vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager – Step by Step How to Install & Import Existing Environment

vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is a new addition to the vRealize Suite. Announced at VMworld 2017 Europe, and v1.0 was released on September 19th 2017! The solution is designed to streamline and simplify the deployment and on-going Day 0 to Day 2 management of the vRealize Suite. Which includes

Installation
Initial Setup
Health Monitoring/Configuration Management
Upgrading & Patching

Check out the VMware Cloud Management blog on this topic.

In addition to streamlining the deployment of new deployments(which aligns with VMware Validated Designs, how cool is that?!), you can import existing brown field environments.

It’s the brown field scenario I’m going to walk through in this post . Detailing how to deploy the solution and import an existing environment. Specifically vRealize Operations v6.6.1 & vRealize Log Insight v4.5. Planning to cover a net new deployment of vRealize Automation in an upcoming post,

Link to Official documentation. Before beginning deployment, confirm your environment meets the minimum system requirements You will also need a My VMware account that is entitled to download the vRealize Suite

Download vRSLCM v1.0 here
Deploy the OVA with details applicable to your environment.
Once deployment is complete and the Virtual Appliance is powered on, Open a browser and connect to https://<vRSLCM FQDN>/vrlcm
Login as admin@localhost with the default password of vmware
You will be prompted to set a new password for the root account, enter a password and click Update Password
Click Start to begin a short tour of the product, which will highlight some of the getting started tasks. Feel free to click X as I’m going to cover in detail below.
First things first, lets setup some common configuration. Click the gear icon in the bottom left. Enter Root, Admin & SSH User passwords. Enable SSH, and I also recommend joining the Customer Experience Improvement Plan to enables VMware to enhance the product. Default Configuration Drift Interval is 24 hours. This is how often the system collects data for configuration drift reporting and can be adjusted accordingly. Click Save
You will be redirect to the login page, login once more as admin@localhost with updated password
Before we begin importing the environment, we need to create a certificate. Click the gear icon in the bottom left, then the Generate Certificate tab, enter appropriate details for your company and click Generate Certificate
To verify successful certificate generation, click the Request icon on the left (4 horizontal bars) and review status
Now click on then Home icon, then Create Environment
Then choose Using Installation Wizard
Ignore the warning about OVA configuration, that is not required to import an existing environment. I’ll cover in a future post
Click the + icon to the right of Data Center
Click the 3 dots on the right & then + to start adding a Data Center
Enter a Name, when you start typing in the Location field locations will start to auto fill. Click Add
Click the Manage vCenters tab, then Add vCenter
Enter vCenter details and click submit
To verify successful vCenter data collection , click the Request icon on the left (4 horizontal bars) and review status
OK, now we have our Data Center created, and vCenter added we can import our solutions. Click on then Home icon, then Create Environment
Then choose Using Installation Wizard
You should now able to select your newly created Data Center from the drop down. Select Environment Type, input Environment Name, Admin E-mail & Default Password
Scroll down to see a list of vRealize Suite products. I’m selecting the import radio button and check box for vRealize Log Insight & vRealize Operations. Then click Create Environment
Scroll down to the bottom of the EULA, select I agree.. then click Next
Enter vRealize Suite license key and click Next again. NOTE You will need to upgrade key in your MyVMware license portal to vRealize Suite 2017
On the next screen select vCenter server from the drop down and details for your infrastructure then click Next
Complete network details(note this would be required for a net new deployment) and click Next
You should be presented with the certificate we created earlier, no input required click Next
Now we need to enter details for the products we will be importing
1. vRealize Log Insight
2. and vRealize Operations
Click Next, confirm details are correct on the summary screen(if not click the previous button to go back and modify the relevant section) the click Submit
Click the Request icon on the left (4 horizontal bars) and review status, click the In progress button to see more details and to verify once complete
Click the Home button, and you should now see your environment ready to be managed by vRSLCM! Note, initially you will see a message stating health not available.

Check here to make sure your environment is configured. You should then see

health status