We all know about how tedious a job it is to find right contents for the product after scrolling through scores of websites and then procuring it. Gosh, and it does not stop at that, the content must be installed on the product. With vRSLCM(vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager) marketplace, all the above-mentioned tedious jobs becomes a walk in the park.
The vRSLCM marketplace provides a single pane of glass for viewing all the contents, downloading the contents and installing the contents on the products.
Wow, all done with ease, just in few clicks. Seems like magic. Isn’t that cool 😊
I know, you can’t wait to get started on this.
Okay then, let’s get started. Below are the steps mentioned for starting with Marketplace in vRSLCM:
- Open the vRSLCM application from browser by connecting to https://<vRSLCM_Address>/vrlcm and login to the application.
- vRSLCM Marketplace depends on the My VMware credentials, configure My VMware from the settings page. This is a onetime activity.
- Go to Marketplace tab and hit the SYNC CONTENT button.It also has a refresh button on the top right corner, for the next time you want to see newly released contents or if any upgrades available. BTW, vRSLCM periodically updates the contents page automatically too. Nice eh 😊
- Voila, we now have all the contents available in vRSLCM Marketplace.
- vRSLCM Marketplace provides you with useful options to filter the contents based on products etc. and a text search option too. Below I am searching for a vROps management pack for AWS, So I set the filter for vROps product and search for AWS and Voila again.
- As seen in the image above, there are different options available on the content card. We have the View Details link to view more information about the content. Mentioned below is the page displayed after clicking on the View Details link. Here we can see the reviews available about the content and view all the activities performed on the content, like downloads etc. On the right-hand side of the page, we can also see the related contents.
- Going back to the content card. There is an INFO icon on the content card to show the compatibility matrix of the content with product. That’s a pretty neat feature to understand with what all versions of product is the content compatible.
- As seen in the previous image, we also have DOWNLOAD option on the content card. Click on the DOWNLOAD link to begin the download of the content. Few contents may have End User License Agreement, click on CONTINUE to proceed with Download of the content
- Just switch to the Download tab in the Marketplace page to check all the downloaded contents. Click on the 3 dots of content card to see options such as Delete i.e. to delete the downloaded content and the other option i.e. Install. Click on Install to install the content on product
- Just select the Data center and environment having the product on which you wish to install the content and hit the INSTALL button. And that’s it, all done. As simple as that, all done in just few click from one place, now that’s awesome 😊.
Content Upgrade notifications in vRSLCM Marketplace:
Just when you thought that it could not get better than this. vRSLCM Marketplace provides with notifications for any new upgrades available for the downloaded contents. You can also select the upgrade option to download the latest version of the content. Below are the steps mentioned,
- Navigate to the Download tab in Marketplace page. A bell notification icon appears on the content card if newer versions of the content are available.
- Click on the 3 dots of the card and a new option to upgrade the content appears. Click on the upgrade option.
- Select the required version to upgrade to, if multiple versions are available. For the selected content, there is only one newer version available. Hit the CONTINUE button to download the new version of the content. The new version of content is now available in vRSLCM Marketplace to be installed on the products.
Troubleshooting section:
While I believe VMware has taken utmost care in providing a seamless experience for their customers using vRSLCM and marketplace especially. I am including a brief troubleshooting section to help you iron out any issues that you may encounter during sync, downloads or install of content in the vRSLCM Marketplace. Below mentioned are few of the scenarios and their possible remediation.
Full Sync in vRSLCM Marketplace
vRSLCM marketplace does an automatic sync process to fetch the latest updates from Marketplace server. These syncs are delta syncs i.e. it only syncs from the time of last successful sync.
In situations where in we would want to sync all of the contents again from the beginning of time, we need to set the fullSync property in lcm.properties file to true and trigger the sync.
Ensure to change the fullSync property back to false after full sync completion, since we would not want to do a time-consuming full sync every time.
Step mentioned below for performing full Sync,
- vi /opt/vmware/vlcm/config/lcm.properties
Update the below property to true
lcm.marketplace.fullSync=false - Hit the refresh button, pointed by the arrow in below image
Contents from Marketplace server not available in vRSLCM Marketplace
Ever wondered why some content available in the Marketplace server but not available in the vRSLCM Marketplace. You are in the right place.
vRSLCM Marketplace only shows the content which have the flag supportsInProduct set as true. We can check the content on the Marketplace server to verify the supportsInProduct flag.
So, the solution here is that the publisher of the content must update the flag supportsInProduct to true.
Steps to verify the flag
- Connect to the VMware marketplace server https://marketplace.vmware.com/
- Search for the required content. Below I am searching for the content “Management Pack for AWS”
- Click on the content to view the details. Copy the slug from the browser URL section, underlined in the below image.
- Connect to the URL https://marketplace.vmware.com/service/api/v1/app/<Slug>
Replace the Slug in the URL above with the one copied in previous step
Ex : https://marketplace.vmware.com/service/api/v1/app/management-pack-for-aws
In the response received check if the flag supportsInProduct is set as true
Unable to install content on vRA
If you get a message “Required entitlement level not present” while installing a vRA content from marketplace on the vRA product. Firstly, verify from the license information on the vRA VAMI page and check if the entitlement required for the content is available. So, if you find that the required entitlement is indeed available, then trigger a Refresh Sync from the vRSLCM Marketplace page. Along with fetching latest details from Marketplace server, this also ensures that the information like licenses and tenant details are fetched from vRA. Once the sync completes, try installing the content again. If the issue persists, it is possible that all the details like the solution user credentials were not captured correctly during the import of the vRA environment, if it was an imported environment. Or the details might have changed later. In such cases we need to verify if the solution user details are in sync between vRA and vRSLCM. Below mentioned are the steps.
- Get Environment ID from vRSLCM. When you press “View Details” on environment card, environment details will be displayed. Capture the environment ID from the URL in browser.
URL will be of the form – https://<vRSLCM_IP>/vrlcm/environments/<environment-id> - Now look for values of __SOLUTIONUSERPASSWORD, __SOLUTIONUSERNAME in the response of the API mentioned below. Replace the environment ID in the API.
API : https://<vRSLCM_IP>/lcm/api/inventory/details?type=environment&id=<environment-id>
The Solution user properties should not be null. - If Present, Check if the same solution user is present in solutionuser.properties file in vRA VA.
Path of file : /etc/vcac/solution-user.properties
If the solution user credentials differ in vRSLCM and vRA, we need to re-import the vRA into vRSLCM. This ensures that all the latest details are captured from vRA and persisted correctly in VRSLCM.
Now trigger a Refresh sync from the vRSLCM Maraketplace page and once the sync completes, try installing the content. We should be back on track and able to successfully install the content on vRA using vRSLCM.
Marketplace sync failure
If you are in a situation where in the Internet is on, My VMware credentials are configured and yet you are not able to sync or download contents form vRSLCM Marketplace. Check if there are any firewall restrictions and ensure that sites and ports mentioned in the link below are white listed.
Disk Space full
You may observe that if huge number of contents are downloaded in vRSLCM Marketplace, it may block further downloads because the disk space is full.
There are two options here to unblock and proceed with the new downloads.
- Delete the downloaded contents which have already been installed on products and are not needed anymore. Unless you want to maintain a copy in vRSLCM marketplace, if it is no more be available on Marketplace server.
- vRSLCM provides an option to increase the storage space. Click on the setting page to find the option to extend storage.
Conclusion
The marketplace feature in vRSLCM is definitely simplifying the process of consuming the contents. With many useful features bundled, it surely is a must use feature of vRSLCM.
Thank you !
