VMware vRealize Business (vRB) for Cloud was removed from GA back in 2019, with general support expiring 11 April 2022. The functionality included in vRB, fine-grain cost analytics and public cloud cost comparison, is available within vRealize Operations Advanced from v8.2 onwards. You can see how to install vRealize Operations here.
VMware vRealize Business for Cloud provides automated cost analysis and consumption metering; allowing administrators to make workload placement decisions between private and pulic clouds based on cost and available services. Furthermore infrastructure stakeholders have full visibility of virtual machine provisioning costs and are able to accurately manage capital expenditure and operating expenditure. For more information see the vRealize Business product page, you can try vRealize Business for Cloud using the Hands on Labs available here.
This post will walk through the installation of vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3; we’ll be provisioning to a vSphere environment running vRealize Automation 7.3. Each vRealize Business instance scales up to 20,000 virtual machines and 10 vCenter Servers, remote data collectors can be deployed to distributed geographical sites. vRealize Business is deployed in OVA format as a virtual appliance, you should ensure this appliance is backed up appropriately. There is no built in HA or DR functionality within vRealize Business, but you can take advantage of VMware components such as High Availability, Fault Tolerance, or Site Recovery Manager. Logs can be output to a syslog server such as vRealize Log Insight.
Requirements
- vRealize Business for Cloud must be deployed to an ESXi host, and can be used to mange vCenter Server, vCloud Director, vCloud Air, vRealize Automation, and vRealize Operations Manager.
- vRB 7.3 is compatible with vCenter and ESXi versions 5.5 through to 6.5, and vRealize Automation verisons 6.2.4 through to 7.3 (latest versions at the time of writing).
- For compatibilty with other VMware products see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix.
- The vRB appliance requires 8 GB memory, 4 vCPU and 50 GB disk (thick provisioned).
- If you use any remote data collectors the memory on these appliances can be reduced to 2 GB.
- vRealize Business for Cloud is licensed as part of the vRealize suite, per CPU, or in packs of 25-OSI.
- There are 2 available editions; standard and advanced. Features such as public cloud costing require the advanced version, for more information see the feature comparison section of the product page.
- The web UI can be accessed from IE 10 or later, Chrome 36.x or later, and Firefox 31.x and later.
- Time synchronization and name resolution should be in place across all VMware components.
- For a full list of pre-requisites including port requirements see here.
Before beginning review the following VMware links:
- vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 Download | Release Notes| Official Install Guide
- See also vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3: What’s New
- vRealize Business for Cloud Information Center
Installing vRB
Download the VMware vRealize Business for Cloud 7.3 OVA file here. Log into the vSphere web client and right click the datastore, cluster, or host where you want to deploy the virtual appliance. Select Deploy OVF Template and browse to the location of the OVA file.
- Enter a name for the virtual appliance and select the deployment location, click Next.
- Confirm the compute resource and click Next.
- Review the details of the OVF template and click Next.
- Accept the end user license agreement and click Next.
- Select the storage for the virtual appliance, ensure the virtual disk format is set to Thick provision eager zeroed, and click Next.
- Select the network to attach to the virtual appliance and click Next.
- Set the Currency, note that at this time the currency cannot be changed after deployment. Ensure Enable Server is checked, select or de-select SSH and the customer experience improvement program based on your own preferences. Configure a Root user password for the virtual appliance and enter the network settings for the virtual appliance in the Networking Properties fields.
- Click Next and review the summary page. Click Finish to deploy the virtual appliance.
Once the virtual appliance has been deployed and powered on open a web browser to https://vRB:5480, where vRB is the IP address or FQDN of the appliance. Log in with the root account configured during setup.
Verify the settings under Administration, Time Settings, and Network. At this stage the appliance is ready to be registered with a cloud solution. In this example I will be using vRealize Automation, for other products or further information see the install guide referenced above. Return to the Registration tab and ensure vRA is selected.
Enter the host name or IP address of the vRA appliance or load balancer. Enter the name of the vRA default tenant and the default tenant administrator username and password. Select Accept vRealize Automation certificate and click Register.
Accessing vRB
vRealize Business for Cloud can be integrated into vRealize Automation, or you can enable stand-alone access. To access vRB after integrating with vRA log into the vRA portal. First open the Administration tab, select Directory Users and Computers, search for a user or group and assign the relevant business management roles. A user with a business management role has access to the Business Management tab in vRA.
Optional: to enable stand-alone access first enable SSH from the Administration tab. Use a client such as Putty to open an SSH connection to the virtual appliance, log in with the root account. Enter cd /usr/ITFM-Cloud/va-tools/bin to change directory, enter sh manage-local-user.sh and select the operation, in this case 5 to enable local authentication.
If you want to create new local users user option 1 and enter the username and password, when prompted for permissions VCBM_ALL provides administrator access and VCBM_VIEW read-only. You can also log in to the web UI with the root account, although it would be better practice to create a separate account.
Disable SSH from the Administration tab if required. Wait a few minutes for the services to restart and then browse to https://IP/itfm-cloud/login.html, where IP is the IP address of your appliance. If you try to access this URL without enabling stand-alone access you will receive a HTTP Status 401 – Authentication required error message.
vRB Configuration
We will continue with the configuration in the vRA portal, open the Administration tab and click Business Management.
Expand License Information, enter a license key and click Save. Expand Manage Private Cloud Connections, configure the required connections. In this example I have added multiple vCenter Server endpoints. Open the Business Management tab, the Launchpad will load.
Select Expenses, Private Cloud (vSphere) and click Edit Expenses. At this stage you will need the figures associated with hardware, storage, and licensing for the environment. You can also add costs for maintenance, labour, network, facilities, and any other additional costs.
Once vRB is populated with the new infrastructure costs utilisation and projected pricing will start to be updated. Consumption showback, what-if analysis, and public cloud comparisons can all be accessed from the navigation menu on the left hand side. For further guidance on getting the most out of vRB see the vRealize Business for Cloud User Guide.
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