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Simplify License Management across VCF Operations Fleet & Standalone Deployment for Monitoring

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Within a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 fleet, a single VCF Operations instance provides centralized license management and fleet management capabilities for all managed VCF instances.

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That said, additional Standalone VCF Operations 9.0 instances can also be deployed for monitoring only use cases, which is a scenario that has been coming up more frequently with customers.

Although the VCF 9.0 Licensing documentation briefly references this supported use case, there is not much details on how this actually works. After getting a quick primer on this use case from fellow colleague Jared Burns and the VCF Licensing PM, I thought I would put together a quick blog post using some visuals I had created to help explain how this scenario can be setup.

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Automated Initial Configuration of VCF Operations 9 using CASA API

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If you have recently followed my automated deployment of the VCF Operations 9.0 OVA, you might also be interested in automating the initial setup wizard that appears when you first access the appliance in a browser, as shown in the screenshot below.

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Funny enough, this was a topic I had originally planned to cover back in 2014 using the vRealize Operations Cluster and Slice Administration (CASA) API, but I never got to Part 3 of the blog post. 😅

The CASA APIs are still applicable in VCF Operations 9.0 and are now better documented. You can access the built in API documentation by navigating to https://vcf02.vcf.lab/casa/api-guide.html (replace the FQDN with your deployment) which includes example requests, which are always helpful when learning how to use a new API!

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To demonstrate the use of the VCF Operations CASA API to automate the initial configuration, I have created a simple PowerShell script that you can use and extend.

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Automated Deployment of VCF Operations 9 OVA

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After receiving an email asking about automating the deployment of VCF Operations 9.0 using the OVA image, I remembered that I had previously written a blog post on this topic back in 2014. Revisiting that article, it was clear the content needed to be refreshed, especially the OVF properties used within the script.

Since I have a written (not using AI) numerous deployment scripts over the years, I was able to quickly adapt the VCF Operations 9.0 changes and also enhance it a bit further.

Here is both PowerShell (using PowerCLI) and Bash Script (using OVFTool) to automate the deployment of VCF Operations 9.0 OVA

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In addition to deploying the VCF Operations OVA, it will power on the appliance and wait for the /admin URL endpoint to be ready before completing.

Note: Since the bash script uses OVFTool, there is a hidden OVF property that allows you to enable SSH if you need. This option is not available with the PowerShell script.

For additional VCF Operations configurations post-deployment, you can refer to the VCF Operations API.