by Tom Stephens, Senior Technical Marketing Architect, VMware
Evaluating software to make sure that it is fit for purpose in your environment can be a time consuming task. One has to acquire the hardware, get the software, and configure the environment. Only then can they get to the business of performing the evaluation. Of course, virtualization helps here. Just a quick look at the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace and you’ll see hundreds of pre-packaged solutions ready for you to download and play with.
Of course, VMware provides virtual appliances of its software as well. By going to VMware.com, you can download virtual appliances for vCenter Server, vCenter Orchestrator, and even vCloud Director!
By using the vCloud Director Appliance, you can have a fully functional vCD environment ready in minutes. In the current version, the vCD Appliance even contains an embedded Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition (XE) database that eliminates the need to configure an external database.
Now the vCloud Director Appliance does have some limitations. As it’s only intended for use with evaluations of vCloud Director, the scale of the deployment is limited to:
- One vCloud Director cell
- Two vCenter Servers
- 10 organization vDCs
- 100 virtual machines
- Up to 11GB of information stored in the embedded database
As you can see, these limitations are generous enough to let you build out quite a large environment for your evaluation.
After you sign in to evaluate vCloud Director, you will be presented with the option to download the vCloud Director Appliance as an .ova file. This .ova file can then be deployed through an existing vSphere environment as normal. Once done, you’ll see you have a CentOS 5.6 based VM that serves as the vCloud Director Appliance.
Complete step-by-step instructions for configuring the vCloud Director Appliance can be found in the vCloud Director 1.5 Evaluation Guide.
The appliance is intended to be a plug-and-play solution for evaluation environments. Due to this, there shouldn’t be any maintenance required on your part. However, if you need to, here is the login information for the vCloud Director Appliance:
Username = root
Password = Default0
Additionally, the account information to access the embedded Oracle XE database is:
Username = vcloud
Password = VCloud
The vCloud Director Appliance is a fairly recent release, having just been released in Nov 2011. As such, there are not too many known issues. In fact, off the top of my head, I can only name one:
- Ability to use the vCloud Director Appliance with VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager. Currently, there are some issues trying to integrate Chargeback with a instance of the vCloud Director Appliance. VMware is aware of this and we are testing a fix to the issue now. Expect to see a KB article out soon on this.
Performing an evaluation of vCloud Director using the appliance is certainly something you should consider. It will no doubt save you a lot of time!
This is an excellent appliance. If you need it for longer than the eval period and have licensing to support it longer than the eval period, check out this article: http://d3planet.com/rtfb/2011/11/28/extending-the-life-of-your-vmware-vcloud-director-appliance-and-changing-certificates/
It helps keep it around longer term for testing.
This is huge. Especially as a preparation to your new certification. Do you think that appliance will be enough to prepare to the exam?
It will certainly help. Remember though, the vCD appliance only supports one vCD cell. Thus, if you are trying to play with multiple cell architectures, then you’ll need the full product. In addition, as it uses it’s own embedded database right now, you won’t have to learn the database administration side. Other than that, the vCD appliance is no different than the real product and should be a great help.
Clement – Good post, but something you may not realize… The Oracle database will expire in 180 days.
Tom, well at least it’s better than 60d.
Wonder if I can track down an oracle license.
I think it is not as much beneficial to held exams. It might be possible that after a long time use you familiar with it.
by default :
Additionally, the account information to access the embedded Oracle XE database is:
Database name = …………… <<—- ?????
Username = vcloud
Password = VCloud
Thanks
Can some one provide me default user name /passwd vcloud director appliance to mange console . I have tired root passwd default0 is not working
If your using the latest version of the appliance (5.1) then read my blog article here http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/vcloud-director-5-1-virtual-appliance-passwords.html
root password for vcloud appliance is not default0,it is ‘vmware’.
Depends on what version of the appliance you are using. The vCloud Director 1.5 Appliance used default0. The newly released 5.1 version has the default password of vmware.
See http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/vcloud-director-5-1-virtual-appliance-passwords.html
Hi Tom.
Does the vcd 1.5 appliance stop functioning after the evaluation period runs out? We have not used ours for a few months and are now unable to connect to the management interface. I am able to connect to the basic config interface e.g. vcd.company.com:5480 but not the main cloud interface e.g https://vcd.company.com/cloud or http://vcd.company.com . Any assistance with this would be much appreciated. We would like to add another eval key to complete our POC if possible.
The appliance does not stop functioning, but you will begin to see messages about the evaluation license having expired. You should be able to continue your evaluation, you just need to put up with the messages. Sounds like you have a different issue if you are unable to connect.
Have you considered restarting your eval using VCD 5.1?
Regards,
-Kyle
Having some problem with root password
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/09/vcloud-director-5-1-virtual-appliance-passwords.html
Curious as to why the XE database expires at all – from the Oracle site:
“Oracle Database 11g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 code base. It’s free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer.”
I’ve used earlier versions of Oracle XE that never expired, but they were restricted as to the number of cores they’d support, the size of tables that can be used, maximum amount of RAM supported, etc.