssovirtual.domain.local:7444/lookupservice/sdk and https://ssovirtual.domain.local:7444/sts/STSService/vpshere.local verifying that the certificates match.
16. YAY, load-balanced SSO with matching SSL certs!

One more thing….

Using your favorite web browser, navigate to http://ssovirtual.domain.local:7444/websso/SAML2/Metadata/vsphere.local you’ll be prompted to download and save an XML file named vsphere.download. Now open the XML file in notepad or Notepad++.  First, make sure you received a readable XML file.  Second, noticed that the EntitiesDescriptor/EntityDescriptor entityID property is server-specific.  We’ll need both servers to respond with the same information.

<EntitiesDescriptor xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata" xmlns:saml="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:assertion" xmlns:vmes="http://vmware.com/schemas/attr-names/2012/04/Extensions" Name="vsphere.local" validUntil="2014-08-12T23:54:04Z">
<Extensions>
<vmes:ExportedOn>2014-08-11T23:54:04Z</vmes:ExportedOn>
<vmes:ExportedBy>Exported by VMware Identity Server (c) 2012</vmes:ExportedBy>
</Extensions>
<EntityDescriptor entityID="https://VCSSO1.domain.local:7444/websso/SAML2/Metadata/vsphere.local">
<IDPSSODescriptor WantAuthnRequestsSigned="false" protocolSupportEnumeration="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:protocol">
<KeyDescriptor xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" use="signing">
<ds:KeyInfo>
<snip...>

Warning This is not in a VMware KB, and may not be best way to do it. Having the value in the EntitiesDescriptor/EntityDescriptor entityID property match the FQDN is going to be very important in the near future. Trust me.

1. On each server, open C:\ProgramData\VMware\CIS\cfg\vmware-sso\hostname.txt. It only contains the resolved hostname, so update it to the virtual hostname (vcsso.ragaazzi.lab in my case) save the file
2. Retrieve the XML file from http://ssovirtual.domain.local:7444/websso/SAML2/Metadata/vsphere.local again open it and confirm that it contains the virtual hostname

Conclusion
This was such a lengthy post, I considered breaking it up, but there was no good break-point. Thanks for sticking with it. This is mostly for my own benefit, hopefully you’ll find it helpful too.