Tag: vApp

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vApp startup order workflow

After installing Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) on vSphere, you’ll have a collection of at least 21 (probably closer to 60!) VMs with names that probably don’t match anyone’s convention.  Although, as noted in the PCF documentation, there is a correct order to starting up and shutting down the VMs in PCF, the installer does not configure a vApp so that we can control that order.  So, I dragged all the PCF VMs into a vApp and starting trying to determine which ones are in which role and quickly realized that it’s a pain.

Creating an AZ in Ops Manager on vSphere
Creating an AZ in Ops Manager on vSphere

As an aside, when you create your Availability Zone, you point it at a vSphere cluster and, optionally, a Resource Pool.  Unfortunately, if you specify a vApp Name instead of a Resource Pool name, BOSH will fail to deploy the VMs.  So, I’ve typically leave the Resource Pool field blank and then drag the VMs into a vApp post-deployment.

I put together a workflow that will help place the PCF VMs into correct startup/shutdown groups for you.

Example PCF VMNames
Example PCF VMNames

Instructions for Use

  1. Download the package from here
  2. Import the package into vRealize Orchestrator
  3. If you haven’t already, create a new vApp in your cluster and drag the Ops Manager, Ops Manager Director and all of the Elastic Runtime VMs into the vApp
  4. Run the “PCFvAppStartupOrder” workflow, select your new vApp as the input, click Submit
  5. If the PCF installation is scaled out to more VMs, just drag them to the vApp and rerun the workflow

How it works/What it does

  • The correct order is stored in a string array
  • The deployment, job and director custom fields are read for each VM in the vApp to get the VM’s assigned role
  • For the Ops Manager, the Notes field is read and if found, it is placed at the top of the startup sequnce
  • Unknown VMs are assigned a startup order higher than the last in the array.  This way, they start last and power-off first
  • Unknown VMs are those where the “deployment” field does not start with “cf”; with exceptions for Ops Manager (Notes field) and Ops Manager Director (“director” field value is “bosh-init”)

Additional suggestions and notes

  • Adjust the resources for the vApp based on VMware best practices and what makes sense for your environment
  • Use this at your own risk, there is no implied warranty
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