vRealize Automation 8.0.1 Deployment with HF2

This article describes the deployment of vRealize Automation (vRA) 8.0.1 with the HF2 patch via vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) 8.0.1 with Patch 1.

The release notes for vRSLCM 8.0.1 can be found here [link]
The release notes for vRA 8.0.1 can be found here [link]
After the installation we will install vRSLCM 8.0.1 Patch 1 and vRA 8.0.1 HF2 patch directly via vRSLCM.

Download the “VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.0.1 Easy Installer” and mount the iso. From a Windows system, start the setup via <drive>:\vrlcm-ui-installer\win32\installer.exe

The installation is straight forward, so I will skip all the screen(shot)s.

• Screen 0: Click Install
• Screen 1: Introduction.
• Screen 2: End User License Agreement.
  • Accept License, Join Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP)
• Screen 3: Appliance Deployment Target
  • Enter your vCenter server and account details and Accept the vCenter Certificate when asked for.
• Screen 4: Select a Location.
  • Choose the VM Folder where you want to place the vrslcm, vidm and vra vm’s.
• Screen 5: Select a Compute Resource
  • Choose a cluster/host where you would like to deploy your vm’s.
• Screen 6: Select a Storage Location
  • Choose a datastore where you would like to store your vm’s.
  • Enable/Disable thin mode as you like.
• Screen 7: Network Configuration
  • Make sure all DNS and NTP settings are correct and working.
• Screen 8: Password Configuration
• Enter the password which will be used for
  • vRSLCM root and admin password.
  • vRA root password.
  • vIDM admin, ssh, root and configuration user password.
• Screen 9: Lifecycle Manager Configuration
• Screen 10: Identity Manager Configuration
  • Remember the name of the “Default Configuration Admin user”
• Screen 11: vRealize Automation Configuration
  • I Chose Standard Deployment.
• Screen 12: Summary

The installation will now start to Deploy vRSLCM, vIDM and vRA. If all went well the final screen looks like this:

Installation issues

Unfortunately, chances are that you run into some issues during the Installation of vRA. The Installation of vRA hangs at Step 5 and ultimately gives a timeout. The error you get is LCMVRAVACONFIG590003

Error Code: LCMVRAVACONFIG590003
Cluster initialization failed on vRA.
vRA va initialize failed on : vra01.infrajedi.local. Please login to the vRA and check /var/log/deploy.log for more information on failure. If this is a vRA HA and to reset the load balancer, set the ‘isBRetry’ to ‘true’ and enter a valid load balancer hostname.

The first thing to double (triple?) check is that all your hostnames, ip addresses, DNS and NTP are configured correct.

If this looks good, you will run into the problem which is described in VMware KB76870 [link] and KB78235 [link]. This article describes that “Builtin containers root password expires preventing installations for vRealize Automation 8.0 and 8.0.1 or cumulative update patches on existing deployments”. Carefully follow the instructions and make the changes as described:

vracli cluster exec -- bash -c 'echo -e "FROM vco_private:latest\nRUN sed -i s/root:.*/root:x:18135:0:99999:7:::/g /etc/shadow\nRUN sed -i s/vco:.*/vco:x:18135:0:99999:7:::/g /etc/shadow" | docker build - -t vco_private:latest'

vracli cluster exec -- bash -c 'echo -e "FROM db-image_private:latest\nRUN sed -i s/root:.*/root:x:18135:0:99999:7:::/g /etc/shadow\nRUN sed -i s/postgres:.*/postgres:x:18135:0:99999:7:::/g /etc/shadow" | docker build - -t db-image_private:latest'

After you ran the commands above, you can retry the Deployment of vRA from the Requests overview in vRSLCM. Everything should be fine now.

To make the new changes persist through reboots use the following command:

/opt/scripts/backup_docker_images.sh

This problem will be fixed in the next vRA 8.1 release.

Install vRSLCM 8.0.1 Patch 1

After you login for the first time in vRSLCM, you will see 1 or 2 notifications about available patches for vRSLCM and vRA.

Beware! Before you start downloading them extend the vRSLCM Storage. Extending the storage for vRSLCM is really easy; Just go to Settings, System Details and Extend the disk from there.

If you don’t extend the storage and download both patches you will end up with a disk full error:

“Disk Usage of the system is very high at 100%. To avoid failures please extend storage from system details page.”.

This can of course be fixed, but there is quite some work involved to continue. More info on this in a separate blogpost here [link].
(hint: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/76688)

To download the patches, Open the Notifications screen and Click Visit, or go to Settings, Binary Mapping, Product Patch Binaries. Click Check Patches online, wait for the vRSLCM and vRA patches to show under Binary Mapping, Product Patch Binaries and download them.

The vRA 8.0.1 HF2 is 4,3GB, so have patience. After download is finished go to Settings, System Patches.
Click New Patch, Select the downloaded vRSLCM patch and install it.

This finishes quite quickly, and the Services are restarted automatically (without notification). After successful installation your version should be 8.0.1.12 with Patch Version PATCH1.

Install vRA 8.0.1 HF2 Patch

Now it is time to install the vRA 8.0.1 HF2 Patch, but before that we need to resize the vRA disks. You will be warned and instructed on how to do this:

Disk Space on root partition ( / ) on /dev/sda4 (Disk 1) requires 20 GB of free disk space and data partition ( /data ) on /dev/mapper/data_vg-data (Disk 2) requires 48 GB of free disk space. To satisfy the requirement, resize Disk 1 to 50 GB or more and Disk 2 to 148 GB or more WITHOUT POWERING OFF THE VA. Then run ‘vracli disk-mgr resize’ from the vRealize Automation command shell and perform the same operation on each vRealize Automation node.

Resize the mentioned disks in vCenter (I chose 55 and 150 GB to be sure), SSH into your vRA appliance and run the commands as stated:

root@vra [ ~ ]# vracli disk-mgr resize
2020-03-12 13:59:12,562 [INFO] Resetting automatic resize scan schedule...
2020-03-12 13:59:12,562 [INFO] Reset successful. Automatic resize of any device where it is applicable will commence in the next minute.

You can monitor if the disk extension is finished with the vracli command.

 root@vra [ ~ ]# vracli disk-mgr
 /dev/sda4(/):
         Total size: 52.78GiB
         Free: 50.24GiB(95.2%)
         Available(for non-superusers): 47.60GiB(90.2%)
 /dev/sdb(/data):
         Total size: 146.64GiB
         Free: 124.44GiB(84.9%)
         Available(for non-superusers): 117.00GiB(79.8%)
 /dev/sdc(/services-logs):
         Total size: 7.81GiB
         Free: 7.63GiB(97.7%)
         Available(for non-superusers): 7.23GiB(92.6%)
 /dev/sdd(/metrics):
         Total size: 19.56GiB
         Free: 19.31GiB(98.8%)
         Available(for non-superusers): 18.31GiB(93.6%)

Go your created Environment in vRSLCM and Select the vRA component.
Click on … , Select Patches, Install Patch.
This process is straightforward and you can view the progress with the following two commands:

vracli upgrade status-details
tail -f /var/log/deploy.log

When you login to vRealize Automation the version should be:
Version 8.0.1.7409 (15464201)