VMWare Inbound Integration

Service Integration with VMware

For this type of integration, you need to set up a VMware vSphere account in Avantra together with a vCenter server URL. The Avantra Agent will recognize automatically if it is running in a VMware virtual machine and will send this information to the Avantra Server. The Avantra server will use this vSphere account to find the matching VM in vSphere and link it to the Avantra Agent. This way, you can start using VMware features in Avantra.

For this integration to work the Avantra Server needs to be able to access the vCenter server via HTTP(S).

Settings in VMware vSphere

We recommend to use a dedicated role and a dedicated local vSphere user for the integration.

Using the VMware vSphere client, create a new role. For the privileges proceed to the virtual machine category and select Power on, Power off, and Restart from the in the Interaction section.

Create a dedicated local user, i.e. one in the VSPHERE.LOCAL domain. Assign the role created above to this user.

Service Authentication settings for VMware in the UI

Procedure: Creating a VMware Service Authentication

  1. Open Configuration  Integrations and choose New  VMware.

  2. Fill in a Name, an optional Description and select a Customer. Push the Finish button.

  3. Select the newly created entry and push Open.

  4. For Host, fill in the URL of your vCenter server. For User and Password fill in the values from Settings in VMware vSphere.

  5. If you are using self-signed certificates, or other certificates that cannot be globally verified, set the flag Trust all SSL Certificates.

  6. If Avantra doesn’t have direct access to VMware, use one of Avantra Agents to use its connection for communication.

  7. Push the Save button.

Synchronization of VMware Virtual Machines in the UI

Open Avantra WebUI and perform the following steps:

  1. Login to the Avantra UI as an administrative user.

  2. Choose Administration  Synchronizations and select New  Inbound synchronization.

  3. For External Service choose VMware Virtual Machines, fill in a Name, for example VMware Synchronization, and push the Create button.

  4. In the newly created item, choose for VMware Account your service account that you want to use.

  5. In Filter, you may define one or more filter rules to restrict the set of instances considered for the synchronization.

    By default, the value of the Name tag is used for the value Physical Server Name in Avantra, and the private IP address is used for FQDN or IP Address.

    Push the Apply followed by the Test Query button whenever you make changes and want to verify the filter.

  6. For System Type choose Server, and choose a Default Customer and a Default System Role. You can override these default settings on a per Server level as described below.

  7. Select the value yes for Start Monitoring. Set the flags for Create Server and Update Server (if desired). Push the Apply button and afterwards the Sync button. Confirm that you have tested your query properly.

  8. If you want to synchronize periodically, set the flag next to Activate background synchronization and choose an appropriate value for the synchronization interval. Push the Apply button.

  9. Select System  Servers to verify the synchronization.

Initially, Avantra matches the server in Avantra UI with the corresponding server in VMware using the server name. If the match doesn’t work the MAC address or IP address of the server is used. If there are no matches the VMware name can be added manually to the ‘Host alias’ field to force a match.

Assign the Service Authentication settings to the Cloud Server

Open Avantra WebUI and perform the following steps:

  1. Choose Systems  Servers, select the Cloud Server in question and push the Open button.

  2. In Service Authentication select the recently created item from the drop-down list.

  3. Push the Apply button.