Using vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager – Part two.

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In Part One we went through the deployment of the two main components of this product, the Lifecycle Manager itself and the Identity Manager. In this second article I will configure the vRLCM to be ready to deploy different vRealize products and I’ll be going through the appliance patching process.

vRLCM Configuration

Add/Expand Disk

Since we will be adding large binaries for upgrading and deploying solutions to the appliance, we have to attach new disk in vCenter, and extend it from the appliance Web UI. 

1) Logon to your vRLCM instance with the user admin@local and choose Lifecycle Operations

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2) Click on the Settings icon in the left-hand pane.

3) Select System Details, click on the Extend Storage button, and enter the details

-Enter the vCenter Host Name, User Name, and Password for the first time.
-Enter the Disk Size in GB and click Extend.

4) Click on the link to review the request and wait until it is completed successfully. If it fails, you will be given an opportunity to retry the operation.

vRLCM Appliance Updates

Before using the Lifecycle Manager, we need to configure some basic system settings as well as verify if the vRLCM appliance is updated with the latest patches and updated with the latest product support packs. 

1)  Go back to the home page choose Locker

2) Add your my.vmware.com credentials and create as many as you need for other vRealize solutions (if you have any).

3) Go back to the home page click on Lifecycle Operations.

4) Click on the Settings icon in the left-hand pane.

5) Click on the Proxy icon to configure the proxy and enter the proxy information.

6) Go back to Settings, choose NTP Servers, and click Add NTP Server to add a server.

7) Go back to Settings, click DNS, and click Add DNS Server to configure the DNS servers.

8) Go back to Settings, click My VMware, and click Add My VMware Account, later used for downloading binaries from the Marketplace.

9) Go back to Settings, click Binary Mapping, click on the Product Patch Binaries tab, and click on Check Patches Online.

10) Click on the provided link to be taken to the request and wait for it to be completed successfully. If there are any errors, you will be given an opportunity to retry the request.

11) Go back to Settings, click Binary Mapping, click on the Product Patch Binaries tab, and click on the down arrow icon in the action column to download the latest patches for vRealize Lifecycle Manager.

12) Once all the basic system configurations are set and the system patches are downloaded, you can now patch your system. Go back to Settings, click System Upgrade, and choose one of three options. 

a, Check Online – Click Check for Upgrade, wait a few minutes, and apply the latest if available. 

Note: If there is a release available which is very new, it may not be able to be discovered in vRLCM yet and will have to be downloaded.

b, Click URL – provide repository

c, CD-ROM – Download the latest version directly from my.vmware.com, upload into a Content Library, mount the installer to the VA, and install via the CD-ROM method.



After the chosen method is determined, click the Upgrade button, and the upgrade initiates….

The System Restarts

13) Once the system is back up, login with the admin@local account, and go to Lifecycle Operations.

14) Go to Settings, click on System Patches, click on the New Patch button in the right-hand corner, select the patch downloaded earlier, and click Next.

15) Click Install and the request completes in seconds.

16) The system reboots shortly after the patch is installed

17) Once the system is back up, login with the admin@local account, and go to Lifecycle Operations

18) Go back to Settings, select Product Support Pack, and click Check for Support Packs Online in order to obtain the latest Product Versions. Apply the latest if available.

19) Go back to the home page, choose Market Place, and click on the Sync button.

Configure User Roles

We need to configure a service account with the required permissions to enable vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager to deploy and manage the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) solutions on the Management vCenter Server – which will be the Log Insight in the 3rd article of this series. Additionally, we need to configure the admin group  to have full control over the appliance for vRealize solution deployments and management.  Both of them must be already created in Active Directory.

1) Go back to the home page and choose User Management

2) Click on the User Management icon on the next page, and click +Add User/Group. Import your both service user and the admin group.

3)  Associate the service account  which was imported earlier during the vRIDM configuration with a the Content Release Manager role privileges. 

4) From vCenter, create the user role, with the following required privileges for vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager, and assign the new permissions to the service account.

  • Datastore.Allocate Space
  • Datastore.Browse Datastore
  • Datastore.Update Virtual Machine Files
  • Host.Local.Operations.Add Host to vCenter
  • Host.Local.Operations.Create Virtual Machine
  • Host.Local.Operations.Delete Virtual Machine
  • Host.Local.Operations.Reconfigure Virtual Machine
  • Network.Assign Network
  • Resource.Assign vApp to Resource Pool
  • Resource.Assign Virtual Machine to Resource Pool
  • vApp.* (All privileges.)
  • Virtual Machine.* (All privileges.)

5) Go back to the vRLCM and the click +Add User/Group again and add the group as LCM Cloud Admin

Note: Even though LCM Cloud Admin has access to the Lifecycle Operations service, only LCM Admin, the admin@local has the privilege to access all the settings in the Lifecycle Operations service. The default admin@local user is the only application admin who can access the User Management service, where Directory Management and Identity Management are handled.