If you don't want to use user@domain.com in vRA Login page, configure SSO wisely!

I have been working on various vRealize Automation consulting engagements and have come across customers who don’t want to use the login name in UPN format i.e. user@domain.com when logging in the vRA portal. They prefer using other traditional methods like domain\user or AD user id.

In this blog post I will try to cover all those options that you may use or recommend to your customer so that they don’t have to use the format user@domain.com when logging into the vRA portal.

Following are your options:

1. vCenter Single Sign On

If you haven’t implemented vRA yet and currently in the design phase, you may suggest customer to use vCenter Single Sign On instead of using vRealize Identity Appliance. However there are some pros and cons of using vCenter SSO over Identity Appliance which you must be aware of when taking this decision, I will rather cover that in a different blog post.

We know that if you vCenter SSO the default domain is Local OS hence you have to set your Windows Active Directory as Default Domain in order to avoid using @domain.com in the login name.

2. Add Identity Store using Active Directory

If you are going to propose using Identity Appliance in your solution, when you add an Identity Store use Active Directory and enter the NTLM name of the domain in the Domain alias field. This would allow you to login using domain\user.

3. Client Integration Plugin

With the Client Integration Plugin you can login using “Use Windows session authentication” option available on the vRA login page. This will enable the user to use his existing Windows session for logging into vRA. If you are using vRA 6.2 and you click on the “Download Client Integration Plugin” link it may not work however if you have a vCenter Server you may download the Client Integration Plugin from its login page and use the same for Identity Appliance SSO.

If you have installed the Client Integration Plugin and the login fails using error “Windows Session Authentication login has failed as a result of an error caused by the VMware Client Integration Plugin” then follow the instructions in VMware KB http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2090617.

Once the Client Integration Plugin is setup correctly you would be able to login using “Use Windows session authentication” and hence won’t have to use @domain.com.

4. Change default Identity Store using JXplorer (UNSUPPORTED)

In the first option, we saw how we can configure a default Identity Store for vCenter SSO using the Web Client. Unfortunately we don’t have a similar option for Identity Appliance SSO. To workaround this, you may use JXplorer to enable a default Identity Store for Identity Appliance.

1. First Download & Installer JXplorer, the installer is available at http://jxplorer.org/downloads/
2. Launch JXplorer and connect to the Identity Appliance SSO. Click on File > Connect

3. Enter the following details:

• Host – Identity Appliance SSO FQDN or IP
• Level – User + Password

For all other options use the values provided in the screenshot

4. Once you have connected to the SSO, navigate to local > vsphere > Services > Identity Manager > Tenants > select vsphere.local
5. Click on Table Editor and search for vmwSTSDefaultIdentityProvider and enter the domain name in the value section.

NOTE: This option is not supported by VMware GSS and if you run into any issues you would have to revert the value of vmwSTSDefaultIdentityProvider to local os. Its recommended that you evaluate other options before implementing this in production.

Troubleshooting MSDTC when vCenter Storage & Network is not detected by vRealize Automation

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I am currently working on vRealize Automation 6.2 implementation where I have completed the distributed install. When. Post the installation I started the basic configuration where I added the vCenter server, Fabric & Business Groups.

However when I was creating the reservations I noticed that the Storage & Network details were not detected. This was not new, I had faced this issue earlier but it was not an easy fix this time as the Windows firewall was enabled on the Windows database & IaaS servers and it could not be disabled.

In this blog post I would like to share the different troubleshooting steps that I have performed to troubleshoot and fix this issue.

Step 1 – Have a clear understanding about the problem statement.

In this case the Storage Paths and Network was not detected when creating the Reservations for Business Groups.

Note that at least one data collection should be completed successfully for the Compute Resource before this data is populated in the Reservations.

Step 2 – Investigating the cause & FIX the issue

Look at the status of the vSphere Endpoint make sure that it’s OK. To confirm this, navigate to Infrastructure > Compute Resources > Compute Resource.

Next navigate to Infrastructure > Monitoring > Log to check the errors. In this case the below errors were reported.

Error	2/4/2015 7:55 PM	Manager Service	Manager Service	XXXXX	XXXXX	DataBaseStatsService: ignoring exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgent Inner Exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgentCapabilities
Error	2/4/2015 7:55 PM	Manager Service	Manager Service	XXXXX	XXXXX	Error processing ping response Error executing query usp_SelectAgent Inner Exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgentCapabilities
Error	2/4/2015 7:54 PM	Manager Service	Manager Service	XXXXX	XXXXX	DataBaseStatsService: ignoring exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgent Inner Exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgentCapabilities
Error	2/4/2015 7:54 PM	Manager Service	Manager Service	XXXXX	XXXXX	Error processing ping response Error executing query usp_SelectAgent Inner Exception: Error executing query usp_SelectAgentCapabilities

While the above errors indicate a possible issue with the IaaS database for detailed information, check the Manager Service logs that is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\vCAC\Server\Logs.

NOTE – If you have multiple servers with manager service installed, check the logs in the server which is Active. You can either check this from the Load balancer to check which node is Active or you can log into the Server and check the status of the below service, it would be running on the Active server.

Here is the snip of the errors reported in the ALL.txt file

System.ApplicationException: Error executing query usp_SelectManagementEndpoint  ---> System.ApplicationException: Error executing query usp_SelectEntityProperties  ---> System.Transactions.TransactionManagerCommunicationException: Network access for Distributed Transaction Manager (MSDTC) has been disabled. Please enable DTC for network access in the security configuration for MSDTC using the Component Services Administrative tool. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: The transaction manager has disabled its support for remote/network transactions. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004D024)

  at System.Transactions.Oletx.IDtcProxyShimFactory.ReceiveTransaction(UInt32 propgationTokenSize, Byte[] propgationToken, IntPtr managedIdentifier, Guid& transactionIdentifier, OletxTransactionIsolationLevel& isolationLevel, ITransactionShim& transactionShim)

  at System.Transactions.TransactionInterop.GetOletxTransactionFromTransmitterPropigationToken(Byte[] propagationToken)

  --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

This clearly indicates that the MSDTC between the SQL Server & the Web Server was not working. However the MSDTC settings have been configured as per the vRA documentation:

The next thing I tried to do was a DTCPing from the Database Server to the Web Server. DTCPing is a tool provided by Microsoft to troubleshoot MSDTC. The tool is available for free download from http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=2868.

Once you have downloaded DTCPing.exe, run the installer and extract the files in a folder.

You will now see the following files in the folder after extracting the executable.

Repeat the same steps on the Web Server.

Launch the Dtcping on both servers

Sine the communication is initiated from the Web Server to the DB server enter DB server hostname in the MSDTC Simulation window launched on the Web Server

Check the status of the DTCPing command. In my case it initially received an error “RPC Server is unavailable”.  To fix the MSDTC issue, I performed the following steps:

Make sure that the MSDTC is enabled between all the servers so if you have a distributed install of vRA and have multiple Web Servers ensure that MSDTC is enabled.

There shouldn’t be any firewalls between this servers, in case there is a firewall and make sure that the MSDTC ports are open.

IMPORTANT – Disable the Windows firewall on the Web Servers & SQL Database. If this is against customer compliance and security policies you can enable the Windows firewall but create appropriate rules which allows the communication between the two host.

Launch the Windows firewall and click on Advanced Settings > Click on Inbound Rules and click on New Rule.

In Rule Type select Program

Enter the complete path of msdtc.exe

HINT – To find the location, open the task manager and click in Details

Right click on the msdtc.exe application and click on Properties

In Properties window for msdtc.exe you will find the

Now back to our firewall rule. Enter the correct path the msdtc.exe application and click Next

Click on Allow the connection and click Next

I chose the default options

Enter a name and description of the rule and click Finish to create this rule.

Login to the server with Manager Service installed. NOTE: In distributed install, Manager Service is installed in Active/Passive mode, to check the Active node login to the Load balancer.

Restart the below service

To confirm the status, check the server logs located at C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\vCAC\Server\Logs.

If the issue persists, perform the below steps on both the Database & IaaS Servers

• Uninstall MSDTC from Windows Command prompt using msdtc –uninstall command.
• Reboot the Manager Service server
• Install MSDTC on the server using command msdtc –install from the command prompt
• Reboot the Manager Service server
• Make sure MSDTC is enabled as per the below screenshot

UPDATE - set the MSDTC service startup type to Automatic after reinstalling, as it defaults to manual:
sc config msdtc start= auto
sc start msdtc

vRealize Configuration Manager - Introduction

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Firstly, it’s great to start blogging again, was away for the past few months due to some other commitments (new job + my new born baby) but I’m happy to be back again and all set to start a new blog series on vCenter Configuration Manager. In this blog post series, I will cover the following topics:

Product Overview

• Create an intelligent compliance management solution using vRealize Configuration Manager
• Sizing recommendations & installation Options
• Use Cases for vSphere Infrastructure
• Create Compliance Rules and Remediation
• Generate various Reports from vCM

For now, I will exclude the topics of compliance for physical infrastructure and OS patching.

In this post, let’s cover the vCenter Configuration Manager Product overview. How many of you have heard about this product in the past? I won’t be surprised if most of you say that you have not heard about VCM for various reasons. This is going to be my task for the next few days or may be weeks to share maximum information about VCM.

Let’s discuss, why vCenter Configuration Manager is a MUST HAVE for your IT Infrastructure.

All the CXOs want their IT Infrastructure to be secure to prevent any kind of security breach in their IT Infrastructure. This means one has to be aware about all those possible loop holes that may lead to this breach and one must also know how to take corrective action and continuously monitor the Infrastructure.

Following are the high level steps that one has to perform to ensure that the Infrastructure remains secure.

• Identify the critical systems (servers, virtual machines, applications, datacenters etc.). For example all the resources in the production cluster which have business critical applications installed. For vSphere Infrastructure VMware offers hardening guides for different versions of vSphere. The VMware Security Hardening Guides can be downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/security/hardening-guides.

• Note the different components in the above systems and create compliance & security rules. For example, create rules to ensure that SSH access to the ESXi host is disabled and used only for troubleshooting. Create rules to disable clip board copy/paste using the Virtual Machine remote console and the client system.
• Create a process which checks for the above rules on those critical systems and identifies the non-compliant servers.
• Perform the corrective action plan on those non-compliant servers.
• Create a reporting mechanism which checks all the above information periodically (daily, weekly, monthly) and generates a report that can be easily reviewed.

VMware provides security hardening guides which can help you in defining rules to keep your vSphere Infrastructure secure. These Security Hardening Guides can be accessed from http://www.vmware.com/in/security/hardening-guides. Also note that there are change logs which includes the differences in two versions of vSphere.  

All the above tasks when combined together forms a Compliance and Security hardening solution. vRealize Configuration Manager makes it a lot easier to manage all the above tasks but note that it’s not limited only to compliance management you can also do OS provisioning & patching.  

vRealize Configuration Manager is part of vRealize Operations Suite and is available in Advanced & Enterprise license

For more information regarding vRealize Operations Suite license options refer to http://www.vmware.com/in/products/vrealize-operations/compare.html.

vRealize Configuration is also available in vCloud Suite for more information refer to http://www.vmware.com/in/products/vcloud-suite/compare.html.

Gear up to be the next vExpert, start today......

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The first batch of vExpert 2014 has been announced today and the list of vExpert 2014 can be found here. I feel honored & proud to be a part of the vExpert group and CONGRATULATIONS!! to all 2014 vExperts. 

                                                   

If you applied for vExpert 2014 but couldn’t make it, don’t get disappointed. With vExpert 2014 you can submit quarterly nominations; you will find more information here. You will get another chance when the quarterly nominations are open.

Here are some suggestions that may help you in getting vExpert 2014 during the next quarterly nominations:

Blogs – Do you blog? Maintain a blog using Blogger or WordPress and post content regularly. Do not COPY/PASTE steps (with screenshots) from VMware Documentation; your content should be helpful to the large VMware community. Include topics that you think would help others based on your experience during designing, implementation, managing or troubleshooting VMware Infrastructure. Off course you may visit my blog for reference.

This does not have to be limited to blog posts; you can also upload YouTube videos or write Whitepapers.While you can be a generalist but I would recommend specializing in a particular VMware topic/product.

Social Media – What do you use Social Networking sites for? We all use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networking sites for various reasons. Use social networking sites to share and spread the knowledge with others. Make good use of the LinkedIn Groups because this is widely used by VMware users across the globe. I have used the following LinkedIn Groups where I have posted various technical details about VMware

VMware Design Study & Discussion Group

Virtualization Architects and consultants

vmware vSphere troubleshooters

NetApp Virtualization

Technical Sessions – Do you conduct technical sessions on VMware during various events? This is another platform where you get to showcase your expertise about VMware. Start participating in events like VMUG, VMworld, vForum or events organized by your company.

Community – Do you participate regularly in communities? This is one area that I really like because you get a chance to help VMware users. There are various questions asked related to designing, implementation, managing or troubleshooting VMware. When you assist the customers and help them fix the issues you are not only rewarded with points but it’s also challenging which ensures that you don’t lose on your VMware skills. You don’t have to restrict your participation in VMware Communities, you may also participate in VMware Partner Communities. You may access my community link for reference

IMPORTANT: vExpert is all about sharing your knowledge and expertise with VMware Community. Help fellow VMware Community members succeed with the VMware solution by sharing your knowledge and expertise CONSISTENTLY. 

All the best !!