Aug 8, 2023

Moving VMware Aria Operations from one VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle to another

Arun Nukula
Aug 8, 2023
4 min read

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Usecase

Explaination of the steps taken if one wants to move VMware Aria Operations which is integrated with vIDM or Globalenvironment from one Suite Lifecycle to another

Note: VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle on both Source and Destination should be same , include policy

Environment

Here are the details of the environment we have on source and destination. The domain names taken here are an example and does not represent any organization


Type	Source	Destination
VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle	devvasl.cap.org	vasl.cap.org
VMware Aria Operations Master	lvrops1.cap.org	lvrops1.cap.org
VMware Aria Operations Replica	lvrops2.cap.org	lvrops2.cap.org
VMware Aria Operations Cloud Proxy	lvrops3.cap.org	lvrops3.cap.org
VMware Identity Manager	vidm.cap.org	vidmlb.cap.org

Product UI

The product has 2 auth sources Local Users and vIDMAuthSource

You can see when we select vIDMAuthSource , it does redirect it to vIDM and we can login using configadmin which is my local vIDM based auth account

Auth Source is configured to vidm as shown below

Procedure

Phase 1 : Removal from Source VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle

Here’s the Operations instance which i’d like to move it to a different Suite Lifecycle

We may see that the Operations instance is integrated with VMware Identity Manager

On globalenvironment or VMware Identity Manager we can see this environment as a reference

In order to move this Operations instance to a different VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle instance, i’ll have to remove this from Suite Lifecycle’s inventory

Remember, I am deleting environment because this is the only product in the environment. If i have multiple products in an environment as shown in the next pane , then i would only delete that specific product
Delete environment will present me with the following screen. I shall select the first option where it removes the environment / product from VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle and not from vCenter. If we select “Delete associated VMs from vCenter” it would delete all associated virtual machines/appliances from the vCenter causing an outage.

So let’s select the first option to delete the environment from just VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle and submit the request

Environment is deleted from VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle

The request is now complete

The references in globalenvironment is removed too

This does not mean it will delete the integration it has with the vIDM whcih it had before that shall still remain

Before moving to the destination Suite Lifecycle, i shall download the certificate being consumed by Operations in the Source Suite Lifecycle and keep it aside to be imported into the destination Suite Lifecycle

Using this information we shall import this key into the destination Suite Lifecycle before we import the Operations product into it. So that when the product is imported , the certificate mapping is perfect.

Phase-2 : Importing to Destination VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle

Let’s import the certificate into Suite Lifecycle first. This is the Operations certificate we downloaded just few steps before
Al i did was to point to the downloaded pem file and it automatically detects the cert and it’s private key to import

Once we click on import the certificate is now imported

globalenvironment or VMware Identity Manager on the destination is a distributed node

Let’s import the product into destination Suite Lifecycle
Click on “Create Environment” to start the import process

Select VMware Aria Operations as a product to import and then click next

Because i am importing an existing product , there not much of information i need to enter in the next pane . All i need to enter is the master node’s fqdn , select passwords and then choose the vCenter it’s located on

Click on next to review the summary and then submit the request

Request is submitted

Import request is now complete and now we can see the new environment in the destination Suite Lifecycle

Remember the certificate we imported just before the product import. It is now marked as used it is mapped to the imported product

If you clearly observe , the imported Operations instance is still pointing to the source VMware Identity Manager

If we clearly observe the vIDM integration is set to false as it is not integrated with the vIDM in this Suite Lifecycle
In the next phase we will add the new vIDM as an auth source and then remove existing vIDM auth source
This should be done from VMware Aria Operations UI

Phase 3: Replacing Auth Source in VMware Aria Operations

Before making any changes take a snapshot

Browse to Administration and Authentication sources
As you can see it’s currently pointing to source vIDM

Make sure the roles and the groups to which the roles are given are taken down. So that the same groups can be readded again
Delete the authentication source

Go back to Suite Lifecycle and perform an inventory sync

As one can see the vIDM information is now gone

Now let’s go and add a new auth source in Operations as shown below. This will be pointing to the new globalenvironment on the destination Suite Lifecycle