#Main Purpose Virtual Pod that demonstrates containers management in vSphere leveraging NSX for more flexibility and a better security. Without impact on your existing environnement: easy to install, easy to play with it and easy to uninstall.

Download 2 Virtual Machines ready to launch within Fusion on Mac OS X (should also work with Workstation and VirtualBox)

Pre-requisites:

• ESX01 / VM #1: 12Gb (24Gb is better) of Memory and 128Gb of Disk (Thin)
• ESX02 / VM #2: 8Gb (24Gb is better) of Memory and 40Gb of Disk (Thin)
• More memory to accept more worlkloads or for best performance
• Tested on Fusion 8.0 (Apple MacBook Pro 16Gb of Memory), vSphere 6.0U1 (Intel NUC i5 16Gb of Memory) and vSphere 5.5 on vBlock with success

The logo:

And about Docker Adoption

#Installation and Setup

Wait at least 20' after lauching ESX VMs in order to see @IP of vPodRouter and to let VCSA a warm-up. If you start up vRA/vRA-IaaS, wait more 15' to be sure that all systems are ready. In order to improve performance, I recommend to increase memory and CPU for VCSA (from 3Gb to 8Gb, from 1 vCPU to 2 vCPU). Although, the environment is pretty responsive on my Mac MacBook Pro (i7 / 16Gb / 1To SSD).

###Memory Overcommitment In order to start ESX with more memory, we need to activate this feature. Create or modify the config file with:

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = 25

File location is respectively:

Fusion => /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/config
Workstation => C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Workstation\config.ini

I don't recommend to enable this feature unless to accept very low performance due to the high usage of disk instead of memory.

###Nested Env Fusion configuration, verify if the VT-x/EPT is exposed:

Nested ESX, as a VM, in VCSA - without it VMs can't be started:

Put a static route on your box in order to reach the internal network:

• The {vPodRouter IP} will be found on the ESX Console when vPodRouter VM is up and running.
• Mac OS: route add -net 172.16.66.0/24 {vPodRouter IP}
• Windows: route add 172.16.66.0 mask 255.255.255.0 {vPodRouter IP}
• Test your env with: ping 172.16.66.1 (vPodRouter) and ping 172.16.66.2 (VCSA)
• Gateway, DNS Server and NTP server: 172.16.66.1 (vPodRouter)
• vPodRouter is a DHCP Server for 172.16.66.200 to 172.16.66.254
• NFS Datastore: 172.16.66.1:/data
• SNAT outside network to access Internet

You should add the DNS Server in your resolv.conf or entries below in etc/hosts:

172.16.66.1 vpodrouter.vpod.local
172.16.66.2 vcsa.vpod.local
172.16.66.3 esx01.vpod.local
172.16.66.4 esx02.vpod.local

Credentials:

• vCenter -> [email protected] / VMware1!
• ESX -> root / VMware1!
• vPodRouter -> vmware / VMware1!
• NSX Manager -> admin / VMware1! and admin / VMware1!VMware1! for Controller and EdgeGW

VCSA URL -> https://vcsa.vpod.local

If you're facing some DHCP issues with VM receiving IP from Fusion instead of vPodRouter, you must disable Fusion's DHCP feature for the second NIC (often vmnet1). (More details how to do it)[http://goo.gl/B7N0j9]

#vSphere Integrated Containers Quick and quite simple:

• start VIC VM trough vCenter
• login to VIC via SSH or console with root / VMware1!
• create a new VCH with the script ./create-vch.sh VCH01 dsLocalESX01 found in /root
• after creation you could enjoy a new container Host in setting export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://{VCH IP}:2376
• delete VCH with ./destroy-vch.sh VCH01 dsLocalESX01

Some caveats:

• VCH creation from the GUI could not work due to unknown reasons
• VCH creation on the NFS Datastore (dsNFS) is possible but performance is low
• You could create VCH and leverage NSX but you must create IPSets for FW containers or use NSX 6.2.1+ with IP & MAC discovery

#vRA 7, Yes already installed! vRA URL: https://vra.vpod.local with administrator / VMware1! Demo Tenant: https://vra.vpod.local/vcac/org/demo with admin / VMware1!

How to install GuGent:

• Donwload bits from https://vra.vpod.local:5480/installer/GuestAgentInstaller_x64.exe or https://vra.vpod.local:5480/installer/LinuxGuestAgentPkgs.zip
• Import IaaS Certificat in /usr/share/gugent with echo | openssl s_client -connect iaas.vpod.local:443 | sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' > cert.pem
• Execute in /usr/share/gugent this script installgugent.sh iaas.vpod.local:443 ssl
• Copy this file from vRA Appliance on your Linux box which will be the template /opt/vmware/share/htdocs/service/software/download/prepare_vra_template.sh
• Execute the script locally, so you're ready to deploy app

App Blueprint example and ready to demo:

• MySQL admin credentials are: admin / changeme
• App URL: https://{front_web_ip}:8443
• PHPMyAdmin URL: http://{backend_db_ip}:8081/phpmyadmin
• Design of Owncloud Blueprint composed by 2 Docker containers in 2 VMs
• Managed Items in vRA
• The Owncloud deployed, Up and Runnig!

[email protected] | @bdereims | https://github.com/bdereims/vpod