Mutli Location Management using single vCAC instance

[VirExprt]

Hello,

I am surprised to see there not much information about how can we deploy vCAC to Manage Multi location Environments and deploy as well based upon location.

I read somewhere in vCAC documentation mentioned about installation of DEM to location help managing Multi-location but nothing more is mentioned in the documents in details.

i would  really appreciate if one can provide these information in details

Thanks in Advance

BR,

MG

[ShibbyB]

I assume you have found the xml file to modify for the datacenter location, and how to tag the compute resources with the associated datacenter label? Problem here is that I don't believe you can make location a required field, I tried in previous versions to define the customer property for the location and make it required in a build profile, but it didn't override the location field as I had hoped.

If you are using vCenter for your endpoint, do you have multiple vCenters or a single vCenter managing multiple sites? The idea is to distribute the DEM's and Proxy Agents close to the endpoint they interact with. If you have multiple vCenters and you deploy a proxy agent in the same site as each vCenter, using the endpoint configured for that site's vCenter server. If you have a single vCenter server, you don't need to distribute the proxy agents to the sites, as it only talks to vCenter, not the ESXi hosts.

If we are talking DEM's (Amazon EC2, Physical, Custom workflows, vCD - I think), you can deploy those close to the end points and try and use Skills to associate a skill for that particular location if you are able to make a relationship. I don't believe there is currently a way to associate a DEM with a location.

Challenge I have run into, is your blueprint has a name of a template and you want to use a site local template. I got around this by having a powershell script run at submission time that looked up the location and added a suffix to the CloneFrom custom property that had a site code of 3 letters, and named the templates at each site accordingly.

Probably hard to follow above, but if you provide more details on what you are trying to accomplish, might be able to help more specifically.

[VirExprt]

Hey ShibbyB,

i have not gone so far as you have and really amazed to get your detailed explanation.

Not sure what xml you are referring to here but yes i found in documentation about location can e specified but not sure how.

What i am trying to achieve is that i have two separate environment managed by different vCenter present at two different physical locations. i wanted them to be managed from Single instance of vCAC but i think it is as good as single vCenter managing two datacenters and connecting it vCAC whose manageability is depended on Proxy agents and DEMs installed. it make sense to me that each location should have VM-template local to do clone function from Global Blueprint. it`s not like i can use same blueprint and provision VM in any location irrespective of Template availability.

Br,

MG

[ShibbyB · Accepted solution]

So based on having two vCenter servers, I would have the single vCAC environment -

1. Deploy the vSphere proxy agent on a VM at each site that has the vCenter server, when doing the install specify the vCenter endpoint to point to the proxy agents local vCenter server.
2. Modify the c:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\vCAC\Server\Website\XMLData\DataCenterLocations.xml - replace London and Boston with your datacenter names
3. Edit the clusters in your enterprise groups under compute resources, and assign them the location for the actual location they are in.
4. Modify your blueprint to prompt for location in the request
5. You can probably use the same blueprint name at both sites, and that would allow you to have one blueprint service at each site. Problem might be that you have different host name prefixes for each site, and you will have to address that and then might have to retain two different blue prints. In that case, you might use reservation policies to force a blueprint to go to a particular reservation which also would give you the proper site.

[VirExprt]

Hey you have just now become my favourate... :smileysilly:

thanks for such a wonderful information and this looks promising..i will give it a try for sure.

Thanks a lot

cheers,

MG