You can access the Management Console from the following link. You will see a login screen like the one listed below. Use the user name and password that was entered during the install or if you have setup LDAP/AD integration to login into the console.

http://servername/LabManager/

Now that you have logged into the console you will be greeted with the Welcome screen. This will give you some details about what you have created in VMware Lab Manager over time.

You will notice on the left side of the console there is a Menu in an explorer like structure. This will allow you to easily navigate around the console.

How to create new Virtual Machines

When creating and working with existing virtual machines you will find them located in the Workspace area of Lab Manager. A workspace is the area that hold Configurations which is a method to group virtual machines together. A configuration can have 1 virtual machine or many.

There are many reasons why using separate configurations is beneficial to keeping the environment organized. I would suggest that each application team creates a configuration for their team at minimum, this will allow them to control the settings on their virtual machines. At times you may need to create new configurations for short term projects, this will allow you to dispose of the setup once its completed.

Each separate configuration has some settings that can be applied to it that won’t affect others. You are also able to shut down and undeploy your configuration when not using it. This will then free up the computing resources for use by others.

The first step in creating a new configuration is to click the New Configuration button from the Workspace area. You can see from the image below that we are in the Workspace area from the left menu and the button for New Configuration is at the top.

Step 2 in creating the new Configuration. You will be presented with a screen like the one shown below. There are a few fields that you need to fill out and make choices on.

First is the name field at the top, this is the name of your Configuration only. So it should relate to what or who is going to be using the Virtual Machines within it. The next field is the Description this allows you to expand more with notes on what this configuration is used for.

The next couple of choices are for Deployment and Storage Lease times. These settings set how long the configuration will be around for, there are options from 1 hour to never expires. If you choose a selection other than never here the Lab Manager system will automatically dispose of your configuration when the time runs out. This is a good choice if you know that your need is short term and you do not need to hold onto the Virtual Machines once you are done, there is always the option to extend the time or manually delete them also. This will help to keep the environment clean and prevent wasting resources.

The VM Fencing Policy will be explained in a separate section as it’s an advanced feature.

The section at the bottom is where you are choosing how your virtual machine(s) will be created and what they will be named.

You can see from the image below that you are allowed to add from one to many VM (virtual machines) to your configuration. By default one will be added upon creating the New Configuration, but by click the Add VM button pointed out in the image you can add extra VM’s to the configuration.

The first field is the Source selection, this is where you will choose the operating system of the VM that you are creating. By click the down arrow on the filed you will be presented with the available Operating System templates.

The next field is the Name filed and this will be the Server Name of the VM created. This server name will be reflected in the Console and it will also be applied as the Windows server name.

The Network filed is listing the Lab Manager private network that the VM will be connected to. The IP address mode shows that the VM will be assigned a static IP address from a Pool.

The Full Clone option is not selected by default. This should remain as the default unless someone has instructed you to select it. If you opt to use a Full Clone it will consume more disk space in the Lab Manager Environment and allow for fewer VM’s to be created. Once the VM is deleted the space would be returned and be available again.

Ok at this point we have made our selections for the VM’s and assigned them the names. We now need to confirm your selections and click the OK button at the bottom to start the creation of your Configuration and virtual machines.

Now that you clicked OK you are returned back to the Workspace area and you can see that your configuration is being created. From the image below you can see the circle icon that runs while the system is doing work and the status field shows what work is in progress.

From the image below you can now see that your Configuration was created but shows and Undeployed. This means that the Virtual Machines cannot be powered on yet. So we must deploy the configuration in the next step.

In this step we will deploy the configuration and from the image below you can see that we get a menu of functions by moving the mouse over top of the Configuration name that you wish to work with. There are 2 Deploy options listed and they are explained below.

Deploy – This method will allow you to change some settings and is explained on the next page.

Deploy with defaults – This method will automatically deploy the configuration with the selections that you selected when the configuration was created. This is a sage method and can be used normally.

The screen below is showing the options available after we selected to deploy the Configuration.

Network Connectivity Section:

The option to Fence Virtual Machines is explained in a later part of this document. It allows for you to provide a firewall type Fence around your configuration to keep it from communicating with other VM’s inside of Lab Manager.

The option for select resources allows you to select a container within Lab Manager that can separate compute resources. At this time there is just once Resource Pool so the default select is OK.

You are able to change the Deployment Lease time here or leave it to match was you previously set it to be.

The section for Power on Virtual Machines gives you a couple of more options. The first one might be helpful if your creating a large configuration with several VM’s. You will be able to later set a boot order to control which VM boots up first. The other option is just choosing if you want the VM’s to be powered on after they are deployed.

Now that you are Deploying your configuration you will see a screen like the one below. It shows you that its working and the Status shows Deploying. Once it finishes you will see an image like the 2^nd on this page.

Your configuration now shows that it’s Deployed and you can see from the image below that the Thumbnail images of the VM’s are changed. This reflects that the VM’s were powered on and are booting up. Each VM will boot up and will have a customization script applied to it and will then reboot and be ready for use. The script applies the Windows name and IP address to the VM. This last step takes about 5 minutes to complete.

At this step I have waited for the VM’s to complete their reboots and they are ready and waiting at the sign on screens. You can see from the Thumbnails that they are waiting at the login screens also. The image below shows us looking at our configuration from the Workspace screen. By placing your mouse over the configuration name it gives us a list of options that you can see in the image below. Note these choices affect all VM’s in the configuration.

Open – Opens the configuration and shows more details about VM’s

History – Will show changes to the configuration over time

View Consoles – Will open up Windows consoles for all VM’s in the configuration

Suspend – Places the VM’s in a suspended mode.

Reset – Will reset VM’s (good to use if they become unresponsive)

Snapshot – Will be explained more in later documentation

Shut Down – Will gracefully shutdown the virtual machines

Power Off – This will forcibly power off the virtual machines

Undeploy Save State – Will power off and undeploy the configuration and save memory state of the virtual machines.

Undeploy Discard State – Will power off and discard anything that was running at the time. Any data on the disk remains intact.

Clone – Will make an exact copy of the configuration to use separately

Library Options – Will be explained in later documentation

Properties – Allows you to adjust or view settings about the Configuration

In the view below we have opened the Configuration that we created. This view now shows some more detail about each VM that running. We can see VM names, Status, IP address and Template which will tell you what OS it’s running.

If you place your mouse over the VM Name you will get a list of options that can be performed. These are similar to the ones from the previous section, except these will only be performed on the VM that you selected.

Since we want to begin working with our VM we will choose View Console selection. This will open up a session and allow us to work with our VM.

From the screen below you can see that we now have a console session open and can interact with our VM. By hovering over the VM name at the top as shown below we get many of the same options again, to control power and reset.

Most important there is a option for CTRL + ALT + Delete which is required to login to Windows VM’s. Once you make a selection move your mouse into the counsel area and click this will switch focus to that area and your mouse and keyboard functions will affect the VM. You can release the focus from the VM by pressing the CTRL + ALT keys and you will be back controlling the console and your computer. This is always displayed at the bottom of the window when in console screens.

In this last picture we have returned to the view of our configuration. Along the top there are tabs that show our VM’s Networks, Configuration Diagram and History. We covered the history earlier. So we are going to focus on the Configuration Diagram tab.

This shows us a view that represents each VM and its network cards and shows how they are all connected. With JukeBox we primarily just use one private network so it’s not that confusing. But if you have a need to use the Fencing that we spoke about earlier this view may help you visualize your configuration.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

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Hopefully you are fairly familiar with how VMware Lab Manager works and I don’t loose you. The limit that I will cover here is when you are creating a New Configuration in a Workspace within Lab Manager when you select a VM Template to use by default the Datastore that it will be created on is locked. The Datastore that it is locked onto is the one that the VM Template is sitting on. This is done for a reason, since by default when creating these new configurations the new VMs created form the Template will be a Linked Clone of the original. For a Linked Clone to work it must reside on the same Datastore as the master VM image.

As you are probably aware that use Linked Clones will save you a lot of disk space on your Datastores so if you do not have a valid reason to not use them I would suggest to leave it this way. Now the only thing that I see is depending on the size of your VMs and your Datastore you could eventually run out of space for this Template on a particular Datastore. To solve that issue you could expand the Datastore or Clone your Template to another Datastore and start creating Linked Clones from that one. If anyone else has run into this issue and has a better idea drop something in the comments.

I have pasted a couple of screen shots below showing what the screens will look like with the default Linked Clone method. And then the option to do a Full Clone which will copy the entire template to the new VM and end up using all of the space.

Here is a note that I found in a VMware KB article to help explain this behavior also.

In vCenter Lab Manager, the configuration files will only be accessible from the same host or datastore as the base template. For example, if you have a Virtual Machine 1 on DataStore1, all the configurations you create from Virtual Machine 1 will be created on DataStore1.

Default option using Linked Clones in Lab manager

Full Clone option in Lab Manager

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

I will be showing you step by step that the vCD setup wizard takes you through. This will show you how to created Virtual Datacenters, Organizations, Networks and Pools, Catalogs and Media. You will begin to get a good base understanding of how vCloud Director works. I will also point out some similarities with Lab Manger 4.0 for those of you that have used LM in the past.

Logging into vCloud Director

Before getting to this initial login screen you will need to supply a password for the admin account and enter the vCloud Serial number. You will not be able to test out vCloud Director in your lab unless you get a trial code or have an NFR license, unless you are lucky enough to have a valid license code to use.

vCloud Director first time setup Wizard

Now that you have logged in you can see below you are presented with the first screen of the vCD setup wizard. This process is broken up into 8 main parts that will step you through setting the bones of the configuration.

Read my full blog post after the jump for complete details.

Attaching a new vCenter Server to vCD

The first step is to attach to a new or existing VMware vCenter server. This is going to allow vCloud Director to gain access to VMware hosts, networks and resources pools. You will need to supply the vCenter server name or IP address along with login credentials.

The next step is going to ask for details about connecting to the vShield Manager virtual machine that you imported. This is going to handle all of the firewall and security features in vCloud Director.

The last screen in this stage is displaying the information that you entered before committing it. Make sure to double check since it will be easier to change now than having to go back and change later.

Create Provider vDC

You have now moved to stage 2 of the initial setup wizard for vCD. In this stage you will create your first Provider vDC (Virtual Data Center). You can use vDC’s to divide up your compute power for locations, SLA’s or any other physical or logical reason that you may have.

You will now select a vCenter server to connect to from the first column. This will then populate a list of resources pools, these pools with show any that exist currently on your VC server. This includes the root pools for the VMware hosts.

Next you will select the datastore(s) that you wish to grant access to on this Virtual Datacenter. The list is populated based on the vCenter server that you selected in earlier step.

In this step you need to provide credentials so that vCD can install the vCloud Director agent onto each host to allow it access to the resource pools that you selected earlier. You can use a global set of credentials or an ID specific to a certain host depending on your setup.

The last page is a summary of your selections for this stage.

Create External network in vCD

So starts the next stage of the vCD setup wizard which covers the External network setup. This screen is going to pull networks/port groups from the vCenter server that you are connected to. These networks will allow you connection out to the internet or your production network for example. In my sample Lab used for this write up I create a couple of empty port groups.

This step is now gathering network related details and asking you to assign a Static IP pool for use on this network. This reminds me very much of Lab Manager 4 in setting up network within that product.

This step is just asking you to provide a meaningful name and description to the External Network so that it will make sense to people when looking at it later.

Final screen is again a confirmation screen showing your selections before committing them.

a

Create Network Pool in vCD

So in this stage you are going to setup a Network Pool in vCloud Director. You can see from the image below that there could be 3 options based upon how you have setup your infrastructure. Since my lab is a simple setup for now I’m not using VLAN tagging or a vNetwork Distributed Switch. So my only option was to use vSphere port group based network pools.

This step is asking you to select the vCenter server that you will be using to setup this stage, in case you have more than one.

I am now able to select a port group from the list below. The only thing to note here was that it states that it must be an unused port group. So make sure that it is empty.

Again you are just providing a name and description that will make sense later. You could name these based on location, customer, business division or any other logical reason for your install.

Create New Organization in vCD

Now we move onto the next stage of vCD setup wizard. In this part we will be creating an Organization that will consume resources. This Organization is very similar to what an Organization was in VMware Lab Manager. You can use them to setup a Company, Customer or Business unit. Its up to you and your business need as to how you will divide things up.

For each Organization you will have different options on how you will setup LDAP for authentication. This is where vCD separates its self from Lab Manager. Since LM was geared towards working with only one LDAP. With vCD you can work with different LDAP sources for each Organization.

For simplistic reasons I choose not to use LDAP for my lab. So below I am creating a user manually for the sake of this lab. You can see that a role is assigned along with generic user information.

For the remainder of the user setup window you can see that for each user you have additional options that can be set. Your allowed to setup the number of Virtual Machines that can be stored or Running for the user.

This screen is showing the user that I created and allows me to create additional ID’s if needed.

This step allows you to choose whether the Organization that you are creating will be able to publish / share its Catalog with other Organizations within vCloud Director. There could be several reasons that come to mind that you might want to do this. Again you need to give this thought to see how it fits into your overall plan. You can always change this by editing the Org later on.

This step allows you to setup the Email preferences to allow VMware vCD to send email alerts.

This step is setting up the retention policies on Virtual Machines that will live within this Organization. On this screen you can set policies that control the Maximum runtime leases within VMware vCloud Director along with Storage Leases. There are also options to control the leases for vApp templates.

This screen is a continuation of the policies screen from above. Is this lower portion of the policies section you can set Quotas on the number of Running Virtual Machines and Stored VM’s.  There are also some additional limits at the bottom that can be applied for connections and resource intensive operations.

This last screen is the settings confirmation screen.

Allocate resources to an Organization

So onto the next stage of the setup and we are now Allocating resources to our Organization that we created earlier. You can see below the Provider DC that we created is listed and its showing us the percentage of Processor, Memory and Storage used.

On this step we are presented with 3 different Resource Allocation Models that we can use. The choices are Allocation Pool, Pay as you go and Reservation Pools within VMware vCloud Director.

In this screen I select the Resource Allocation Method so that you can see how resources are controlled. This Resource Model lets you control the amount of CPU GHz at a percent guarantee. You also have the same approach for Memory allocation. There is a setting more max number of VM’s that can be created also. In the lower portion vCloud Director is giving you an estimate based upon the settings you have chosen and the available resources of the Organization that you have setup.

I backed up a step and choose the Pay as you Go Model in vCD to let you see the options available with this method. This method is only commiting resources when the vApps are running in the Organization VDC.

And lastly the third model is the Reservation Pool Model that is being shown below. This method offers guaranteed resources to the Organization vDC and lets users control and commit on a per VM basis.

Next it’s asking we to allocate storage to this Organization. It is showing me the amount of space available in the Datastore that was assigned to the Org when we set that up earlier. You can then commit the amount that you want and decide if you want it to be Thin provisioned.

Now we need to select a Network Pool.

Next you need to name your Organization vDC just as we did in other steps. You also can choose to Enable the vDC now or leave it inactive for now.

The final screen is confirming your selections.

Add Network to an Organization

Ok it’s network time in the setup wizard. As you can see from the image below its allowing you to create Internal and External networks in your Org. This also reminds me a log of Lab Manager with it’s Virtual Networks. You can see from the option below that its using a NAT’d setup and routing the external traffic into our Org. There is also and Advanced setup option which is shown in the next image.

In this image I selected the Advanced option to setup the network settings.

This is the option that I ended up selecting for it’s simple setup. It will have a internal and external connection but the external will have a direct connection. So it won’t be fenced or fire walled off and need traffic routed to it.

In this step you are setting up the Internal Org Network for vCD. You can see the available port groups that are setup on your vCenter server. It allows you to see only networks that this Org has permissions to use or see all available networks.

You are now setting up IP information for your Internal Network.

Now you must name the Internal vCD Organization Network.

This step you are setting up the External Organization network and selecting from available networks that were setup earlier for external use.

Here is just the confirmation screen.

Create a vCD Catalog

Now onto the final step of the setup wizard. You are now going to create a Catalog for your customer. You are presented with a list of customers that are setup, select the right one and proceed. This is another step again that reminds me a lot of how Lab Manager worked. The vCD Catalog feature is kind like what the Library feature in Lab Manager strives to be. Within a Catalog you will be able to publish Templates, vApps and Media for people to consume.

Your just naming your Catalog in the vCD step.

This screen is asking if you want to have the vCD Catalog remain private to this Organization or allow if to be published for other Organizations to use.

You have now finished the basic setup of VMware vCloud Director. From this point you can create Virtual Machines, vApps and attach media to the Catalog and allow them to be used. All of these steps from the wizard are the same methods that you will use later on to add additional resources from within the vCD admin panel. So these screens will become very familiar as you use the product more.

OK as promised here is a list of good blog articles from other community members that have documented the setting up of the underlying infrastructure required to run VMware vCloud Director. These guys have created great step by step guides some including videos to show you how to create and install the virtual machines necessary before you can get to this stage.

Hany from Hypervisor – vCloud install

Duncan from Yellow Bricks – vCloud install

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

So how does this work out since Lab Manager was sold as normal per socket licenses and vCloud Director is now sold on the new VMware per VM licenses. It breaks down like this for each Lab Manager license you will get 20 per VM licenses of vCloud Director. So if you purchased 6 sockets of Lab Manager that would equal 120 Per VM licenses for vCD.

I personally could not find this promotion on the Partner portal so you should inquire with your VMware rep for details.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)

The setup and design challenges with Lab Manager make ESX look easy. Sure it sits on top of ESX but the possibilities are endless for the number of configurations that you can establish within the environment. You can configure physical/virtual networks, templates, pools, workspaces and countless other items. All this and the ability to offer a self service option to users with different levels of permissions to restart VM’s and deploy or destroy VM’s.

I will be writing more blog posts on Lab Manager in the weeks to come that will go into more depth on specific features.

About Brian

Brian is a Technical Architect for a VMware partner and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and is helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. This blog Virtualize Tips was started to document and remember things that I come across while working with tech.

Mail | Web | Twitter | LinkedIn | More Posts (169)