Posts

in previous posts we discussed how you can use Jenkins to test various pieces of code including Powershell. Jenkins is a neat way to test your code and have a log of the successes and failures but let’s face it, you were probably testing your code as you were writing it anyway right? Well, what if you could push your code to GIT and have that code tested each time a GIT push was executed? Then you can have several people working on the same code and when the code gets updated in your repositories, it will be tested and logged. This makes it really nice to see when the code stopped working and who published the code to GIT. Now we’re really starting to see the power of this CI/CD stuff. ...

Jenkins is a Continuous Integration / Continuous Development (CI/CD) tool that can be used to deploy code and test it based on a schedule, triggered by a commit in GIT or after other jobs have been completed. Jobs can all be kicked off manually. The pages below might help you to get familiar with Jenkins and how it could be leveraged in an organization. Jenkins Installation Create Jenkins Project Add Jenkins Nodes Test PowerCLI Code Commit Code to GIT to Trigger Job Use vRealize Automation with Jenkins Integrate Jenkins with vRealize Code Stream

In the previous post we discuss how to setup a Windows Node to test PowerShell code. In this post, we’ll configure a new Jenkins project to test some very basic PowerCLI code. To start, we need to have some basics setup on our Windows Node that we setup previously as a slave. In our case, we need to make sure that we have PowerCLI installed on the host. Let’s think about this logically for a second. Jenkins is going to tell our Windows node to execute some PowerCLI scripts as a test. If the Windows node doesn’t understand PowerCLI, then our tests just won’t work. I would suggest that you install PowerCLI on your Windows node and then do a quick test to make sure you can connect to your vCenter server. ...

Not all of your Jenkins projects will consist of “Hello World” type routines. What if we want to run some PowerShell jobs? Or better yet, PowerCLI? Our Jenkins instance was built on CentOS and doesn’t run Windows PowerShell very well at all. Luckily for us, in situations like this, we can add additional Jenkins nodes and yes they can also be Windows hosts! Login to your Jenkins Instance and go to Manage Jenkins and then click on Manage Nodes. ...

In this post we’ll create a Jenkins project on our brand new shiny server that we just deployed. The project we create will be very simple but should show off the possibilities of using a Jenkins server to test your code. To get started login to your Jenkins server at the http://jenkinsservername:8080 port and then click the “New Item” link. From there give your new project a name. In this example our project is a Freestyle project which will let us throw code right into the project and run it on the Jenkins server or subsequent Jenkins Nodes. ...

Installing a Jenkins instance is pretty simple if you’re a Linux guy. But even if you’re not a Linux admin, this isn’t going to make you sweat too much. First, start by deploying yourself a Linux instance. The OS version in this post is based on CentOS 7 if you are interested in following along. Once you’re up and running, make sure you can ping into the box and have SSH access. If you’re new to this, you can find instructions on setting up an SSH daemon here. Now that it’s setup we can install Jenkins by running the following commands. ...

I had some extra materials left over from a home improvement project I had been working on and decided to put them to use on a custom made rack for my lab. My requirements for the rack design were pretty simple. Hold my equipment Make it somewhat portable Needed to be able to work on the equipment from both the front and the back side Able to discretely hide cabling Here is what I came up with. It’s a set of three shelves attached to four posts. The posts in the back are longer because I thought I might add some additional patch paneling in the back. The rack is built on top of casters so I can roll the lab to a different area of my basement if I need to move it’s location for some reason. ...

Amazon has a pretty cool service that allows you to create a template for an entire set of infrastructure. This isn’t a template for a virtual machine, or even a series of virtual machines, but a whole environment. You can create a template with servers, security groups, networks and even PaaS services like their relational database service (RDS). Hey, in today’s world, infrastructure as code is the direction things are going and AWS has a pretty good solution for that already. ...

In the previous post we went over how to get the basics configured for NSX and vRealize Automation integration. In this post we’ll build a blueprint and deploy it! Let’s jump right in and get started. Blueprint Designer Login to your vRA tenant and click on the Design Tab. Create a new blueprint just like we have done in the past posts. This time when you are creating your blueprint, click the NSX Settings tab and select the Transport zone. I’ve also added a reservation policy that can help define with reservations are available for this blueprint. ...

Its time to think about deploying our networks through vRA. Deploying servers are cool, but deploying three tiered applications in different networks is cooler. So lets add VMware NSX to our cloud portal and get cracking. The first step is to have NSX up and running in your vSphere environment. Once this simple task is complete, a Distributed Logical Router should be deployed with an Uplink interface configured. The diagram below explains what needs to be setup in vSphere prior to doing any configurations in vRealize Automation. A Distributed Logical Router with a single uplink to an Edge Services Gateway should be configured first, then any new networks will be built through the vRealize Automation integration. While the section of the diagram that is manual, will remain roughly the same throughout, the section handled by vRealize Automation will change often, based on the workloads that are deployed. Note: be sure to setup some routing between your Provider Edge and the DLR so that you can reach the new networks that vRA creates. ...