Installing & Configuring VMware Life Cycle Manager (LCM)
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I recently noticed that VMware was offering a 30-day trial version of their new product, Life Cycle Manager. This product came about through the acquisition of Dunes Technologies back in Q3 of 2007, and it was formerly known as the Virtual Machine Orchestrator (VMO branding is still in the new product).
After attempting to run through the installer on a sandbox Windows 2003 server, and subsequently getting a headache, I realized there was a virtual appliance available for download – perfect. Simply download the virtual appliance, turn it on, check to see what IP address it receives and then point your web browser to it, e.g. http://192.168.3.45
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The first step is to change the default password (‘vmware’) to something more secure, that’s done on the General Tab —> Change Password.
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Next, setup the Network configuration.
- On the first tab, choose the applicable IP address from the drop down box.
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- On the Network Configuration tab, I left everything default.
- On the SSL certificate tab, you need to import your Virtual Center certificate, which resides, surprisingly enough, on your Virtual Center server. The typical path is:
\\_virtualcenterservername_\c$\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\SSL
The filename is rui.crt.
Once you’ve done that successfully, you should see the VMware certificate listed.
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On to the most exciting configuration component, LDAP!
The default is OpenLDAP running on the appliance, but that’s no fun at all. Most people will be in an Active Directory environment, so let’s configure it for that, shall we?
- Select Active Directory from the LDAP client drop down box.
- In primary LDAP host enter a domain controller. Not sure what a domain controller is or the name of yours? Drop to a command line and run nslookup:
- Then type in your domain name, e.g. test.systemsarchitech.com
- A list will be returned with Addresses. Pick two from the list. To ensure that they are indeed listening for LDAP queries, telnet on 389. e.g. telnet 192.168.2.45 389. If it goes to a blank screen, you’re golden.
- In the Root field, enter your primary domain name (e.g. test.systemsarchitech.com).
- In Username, enter the full path to your username, or the username you want to use as the service account. If you don’t know the full path, you can also find this from the magical command line with dsquery:
- dsquery user -name jasonlangone
- ^ returns “CN=jasonlangone,OU=Test Administrators,OU=Super Administrators,DC=test,DC=systemsarchitech,DC=com”
- Enter that entire thing, minus the quotations, in the username field.
- Enter the correct password in the password field.
- I left timeout default.
- I also checked Deference Links and Filter Attributes.
- Click Apply Changes.
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Now, off to the LDAP Lookup Paths. There are three fields here and they are explained below:
- User Lookup Base: The highest level OU you want to search for potential LCM users.
- Group Lookup Base: The highest level OU you want to search for potential LCM groups.
- VMO Admin Group: The full DSN to the group in Active Directory that you want to use to be the LCM Administrators. To find the full path to the group, once again, use dsquery:
- dsquery group domainroot -scope subtree -name “MY VMO Admin Group*”
- Now Apply Changes.
If you’ve done everything correctly (highly unlikely in your first attempt), you will successfully pass the Test Login tab. If you were successful on your first go, pat yourself on the back and open up a bottle of Luc Pirlet’s Syrah-Mourvèdre en Fût de Chêne.
On the Database tab, feel free to use the built-in PostgreSQL. It’s fine for testing.
The Server Certificate tab should already be taken care of, so move on.
The Licenses tab is where you will need to import your trial license that you receive from VMWare upon successfully registering for the download.
The Server tab is where you go to stop and start services.
The VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (1.3.0) tab is another prerequisite to being able to actually USE LCM.
Enter the necessary information, as shown below:
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- I also selected Session per User.
- Apply Changes and move on.
You can also configure SNMP or SMTP if you’d like. The default for SMTP will be to use the appliance.
Now you’re ready to login. Fire up the VMO client and enter your Active Directory account that’s a member of the VMO Admin Group, defined above.
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Upon logging in you should see a screen that looks like this:
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...I will cover actually using LCM in a soon to be posted future article.
Cheers!
- Jason Langone
Commenting is closed for this article.
2007 Systems Architech.
I’m impatient to see the next article about LCM because i’m a little confused… Good work !
demz | May 19, 10:45 AM | #