VMware Cloud Director Data Services Extension Configuration Iteration

This blog post is not about how to configure Data Solutions for VMware Cloud Director; it is rather a look at what is required for this solution to work with some caveats that I’ve seen from the field. For details regarding the extension, please check VMware Docs for the Data Solutions Extension.

Prerequisites

Data Solutions primarily capitalizes on Cloud Director from infrastructure as a service perspective, and with the additional integrations on top of Cloud Director. What do I need as a prerequisite to get to provide data services?

• IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service):
  • Organization VDC with some compute and storage capacity and routed networking capabilities.
  • Organization VDC Edge that is capable of reaching the internet and the SPs Cloud Director FQDN.
    
• LBaaS (Load Balancing As A Service):
  • Organization VDC Edge enabled with load balancing (NSX Advanced Load Balancer integration with NSX-T and VCD).
  • An Organization VDC Edge with a Service Engine Group.
    
• K8aaS (Kubernetes As A Service):
  • Container Services Extension capabilities assigned to the organization administrator, with access to TKGm (TKG Multi-Cloud) templates.
  • A provisioned Kubernetes cluster (here, it is very good to size the Kubernetes cluster properly to avoid resourcing issues when the Data Services PODs get created); if the service lingers for more than 10 minutes, then, run a “describe” against the POD, and you might notice details regarding insufficient CPU or memory, which means you’d need to delete the data service and create a new one with an extra size).

Tanzu Registry Account:

Before integrating and enabling the Data Solutions plug-in, there is a very important step that must be done for any Service Provider, and this is related to the registration of a user account:

• In the VCD DS UI, you will be requested to enter credentials for “registry.tanzu.vmware.com“; however, when you head there, there is no link for registration, and actually, you’ll need to register for a VMware Tanzu Network account.
• Register a user account in VMware Tanzu Network (pivotal.io), here VMware Account (pivotal.io), and you’ll need a valid email for this to be able to activate the account.
• Once the account is activated, you’ll need to log in and complete the remaining details for the profile.
• Once logged in, search for “Packages for VMware Tanzu Data Services” and click on “Click here to sign the EULA.” within the yellow warning box.

Data Services Integration

• DSaaS (Data Services As A Service):
  • Data Solutions extension integrated with Cloud Director.
  • Access to the SaaS Harbor registry from Cloud Director.
  • An Organization VDC with the previously mentioned prerequisites; however, here, the Kubernetes cluster will also require access to the SaaS Harbor registry to be able to synchronize the packages.
  • An Organization VDC user with the rights to administer data services (probably here it would be to have a combined role between CSE administration and DS administration).
  • A Kubernetes cluster that is activated via the DS plug-in.

• Troubleshooting Data Services when provisioning:
  • From a VM that can reach the Kubernetes cluster, you can use the following commands to be able dig into the data services PODs and check the status of deployment:
    • kubectl.exe get pkgr -n vcd-ds-system –kubeconfig kubeconfig-<clustername>.txt
      • The reconciliation must be successful here, if the reconciliation has failed, then you can move to the next step.
    • kubectl.exe get pkgi -n vcd-ds-system -o yaml –kubeconfig kubeconfig-<clustername>.txt
      • This will provide details about the installation status and will output further details.
    • kubectl.exe get pkgr -n vcd-ds-system -o yaml –kubeconfig kubeconfig-<clustername>.txt
      • This will provide details about the repository and synchronization.

I hope this helps, and happy data provisioning =).