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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

URL Redirection in vCloud

What's the best way to do URL redirection within vCloud for specific organizations? For example, let's say the organization url is https://cloud.company.com/cloud/org/smallbusiness and I wanted to have the organization users just access the vCD console for their organization via an easier URL, such as mysmallbusiness.company.com. Does vCD support doing that in some way?

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rjanakangnax
Contributor
Contributor

You can do that via "Set up this organization" and choosing a "Public organization URL"

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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

I don't seen an option for a Public URL at the organization level, only at the system level. If I open up an organization, go to the home page, click on the "Set up this organization" link, the wizard that pops up does not provide any options around a public URL or around modifying the default URL. Am I missing something?

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rjanakangnax
Contributor
Contributor

You have to be a system administrator in the pvDC level and then go to the Org DC where you can find this option. It may not be available in Org DC administrator level as they may not have access to provider DC's infrastructure to do URL redirection.

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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

I'm already logged in at a system administrator level and opening an Org with sysadmin access. I've tried opening multiple different Orgs from that same level and none of them give you an option to update a Public URL at an Org-specific level. The only Public URL option I see is at the main vCD level but this does not solve my problem because it's not org-specific. I could change the system-wide public URL but the org users would still have to put the public url along with /org/orgname to sign in.

Can you double-check what you're stating and make sure that you're not thinking of the vCD system-wide Public URL option? If you have this ability at an org-level I'd love to see a screen-print because I'm not finding it anywhere.

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rjanakangnax
Contributor
Contributor

This is how I am accessing...

1. System->Home->Manage Organizations...

2. Double click on the Organization you want..

3. click "setup this organization" in "Home"...

Screenshot attached.,

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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

Hmm, well I can see now why we're having such confusion. I'm following the same procedures as you but the wizard that pops up for me does not have the Public URL option (see attached). Other then that, it looks the same. What version of vCD are you running? I'm using the normal GA release only. Is there a pre-requisite that needs to be in place before the public URL shows up at the org-level?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

While referenced in the online help for the product, this particular field/feature was removed prior to 1.0 GA.

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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

@kmsmith I wonder why they took it out...can you provide a link to the online support page you're referring to?

@rjanakangnax Can you confirm what version of vCD your working with?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Since anyone can go map a URL to another one external to vCD I believe it was deemed unnecessary. It may have been present in certain beta/prerelease versions of the product.

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troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

@kmsmith Let me preface this by saying I don't have a web services background so forgive me if my questions seem dumb. When you say this can be done external to vCD, are you referring to an pre-existing web server of some sort that simply redirects the URL? If so, we don't have this in place today and I'd hate to spin up a web server external to vCD only to redirect a URL. Plus, if I did that, wouldn't I need to setup 2 of those for redundancy? Seems a bit over the top just to redirect a URL. If this is not what you mean and there's a better way people are doing this please let me know.

Side question, is it possible to do the URL redirection that used to be in the web console by manipulating apache on the vCD linux host directly?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Yes, something along those lines. If you wanted to use https://customername.provider.com or https://provider.com/customer, etc. you could do that outside of vCD -- the feature as it was implemented was only for display purposes. You still needed that external service to do the mapping/request forwarding, the UI field just made sure that certain links that were visible to org users displayed that base URI instead of the public URL for the vCD cluster or individual cell IPs.

You could set up an Apache HTTPD instance on the same Linux host as long as you set up the appropriate virtual hosts or DNS, but you'd need at least one more IP for Apache to bind to on port 80, and then redirect traffic to the cell's HTTP service IP on port 80/443.

troyprouty
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the guidance kmsmith. I'm disappointed that the redirection is not something incorporated with the vCD product but I appreciate the insight on a workaround.

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