vCAC Enterprise (formerly Application Director), automated agent installation for Windows

As with all things I find that keeping this small and focused will make it much easier to consume and potentially grow. One of the many valuable feature I find with vCAC and vCO is how much one workflow can build out from another and grow into this beautiful and very functional system as demand changes. This is where we will start today something small but valuable. Focusing 100% on windows today, the next steps will include Linux, and then automated blueprint creation.

PreReqs:

• Windows 2008 R2 x64 &/or Windows 2012 R2 x64
• On Windows 2012 R2 the .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) must be added
• vCAC and vCO configured (if you need help see my previous post)
• A virtual machine 2008 or 2012 that has been provisioned by vCAC

Let’s start with a quick overview of the workflow. Download this workflow package

1. In this workflow we utilize the vCAC workflow template which includes display inputs
2. Wait for tools to be running
3. Download the powershell script to c:agentScript.ps1
4. Sleeps for 20 seconds
5. Checks for the c:agentScript.ps1 to exist, if not it redirects to the sleep and loops till the file is there
6. Sleeps for 20 seconds
7. Runs the c:agentScript.ps1script with the parameters that were passed in the workflow
8. Checks for the transcript file in a loop until it exists, This indicates the install is complete

Step 1:

• vCACHost – Select the host from the drop down list
• vCACVm – Select the VM from the drop down list
• vCenterVm – Select the VM from the drop down list
• virtualMachineEntity – Leave as Not set
• externalWFStub – Leave blank
• vCACVmProperties – Uneditable

Step 2:

• Username – Set to and administrator of that machine
• Password

Step 3:

• Define location for JRE Zip file – If left blank it downloads from horizon workspace
• Define location for AppD Agent Bootstrap – If left blank it downloads from horizon workspace
• Define location for vCAC Gugent Zip file – If left blank it downloads from horizon workspace
• Define location for ntrights.exe – If left blank it downloads from horizon workspace

I recommend using local file shares for all of these to make the process move quickly. ntrights.exe is the only file you may not have in your environment.

Step 4:

• vCAC IaaS Host – This is the fqdn of your windows server
• Password – This is the password for the darwin user who will start the appD services

If any of this process fails or you’re looking for the logging check the following locations/files.

c:windowstempappdAgentInstall.txt (this file is written directly to the c: then moved on completion)

c:windowstempappdAgentService.txt

Next steps (not yet included in this tutorial)

1. Clone this virtual machine to a template
2. Use the vCAC web console to create a blueprint
3. Publish that blueprint
4. Utilize vCAC enterprise (AppD) to target this blueprint for a windows cloud template