How to create a vRA 7 Automation Agent Linux Template – Part I

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Ryan Kelly — 27 Comments ↓

New in vRealize Automation 7 you now have the ability to drop software components onto your Blueprints in the new blueprint design tool. In this guide I will show you how to create a Linux template with the vRealize Automation Agent installed and configured. We will then make this template available in vRA and create and run a simple test Software component.

Pre-Reqs

vRA7 Installed and configured
A working Linux Blueprint in vRA that can be successfully deployed via clone or Linked Clone using vCenter Guest customization
Network access from the Base VM to the vRA appliance.
A vRA reservation with a port group that will allow the provisioned VM’s to reach the vRA appliance.

Log into vCenter Client and power on your Linux Base VM.

SSH or open Console and change to the tmp directory

Make sure you have wget installed by typing the following and press enter

yum install wget -y

Now type the following to get the agent install script. Note: You will need wget installed and you will need to enter the url for your vRA Linux Appliance.

wget --no-check-certificate https://vra-01a.corp.local:5480/service/software/download/prepare_vra_template.sh

NOTE: In 7.1 the URL has changed the download path is now:
https://vraApplianceFQDN/software/download/prepare_vra_template.sh

Now make the script executable by typing the following

chmod u+x prepare_vra_template.sh

Now type the following and press enter to run the script

./prepare_vra_template.sh

Type vsphere and press enter

Enter the FQDN of your vRealize Appliance and press enter

Enter the FQDN of your IaaS Windows box and press enter

Type N to not check for certificate and press enter

Press enter at next screen to accept the default

type y and press enter to download and install Java Runtime Environment

Review your settings and if all is good type y and hit enter to start the installation

If all went well you should see the following screen

Type shutdown now and press enter

NOTE: for CentOS/RHEL7 templates. As of vRA 7.0 there is a known issue with the software agent. See here for a workaround.

For linked clones, create a new snapshot and name it Base_vRAagent. Full Clone you can just convert the machine back to template.

Go to Part II here!

27 Replies to “How to create a vRA 7 Automation Agent Linux Template – Part I”

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Amir A. on April 19, 2016 at 2:16 pm said:

Hi Ryan – thanks for this detailed doc on this topic. I have followed it thru and worked like a charm in our POC environment. However, our production is vRA 7 distributed setup. So, should we use the VIP for the vRA and manager service when running the bash script.

Thanks,

Reply ↓
- Ryan Kelly on April 20, 2016 at 6:41 pm said:
  
  Yes, in distributed environment point to the VIP of the vRA appliances and the manager service.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Amir A. on April 27, 2016 at 3:01 pm said:
    
    Ok, thanks. That did work.
    
    Reply ↓
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TRen0026 on July 26, 2016 at 12:18 pm said:

Hello,

great article! I was curious about the vCenter guest customization script. Is there any specific settings I should be using?

Reply ↓
- Ryan Kelly on July 26, 2016 at 4:56 pm said:
  
  Hi Tren0026, See this guide for details on the vCenter Guest Customization settings. https://www.vmtocloud.com/vravcac-clone-blueprint-magic-secrets-revealed/
  
  Reply ↓
Mukesh on August 29, 2016 at 8:05 pm said:

Hi Ryan

will this work for Ubuntu 14.4 template. when I try to run the “./prepare_vra_template.sh”.
I am getting bunch of 404 Not found errors.

Thanks

Mukesh

Reply ↓
- Mukesh on August 29, 2016 at 8:08 pm said:
  
  apt-get update solved the issue
  
  Reply ↓
Justin on October 4, 2016 at 10:30 pm said:

In 7.1 they changed the download path to
https://vraAppliance/software/download/prepare_vra_template.sh

Reply ↓
- Ryan Kelly on October 4, 2016 at 10:39 pm said:
  
  Ahh, thanx for the tip, will update post with this info.
  
  Reply ↓
Krishna on March 28, 2017 at 7:31 pm said:

Hello Ryan, Very good one. thank you. Could I also configure primary IP after clone, by passing arguments along with the script ? I am kind of stuck where I nee to configure IP at Linux guest side to bring the host on to network after cloning. Please advise. I need to automate the whole IP config process without manual intervention. I already defined Network custom properties . Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

Reply ↓
- Ryan Kelly on March 30, 2017 at 4:52 pm said:
  
  Hi Krishna,
  
  vRA does this already out of the box when using cloning, see this guide https://www.vmtocloud.com/vravcac-clone-blueprint-magic-secrets-revealed/
  
  Reply ↓
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peterm on February 19, 2018 at 1:18 am said:

Does this work with atomic? Agent install falls over when installing the RPMs, as root.

Successfully extracted LinuxGuestAgentPkgs.zip
Installing vRealize Automation Guest Agent RPM
rpm -i /tmp/vmAgentInstaller/VraLinuxGuestAgent/rhel64/gugent-7*.*.rpm
error: can’t create transaction lock on /var/lib/rpm/.rpm.lock (No such file or directory)
#######################################################################
!!! ERROR !!!
Unable to install vRealize Automation Guest Agent
Installation unable to continue!
#######################################################################

Reply ↓
- peterm on February 19, 2018 at 1:20 am said:
  
  Here’s the atomic spec
  
  [root@devops-centos-atomic-tmpl ~]# rpm-ostree status
  State: idle
  Deployments:
  ● centos-atomic-host:centos-atomic-host/7/x86_64/standard
  Version: 7.1712.1 (2018-01-12 10:25:04)
  BaseCommit: c6104b6bd8aeabbc19687e91359657e1292c3669e3c686438993e48481af6f2d
  GPGSignature: Valid signature by 64E3E7558572B59A319452AAF17E745691BA8335
  LayeredPackages: perl unzip
  
  centos-atomic-host:centos-atomic-host/7/x86_64/standard
  Version: 7.1712.1 (2018-01-12 10:25:04)
  BaseCommit: c6104b6bd8aeabbc19687e91359657e1292c3669e3c686438993e48481af6f2d
  GPGSignature: Valid signature by 64E3E7558572B59A319452AAF17E745691BA8335
  LayeredPackages: unzip
  
  Reply ↓
Ragupathy Subramanian on September 19, 2019 at 2:19 pm said:

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the blog, feeling like an expert when going through this vro integration with ansible !!

Last year vRO 7.3 with ansible integration worked fine, however now with vRO 7.6 (embedded vRO from vRA 7.6) not able to succeed. Can you help me to resolve the below error?. Thanks.,

==================
Prod-00019: sendEBSMessage22(workflow=65340733-7b57-4975-af2c-2a9266a5f035) Error in state VMPSMasterWorkflow32.MachineActivated phase POST event (queue = 7930bad5-8dda-4978-9a1d-d90d109133eb): Extensibility consumer error(20999) – TypeError: Cannot call method “get” of null (Workflow:AnsibleServerRunvRA7 / Collect vRA Payload (item1)#42)
==================

Reply ↓
- Ragupathy Subramanian on September 19, 2019 at 3:09 pm said:
  
  After uploading the blueprint via cloudclient, the following error !!
  Please help. Thanks.,
  
  ===============
  Prod-00020: sendEBSMessage22(workflow=0fa76b74-49a2-4a62-b822-2cc65403d94b) Error in state VMPSMasterWorkflow32.MachineActivated phase POST event (queue = ac30b265-261b-440e-af5f-0e3c5eb85a09): Extensibility consumer error(20999) – ReferenceError: vm is not defined for waiting for the DNS name
  ===============
  
  Reply ↓
  - Ragupathy Subramanian on September 20, 2019 at 5:42 am said:
    
    Still not successful !!
    
    ==============
    Prod-00025: sendEBSMessage22(workflow=0f34115e-f426-4a4c-b383-b765af7a4f83) Error in state VMPSMasterWorkflow32.MachineActivated phase POST event (queue = caaeffa6-8343-4061-af12-acbbe399fe0a): Extensibility consumer error(20999) – java.lang.ClassCastException: com.vmware.vcac.authentication.http.spring.oauth2.OAuthToken cannot be cast to com.vmware.vim.sso.client.SamlToken (Workflow:virtual machine by name / Scriptable task (item1)#4)
    ==============
    
    Reply ↓