Chapter 1. Infrastructure Providers

A provider is a server with software to manage multiple virtual machines that reside on multiple hosts. Infrastructure → Providers displays the providers in your environment.

The web interface uses virtual thumbnails to represent providers. Each thumbnail contains four quadrants by default, which display basic information about each provider.

2189
  1. Number of hosts
  2. Management system software
  3. Currently unused
  4. Authentication status
IconDescription

2190

Validated: Valid authentication credentials have been added.

2191

Invalid: Authentication credentials are invalid.

2192

Unknown: Authentication status is unknown or no credentials have been entered.

1.1. Discovering Providers

Add providers to the CloudForms Management Engine environment by discovering them based on their IP addresses. This procedure demonstrates discovering Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager providers. Providers must be running in order for the appliance to discover them.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click Configuration (Configuration), then click Discover Infrastructure Providers (Discover Infrastructure Providers).

  3. Select the types of provider to discover.

    discover providers

  4. Enter a Subnet Range of IP addresses starting with a From Address and ending with a To Address. The cursor automatically advances as you complete each octet.

    2196
  5. Click Start.

1.2. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager Providers

To use a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager provider, add it to the appliance and authenticate its hosts.

1.2.1. Adding a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager Provider

After initial installation and creation of a CloudForms Management Engine environment, add a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager provider to the appliance.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click 1847 (Configuration), then click 1848 (Add a New Infrastructure Provider).
  3. Enter the Name of the provider to add. The Name is how the device is labeled in the console.
  4. Select Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager from the Type list.

  5. Enter the Host Name or IP address(IPv4 or IPv6) of the provider.

    Important

    The Host Name must use a unique fully qualified domain name.

  6. Enter the API Port if your provider uses a non-standard port for access.
  7. Select the appropriate Zone for the provider. By default, the zone is set to default.

  8. In the Credentials area, under Default, provide the login credentials required for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager administrative user:

    • Enter the user name, admin@internal, in the Username field.
    • Enter the password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm CloudForms Management Engine can connect to the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager.

  9. Under C & U Database tab, provide the login credentials for the CloudForms user of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Data Warehouse database:

    Note

    For the metrics collection to work properly, configure the CloudForms Management Engine to allow for all three Capacity & Utilization server roles which are available under Configure → Configuration → Server → Server Control. For more information on capacity and utilization collection, see Assigning the Capacity and Utilization Server Roles in the Deployment Planning Guide.

    To obtain historical Capacity and Utilization (C & U) data for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager, you must create a CloudForms Management Engine user in the already-configured Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Data Warehouse database. To create the user, see Data Collection for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.3 and 3.4 in the Deployment Planning Guide.

    For information on setting up the Data Warehouse service on the Manager, see the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Installation Guide.

    • Enter the database user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the user password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the user password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm CloudForms Management Engine can connect to the database.
  10. Click Save.

1.2.2. Authenticating Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hosts

After adding a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization infrastructure provider, you must authenticate its hosts to enable full functionality.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click on a provider to display its summary screen.
  3. On the summary screen, click Hosts in the Relationships information box to display the hosts on that provider.
  4. Select the hosts to authenticate. You can select all hosts using the Check All option.
  5. Click Configuration (Configuration).
  6. Click Edit this item (Edit this item).

  7. In the Credentials area, enter credentials for the following, as required:

    1. Default: This field is mandatory. Users should have privileged access such as, root or administrator.
    2. Remote Login: Credentials for this field are required if SSH login is disabled for the Default account.
    3. Web Services: This tab is used for access to Web Services in Red Hat Enterprise Virtuaization Manager.
    4. IPMI: This tab is used for access to IPMI.
  8. Click Validate.

  9. If editing multiple hosts:

    1. Select a host from the Select Host to validate against list.
    2. If required, enter credentials for Remote Login, Web Services, and IPMI in their respective tabs; click Validate.
    3. Select another host to validate each of these credentials against.
  10. Click Add.

1.3. OpenStack Infrastructure Providers

Enable an OpenStack Infrastructure provider by adding it to the appliance.

1.3.1. Adding an OpenStack Infrastructure Provider

After initial installation and creation of a CloudForms Management Engine environment, add an OpenStack Infrastructure provider to the appliance. CloudForms Management Engine supports operating with the OpenStack admin tenant. When creating an OpenStack Infrastructure provider in CloudForms Management Engine, select the OpenStack Infrastructure provider’s admin user because it is the default administrator of the OpenStack admin tenant. When using the admin credentials, a user in CloudForms Management Engine provisions into the admin tenant, and sees images, networks, and instances that are associated with the admin tenant.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click Configuration (Configuration), then click Add a New Infrastructure Provider (Add a New Infrastructure Provider).
  3. Enter the Name of the provider to add. The Name is how the device is labeled in the console.
  4. Select OpenStack Platform Director from the Type list.

  5. Enter the Host Name or IP address(IPv4 or IPv6) of the provider.

    Important

    The Host Name must use a unique fully qualified domain name.

  6. Select the API Version of your Keystone service from the list. The default is Keystone v2.

    Important

    If the Keystone service is configured to use SSL, you must enter the SSL port for Keystone.

  7. Select the appropriate Zone for the provider. By default, the zone is set to default.

  8. In the Credentials area, under Default, provide the login credentials required for the OpenStack Infrastructure administrative user:

    • Enter the user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the user password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm that the CloudForms Management Engine can connect to the OpenStack Infrastructure instance using the user name and password.

  9. Under AMQP, provide the login credentials required for the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol messaging service:

    • Enter the administrative user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the user password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the user password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm CFME can connect to the messaging service.

  10. Under RSA key pair, provide the user name and private key required to connect via SSH to all hosts in the provider:

    • Enter the administrative user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the private key from the machine on which OpenStack was deployed in the Private Key field.
  11. Click Add.
Note

CloudForms Management Engine requires that the adminURL endpoint for all OpenStack services be on a non-private network. Accordingly, assign the adminURL endpoint an IP address of something other than 192.168.x.x. The adminURL endpoint must be accessible to the CFME Appliance that is responsible for collecting inventory and gathering metrics from the OpenStack environment.

1.3.1.1. Configuring Red Hat CloudForms to Receive Events

To allow Red Hat CloudForms to receive events from a Red Hat OpenStack Platform environment, you must configure the notification_driver option for the Compute service and Orchestration service in that environment.

  1. Edit /etc/heat/heat.conf, and specify the following options: 

    notification_driver=glance.openstack.common.notifier.rpc_notifier
notification_topics=notifications

  2. Edit /etc/nova/nova.conf, and specify the following options: 

    notification_driver=messaging
notification_topics=notifications

  3. Restart the Compute service and Orchestration services: 

    # systemctl restart openstack-heat-api.service \
  openstack-heat-api-cfn.service \
  openstack-heat-engine.service \
  openstack-heat-api-cloudwatch.service
# systemctl restart openstack-nova-compute.service

1.3.1.2. Configuring the Telemetry Service to Store Events

By default, the Telemetry service does not store events emitted by other services in a Red Hat OpenStack Platform environment. The following procedure outlines how to enable the Telemetry service to store such events so that they are exposed to Red Hat CloudForms when a Red Hat OpenStack Platform environment is added as an infrastructure provider.

  1. On the director node, edit undercloud.conf, and set store_events to true.

  2. Create an environment file called ceilometer.yaml, and add the following contents: 

    parameter_defaults:
  CeilometerStoreEvents: true

  3. Add the environment file to the overcloud deploy command: 

    # openstack overcloud deploy --templates -e ~/ceilometer.yaml

1.4. VMware vCenter Providers

To use a VMWare vCenter provider, add it to the appliance and authenticate its hosts.

1.4.1. Adding a VMware vCenter Provider

After initial installation and creation of a CloudForms Management Engine environment, add a VMware vCenter provider to the appliance.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click Configuration (Configuration), then click Add a New Infrastructure Provider (Add a New Infrastructure Provider).
  3. Enter the Name of the provider to add. The Name is how the device is labeled in the console.
  4. Select VMware vCenter from the Type list.

  5. Enter the Host Name or IP address(IPv4 or IPv6) of the provider.

    Important

    The Host Name must use a unique fully qualified domain name.

  6. Select the appropriate Zone for the provider. By default, the zone is set to default.

  7. In the Credentials area, under Default, provide the login credentials required for the VMware vCenter administrative user:

    • Enter the user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm CloudForms Management Engine can connect to the VMware vCenter.
  8. Click Add.

1.4.2. Authenticating VMware vCenter Hosts

The procedure below describes how to authenticate the VMware vCenter hosts.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click on a provider to display its summary screen.
  3. On the summary screen, click Hosts in the Relationships information box to display the hosts on that provider.
  4. Select the hosts to authenticate. You can select all hosts using the Check All option.
  5. Click Configuration (Configuration)
  6. Click Edit Selected items (Edit Selected items).

  7. In the Credentials area, under Default, provide the VMware ESXi login credentials:

    • Enter the user name in the Username field.
    • Enter the password in the Password field.
    • Confirm the password in the Confirm Password field.
    • Click Validate to confirm CFME can connect to the VMware vCenter host.
  8. If editing multiple hosts, select a host from the Select Host to validate against list; provide the VMware ESXi login credentials and click Validate.
  9. Click Save.

1.4.2.1. Using a Non-Administrator Account for Host Credentials

After adding a VMware vCenter infrastructure provider, you must authenticate its hosts to enable full functionality. You can use administrator credentials, or create another user assigned to a role (See the VMware documentation for instructions on how to create a role) created for Red Hat CloudForms Management Engine. The following privileges should be enabled for the non-administrator user:

From the Global group, check:

  • Cancel task
  • Diagnostics
  • Log Event
  • Set custom attribute
  • Settings

The entire set of privileges for the following groups should be checked:

  • Alarms
  • Datastores
  • dvPort Group
  • Host
  • Network
  • Resource
  • Scheduled Task
  • Tasks
  • Virtual Machine
  • vSphere Distributed Switch

Additionally, you must assign the new role to the following objects:

  • Datacenter: At the Datacenter the CloudForms Management Engine (CFME) (formerly EVM) user/group must have at least the read-only role at the Datacenter level (Not Propagated) to be able to see the datacenter. Without this access, relationships cannot be made. Specifically, the datastores will not show up.
  • Cluster: Each Cluster that the CloudForms Management Engine needs access to must have the new role assigned and propagated.
  • Folders: Each Folder that CloudForms Management Engine needs access to must have the new role assigned and propagated.
  • Datastores: Each Datastore that CloudForms Management Engine needs access to must have the new role assigned and propagated.
  • Networking: Each vLAN or Port Group that CloudForms Management Engine needs access to must have the new role assigned and propagated.

1.5. Microsoft SCVMM Providers

To use a Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager provider, add it to the appliance and set up the SCVMM server for authentication.

1.5.1. Authenticating to Microsoft SCVMM

Before you can add a Microsoft SCVMM provide to your Red Hat CloudForms environment, you must enable WinRM to listen for HTTP traffic on Microsoft SCVMM servers. You must also set the appropriate execution policy on the Microsoft SCVMM server to allow PowerShell scripts from the appliance to run remotely.

  1. Log in to the Microsoft SCVMM server.

  2. Enable WinRM for configuration. 

    winrm quickconfig

  3. Set the following options: 

    winrm set winrm/config/client/auth @{Basic="true"}
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth @{Basic="true"}
winrm set winrm/config/service @{AllowUnencrypted="true"}

  4. For Windows 2012 R2 with PowerShell 4.0, use the following syntax to set these options: 

    winrm set winrm/config/client/auth '@{Basic="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth '@{Basic="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/service '@{AllowUnencrypted="true"}'

  5. Enable remote script execution on the SCVMM server using the Set-ExecutionPolicy cmdlet. 

    Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

    For more information on SCVMM remote script execution policies, see Using the Set-ExecutionPolicy Cmdlet.

If PowerShell returns an error, search for log_dos_error_results in the evm.log and scvmm.log files for information.

1.5.2. Adding a Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Provider

After initial installation and creation of a CloudForms Management Engine environment, add a Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager provider to the appliance.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click 1847 (Configuration), then click 1848 (Add a New Infrastructure Provider).
  3. Enter the Name of the provider to add. The Name is how the device is labeled in the console.
  4. Select Microsoft System Center VMM from the Type list.

  5. Enter the Host Name or IP address(IPv4 or IPv6) of the provider.

    Important

    The Host Name must use a unique fully qualified domain name.

  6. Select Kerberos or Basic (SSL) from the Security Protocol list.

    1. For Kerberos:

      1. Enter the user name and realm in the Username field.
      2. Enter the password in the Password field.
      3. Enter the password again in the Confirm Password field.

    2. For Basic (SSL):

      1. Enter the user name in the Username field.
      2. Enter the pasword in the Password field.
      3. Enter the password again in the Confirm Password field.
  7. Click Validate to confirm that Red Hat CloudForms can connect to the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
  8. Click Add.

1.6. Refreshing Providers

Refresh a provider to find other resources related to it. Use Refresh after initial discovery to get the latest data about the provider and the virtual machines it can access. Ensure the provider has credentials to do this. If the providers were added using Discovery, add credentials using Edit Selected Infrastructure Provider (Edit Selected Infrastructure Provider).

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Select the providers to refresh.
  3. Click Configuration (Configuration), and then Refresh Relationships and Power States (Refresh Relationships and Power States).
  4. Click OK.

1.7. Tagging Multiple Providers

Apply tags to all providers to categorize them together at the same time. Before assigning tags, create them using instructions in the General Configuration guide.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Check the providers to tag.
  3. Click Policy (Policy), and then Edit Tags (Edit Tags).

  4. In the Tag Assignment area, select a customer tag to assign from the first list, then select a value to assign from the second list.

    2194
  5. Select more tags as required; click (Save).

1.8. Viewing a Provider

From a list of providers, you can review a specific provider by clicking on it. This displays various options to access provider information.

Figure 1.1. Provider Management Screen

providers summary new
  1. Provider Taskbar: Choose between Configuration, Policy and Monitoring options for the selected provider.
  2. Provider Summary: Displays provider summary such as Properties, Relationships, and Smart Management.
  3. Provider Summary PDF: Generates provider summary in PDF format.
  4. Provider Accordion: Displays details about Properties and Relationships for the selected provider.

1.9. Removing a Provider

If a provider has been decommissioned or requires some troubleshooting, it might require deletion from the VMDB.

Deleting a provider removes the account information from CloudForms Management Engine console. You will no longer be able to view any associated history including chargeback reports generated for the deleted provider. Additionally, if CloudForms Management Engine is the database of record, deleting providers would become a major problem for the other systems relying on it for accurate and consistent billing information. Review all the dependencies carefully before deleting a provider.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Select the check box for the provider to delete.
  3. Click Configuration (Configuration), then Remove Infrastructure Providers from the VMDB (Remove Infrastructure Providers from the VMDB).
  4. Click (OK).

1.10. Viewing the Provider Timeline

View the timeline of events for the virtual machines registered to a provider.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click a provider.
  3. Click Monitoring (Monitoring), and then Timelines (Timelines)from the taskbar, or from the provider accordion, click Properties → Timeline.

  4. From Options, customize the period of time to display and the types of events to see.

    provider timeline
    • Use Show to select regular Management Events or Policy Events.
    • Use the Interval dropdown to select hourly or daily data points.
    • Use Date to type the date for the timeline to display.
    • If you select to view a daily timeline, use Show to set how many days back to go. The maximum history is 31 days.
    • The three Event Groups lists allow you to select different groups of events to display. Each has its own color.
    • From the Level list, select a Summary event, or a Detail list of events. For example, the detail level of a Power On event might include the power on request, the starting event, and the actual Power On event. If you select Summary, only the Power On event displays in the timeline.

1.11. Viewing Hosts and Clusters

Access a tree view of the hosts and clusters for a provider from the Provider Summary.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click the provider to view the hosts and clusters.
  3. Click on the Relationships accordion, then click Hosts & Clusters.
hostsandclusters

1.12. Viewing Virtual Machines and Templates

Access a tree view of the virtual machines and templates for a provider from the Provider Summary.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Providers.
  2. Click the provider to view the virtual machines and templates.
  3. From accordion menu, click Relationships, then click VMs & Templates.