NetApp Workflow Automation for VMware - Setup & Configuration

Welcome: To stay updated with all my Blog posts follow me on Twitter @arunpande !

In my previous blog post Monitoring NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP using Unified Manager 6.0 I have discussed the steps required to setup OnCommand Unified Manager and integrate it with LDAP. In this blog post I will discuss the setups required to install & configure NetApp OnCommand Workflow Automation (WFA). WFA is used to automate various storage provisioning & management tasks using role based user access. It can be further integrated with vCenter Orchestrator to provide end to end automation for NetApp & vSphere related tasks.

Install OnCommand Workflow Automation

Download WFA 2.1 from NetApp Support Site. Note that you need to have valid credentials to download this software. This installer is available as a 200 MB WFA-x64-V2.1.0.70.32-B2178337.exe file that can be installed on 64 –bit Windows OS. I have installed WFA on a Windows 2008 R2 virtual machine.

Launch the installer and click Next to continue.

 

Accept the license agreement and click Next to continue or change them if you are using custom HTTP and HTTPS ports.

 

Enter the username and password. NOTE: This username/password would be used to login to WFA using the Web browser.

Change the destination location if required else click Next to continue.

Review the information in this screen and click Next to continue.

This completes the installation of WFA.

Launch WFA using https://IPorFQDN of the server where you installed WFA. Ensure that the latest Adobe Flash Player is installed.

 

Login using the credentials provided during the installation

 

Setup OnCommand Workflow Automation

Launch the Setup Wizard

 

Select the version of OnCommand Unified Manager that has been installed. If you have not installed OnCommand Unified Manager (UM), you would have to pause the setup and install UM first. In my setup I chose UM 6.0 since I already have it installed.

 

For WFA to communicate with UM, you have to create a user account in UM.

 

If you have not created the user account in UM, login to UM and create the following 

database user account.

 

Enter the database user credentials for UM.

You will receive the following message when WFA is successfully connected to UM.

 

Enter the admin credentials of the cluster if you are using NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP.

 

Once the NetApp Storage is added successfully, you will receive the message. I strongly recommend that you visit the Workflow Automation community to understand more about this product.

 

Add additional Data Source

During the above setup, UM is added as a Data Source for WFA. If you want to automate vSphere Infrastructure tasks then you should also add the vCenter Server as a Data Source in WFA.

To add vCenter Server, navigate of Execution > Data Sources > Click to add a Data Source.

Enter the following information

• Name: Descriptive name for the vCenter Server instance.
• Data Source Type: Select VMware vCenter
• Home Name: Enter the IP or FQDN
• Port: Use the default port
• User name & Password: Create a user name and assign it Read Only permissions for your vCenter Server. Enter the user name and password here.

IMPORTANT: You must install VMware PowerCLI on the server where WFA is installed; else the following error would be reported while adding vCenter Server as data source.

Unable to load VMware Poweshell Snapin

The data sources have now been added successfully.

 

Configure LDAP integration with OnCommand Workflow Automation

WFA supports LDAP integration to provide role based access. In this demo I am using Windows 2008 R2 Active Directory and will integrate my AD users with WFA.

To configure LDAP, navigate to Administration > WFA Configuration > LDAP

IMPORTANT: Do not change the attribute values for the following:

• User name attribute
• Group membership attribute
• Mail attribute
• Distinguished name attribute

You will find the above attributes in the Attribute Editor tab in user properties for all the users created in the AD.

Enter the LDAP Server in the following format if you are using default port 389

ldap://ip of fqdn of ad

If you are using a custom port change append :port# to the above address.

Provide the Group names in AD for WFA admins Groups. Now login using the AD user using DOMAIN\USER format.

Once you have successfully logged into WFA, navigate to Execution > Users and you will find that the AD user is now detected with LDAP value set to true.

With this you have completed the install and setup of WFA. You can now select the available workflows in Portal and start exploring them.

Automate vSphere Networking (Create VMkernel & VM Portgroups) using PowerCLI

Welcome: To stay updated with all my Blog posts follow me on Twitter @arunpande !

This blog post provides a simple and easy to use PowerCLI script which allows vSphere administrators & consultants to perform the following tasks AUTOMATICALLY !

• Add multiple ESXi hosts in a cluster
• Create vSphere Standard Switch
• Assign Physical Network cards
• Create Virtual Machine portgroups and assign VLAN
• Create VMkernel Port groups
• Assign IP address, Netmask & Gateway to the VMkernel ports

I have provided comments before each script to help you understand the script better. Please leave a comment if you have any questions.

#Create an Empty array which will save all the values in $esxi variable, 
#you can input values for #ESXi host IP/FQDN using multiple. 
#In this example I have used Read-Host option.

$esxi = @()

#Enter the IP/FQDN of the ESXi servers and this script will 
#continue to prompt you to add hosts untill you stop entering them.

do {
  $input =  Read-Host "Enter the name or IP of the ESXi server"
  if ($input -ne ""){
      $esxi += $input
  }
 }
until ($input -eq "")

#The ESXi hosts that you add in the above step are saved in an array. 
#The below commandlet lets you addd these ESXi host to the cluster "DR-Stie". 
#The credentials have been pre-entered.

foreach ($name in $esxi)
{
add-vmhost -Name $name -location DR-Site -user root -password XXXXXX -force: $true
}

#The below cmdlet allows you to define the last octet for VMkernel interfaces 
#that you want to configure. 
#For example I have used 101 as the last octet for VMkernel interfaces used for 
#vMotion & NFS. Though they would belong to different Subnets & VLANs.

    $vMotionip = 101
    $nfsip = 101

#I am using a for-each loop to perform the below tasks on all the ESXi hosts 
#reported using the get-vmhost cmdlet. 
#Here we are querying all the ESXi host managed by vCenter. 
#You can modify this to query only specific ESXi hosts in cluster.

    foreach ($vmhost in (get-vmhost))
    {

#Here I am defining a variable $vmnic with value of vmnic1. 
#You can use multiple vmnics by separating them using ","

    $vmnic = vmnic1

#Here is am defining a variable $vs for vSiwtch2 while creating the vSwitch.
    
    $vs =  New-VirtualSwitch -VMHost $vmHost -Name vSwitch2

#Here I am creating a new virtual machine portgroup named "VLAN-600-Std-Switch" 
#and assigning it VLAN 600. 
#The output of this cmdlet is saved in $vlan

    $vlan600 =  New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name VLAN-600-Std-Switch -VLanId 600

# I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "Infra".

    New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name Infra -Vlanid 0

# I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "Infra".

    $vmotion = New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name vMotion -VLanId 500

# I have created a new virtual machine portgroup named "NFS" and assigned it VLAN 400. 
#The output of this cmdlet is saved in $nfs

    $nfs = New-VirtualPortGroup -VirtualSwitch $vs -Name NFS -VLanId 400

# We are now creating a VMkernel network interface that will be used for vMotion. 
#I am using the vMotionip+=1 which will increment the last octet of the IP by one.

    New-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmhost -PortGroup $vmotion 
    -VirtualSwitch $vs -IP 192.168.50.$vMotionip -SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 
    -VMotionEnabled: $true

    $vMotionip+=1

# We are now creating a VMkernel network interface that will be used for NFS. 
#I am using the nfsip+=1 which will increment the last octet of the IP by one.

    New-VMHostNetworkAdapter -VMHost $vmhost -PortGroup $nfs 
    -VirtualSwitch $vs -IP 192.168.40.$nfsip -SubnetMask 255.255.255.0 
    -VMotionEnabled: $false

    $nfsip+=1

    }