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Building vCloud Suite POC – Part 20: Request Resources Using vCAC Self Service Portal

Marek Zdrojewski

In previous part of this vCloud Suite Proof of Concept we have integrated the vCloud Director with the vCloud Automation Center and created blueprints for virtual machines that a customer can request through the Self Service Portal. Now we will take a closer look at the resource request from the Self Service Portal.

Request Resources

  1. Open the Self Service Portal by typing https://<vCAC_Server>/vCACSelfService address in your internet browser.
  2. Login with user credentials. I’ve created an admin account for my organization in the Active Directory and assigned the user to the corresponding Provisioning Group in vCAC.
  3. When logged in, the welcome screen should look similar to the one below.
  4. Click the New Request button on top of the page. You should see all blueprint available to this particular user.
  5. Click on the blueprint and a Request vApp wizard window will appear.
  6. In Step 1 – General Settings, enter the number of machines you want to request, provision information, description and the reason for the request. Click Next.
  7. In Step 2 – Machine Configuration you have the opportunity to customize the machine (if you are authorized of course). Click Next to continue.
  8. In Step 3 – Custom Properties, leave the properties as default and click Next.
  9. Review the request and click Finish to submit it.
  10. The requested machine will be cloned, deployed and powered on. You can monitor the progress from the My Resources -> My Machines menu on the Self Service Portal. When the virtual machine is deployed, you will see its status as On.

It’s also nice to see how the vApp and the VM are being deployed on the vSphere cluster. Check the screenshot below.

You will also receive an e-mail notification when the virtual machine will expire with an option to add it to your calendar. Pretty neat huh? 🙂

Note 1

If you get the following error during a new resource request:

Error requesting machine. Transactions with IsolationLevel Snapshot cannot be promoted.

You probably installed the vCAC database with different credentials than the credentials used to run the vCloud Automation Center Service. To fix this, you have to reinstall the vCloud Automation Center Server and make sure when creating the database you use the same credentials for the database as for the vCloud Automation Center Service on your Windows Server. Also, note that the FQDN’s and the database name during the setup of all vCAC components are case sensitive!

Note 2

If you get the following error during the deployment of the virtual machine:

Error creating user: administrator in organization: <Organization_Name>. Inner Exception: Matching LDAP object for administrator not found

Make sure that your organization in de vCloud Director is configured with LDAP connection and that the user account requesting the resources through Self Service Portal is added as organization administrator.

And so this concludes the vCloud Automation Center in this Proof of Concept series.

Continue to part 21 where we will take a closer look at the vCenter Infrastructure Navigator.

Cheers!

– Marek.Z

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