Kristof's virtual life

I saw a post on Twitter, saying there was a new Fling out to monitor your vRealize Automation environment. So I needed to have it running in my homelab, you can find the link to the fling => HERE You can choose to install Docker Desktop on Windows or on Linux. But because I’m not Linux-savvy I’ve decided to try it on a Debian distro 🙂

Content blog article

1. Installing Docker
   1. Pre-reqs for Docker Desktop
   2. Setup the repository
   3. Install Docker Engine
2. Deploy vRealize Automation Health Monitor
3. Check your deployment

1. Installing Docker

First, I’ve deployed a 64-bit Debian 11 machine to my environment. Make sure that you have enabled Hardware virtualization on your VM. To enable it, shutdown your VM and check the option “Expose hardware assisted virtualization to the guest OS” in your settings. I’m not going to explain the Debian install in detail, because if I can do that, anyone can do that.

1.1. Pre-reqs for Docker Desktop

You can find the system requirements for Docker Desktop => here

1. Install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator => “sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator”

2. I wasn’t able to run “modprobe kvm” nor “kvm-ok” in my terminal. I thought I had to install “cpu-checker” to enable these commands. But that’s not necessary. I was able to simply run “lsmod | grep kvm” and that showed me that the necessary modules were enabled.

1.2. Setup the repository

1 First do an update of apt-get => “sudo apt-get update”

2 Install some extra packages => “sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release”

1.3. Install Docker Engine

3 Add Docker’s official GPG key
=> “sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings”
=> “curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg –dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg”

4. Setup the repository => echo “deb [arch=$(dpkg –print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
$(lsb_release -cs) stable” | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

5 Finally install docker desktop => “sudo apt-get-install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin”

3.6 Test your install => sudo docker run hello-world

2. Deploy vRealize Automation Health Monitor

Connect with SSH to your vRA appliance and edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file with vi.

Scroll down untill you see MaxSessions and increase it to 7

Restart the service

Now go to your Debian machine or where you’ve installed Docker Desktop. DO NOT continue on your vRA appliance as I initially did.
Pull the docker file => “docker pull projects.registry.vmware.com/vrealize_automation_health_monitor/vra_health_monitor@sha256:0e51a664d6c9685414f834403abf1ccfe6695192d841271d34bc791dc0a2af46”

Check your installation => “docker image ls”. You should see the vra_health_monitor in the list

Now run your docker image => “docker run -itd –name=vra_health_monitor -p 8000:8000 3b3ff809f364”
You get “3b3ff809f364” from the previous command in the image ID.

3. Check your deployment

Now your ready to access the fling on https://ip-address-debian:8000
Provide the necessary information for your vRA environment and click on login.

Tada…. now you have an overview of your vRA environment. You really have a nice overview of your environment. Would be nice if this gets incorporated in the vRA deployment.