Registering VMware vCloud providers

This topic provides instructions for working with vCloud providers.

Before you begin

Install and configure the VMware vCloud Director cloud infrastructure to connect to and integrate with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. Refer to the appropriate VMware vCloud documentation.

To register a VMware vCloud provider

From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console, choose the Providers workspace.
Click the Register New Provider icon to open the Register Provider dialog box, and select the provider type VMware vCloud.

Complete the following fields to register the specified VMware vCloud provider:

Field	Description
Provider Type	From the drop-down list, select the VMware vCloud provider.
Name	Enter a meaningful name to distinguish your vCloud provider type instance from others.
Description	(Optional) Enter a text description that further distinguishes this provider type.
Server Name	Enter the IP address or host name of the VMware vCloud Director server with which BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management communicates.
Protocol	Select the communication protocol that the VMware vCloud server uses to exchange messages. The default is https.
Port	Select the port number. The default value is 443. You can change this default value through the vCloud Director interface (not through BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management).
Username	Enter the user name of the system administrator created for vCloud Director. Note Starting with BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management 4.1 patch 1, you can register the vCloud Provider with the organization administrator user account. To use the organization administrator user account, specify the user name in the following format: <organization administrator user name>@<organization name> For example, if the organization administrator user name is myorgadmin and the organization name is bestorg, specify the username as myorgadmin@bestorg. If you specify the organization administrator account to register the provider, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management creates blueprints for all the vApp templates available through public catalogs and private catalogs (created for that specific organization). If you specify the system administrator user account to register the provider, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management creates blueprints for vApp templates available through public catalogs only.
Password	Enter the password associated with the user name of the vCloud Director administrator.
Maximum connections	Enter the maximum number of simultaneous connections that the Platform Manager allows for the VMware vCloud Director server. The default value is 50. Note The current implementation uses a behind-the-scenes, hard-coded minimum connections value of 20. You can manually change this value by accessing the underlying .json file. For instructions, see To update the Minimum Connections value manually.
vApp Ownership Model	The vApp Ownership Model determines how BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management users are mapped to vCloud users. This mapping controls the ownership and behavior of provisioned vApps in the vCloud. You have the following options: User mappings required: This value is the default. It requires a mapping entry in the mappings form for every BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management user or tenant; otherwise, the vApp deployment fails for the assigned user. See Managing Logical Data Center user mappings. User administrator as default: The vCloud Director administrator user who is specified in this provider definition. The user administrator is used for all provisioning requests if a mapping entry does not exist for a specified BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management user or tenant. The vApp deployment does not fail.
Blueprint Name Prefix	Append a service blueprint prefix to the vApp template name. The vApp templates are imported from vCloud Director into BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, and serve as the basis of the service blueprint. The format of the blueprint name is as follows: FM_ <Blueprint Name Prefix> _ <name of vApp template name in vCloud Director>. Note There is no way to differentiate between the versions of vCloud (1.5 and 5.1). Therefore, consider defining the blueprint prefix name using the version number.
Synchronization Interval	Enter the synchronization interval in minutes. The synchronization interval is a polling interval between the underlying virtual machine templates and the corresponding entry in the service blueprints of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. The purpose of the synchronization is to ensure that the values of the VM templates and of the blueprints correspond. The interval is measured in minutes.
Operation Timeout	Enter the timeout interval in milliseconds for all vCloud Director operations. The default is 1,800,000 milliseconds (30 minutes).

Click Submit.
BMC recommends that you restart the Cloud Platform Manager after registering the provider.

After registering the provider type, you can proceed to Onboarding and offboarding Logical Data Centers.

Note

To view the vCloud Director version, click on the provider type after registering. The version is displayed in the Details pane.

To deregister a vCloud provider type

Select the vCloud provider type instance from the list in the Providers workspace.
Click the De-Register icon.

To update the Minimum Connections value manually

To change the hard-coded Minimum Connections default value of 20, follow these steps to add the appropriate code to the providers.json configuration file that is associated with the registered vCloud provider you want to update.

Go to the Platform Manager installation location, and use an editor to open the following file: BMCCloudLifeCycleManagement\Platform_Manager\configuration\providers.json

Add the following code just above the first VCLOUD_MAX_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS stanza in the configuration file. The Minimum Connections value is captured by the attributeValue property. The Minimum Connections value is increased to 25, as shown in this excerpt:

The actual code block example follows:

{

"cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
    "accessAttribute" : {
      "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttribute",
      "datatype" : "INTEGER",
      "description" : "Minimum Number of client connections",
      "guid" : "afe95438-32ed-4802-a312-5fd273a8924a",
      "hasValueObject" : [ {
        "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
        "attributeValue" : "20",
        "guid" : "6f2f357a-e428-4b36-a0df-5c6daf759dee",
        "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
      } ],
      "isOptional" : true,
      "isPassword" : false,
      "modifiableWithoutRestart" : false,
      "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
      },
    "attributeValue" : "25",
    "guid" : "6fb7b54c-1131-42b9-ac67-9700f4648ea8",
    "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
      },

With the addition of this code to support the Minimum Connections value, your version of the providers.json file will look similar to the following example:

{
    "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
    "accessAttribute" : {
      "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttribute",
      "datatype" : "INTEGER",
      "description" : "Minimum Number of client connections",
      "guid" : "afe95438-32ed-4802-a312-5fd273a8924a",
      "hasValueObject" : [ {
        "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
        "attributeValue" : "20",
        "guid" : "6f2f357a-e428-4b36-a0df-5c6daf759dee",
        "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
      } ],
      "isOptional" : true,
      "isPassword" : false,
      "modifiableWithoutRestart" : false,
      "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
    },
    "attributeValue" : "25",
    "guid" : "6fb7b54c-1131-42b9-ac67-9700f4648ea8",
    "name" : "VCLOUD_MIN_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
  }, {
    "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
    "accessAttribute" : {
      "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttribute",
      "datatype" : "INTEGER",
      "description" : "Maximum Number of client connections",
      "guid" : "8f5d077f-c616-4a67-a859-8c25bf50429b",
      "hasValueObject" : [ {
        "cloudClass" : "com.bmc.cloud.model.beans.AccessAttributeValue",
        "attributeValue" : "50",
        "guid" : "6f2f357a-e428-4b36-a0df-5c6daf759dee",
        "name" : "VCLOUD_MAX_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
      } ],
      "isOptional" : true,
      "isPassword" : false,
      "modifiableWithoutRestart" : false,
      "name" : "VCLOUD_MAX_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
    },
    "attributeValue" : "50",
    "guid" : "6ccc52ba-5ffb-483f-b0c0-5c08b4a045ec",
    "name" : "VCLOUD_MAX_CLIENT_CONNECTIONS"
  }

After adding the code and updating the attributeValue property to denote the updated Minimum Connections value, save the file.
Restart the Cloud Platform Manager.

Where to go from here

Onboarding and offboarding Logical Data Centers