VMware vFabric Suite - 5.2 Getting Started
Getting Started with vFabric Suite
VMware vFabric Suite 5.2
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Table of Contents
1. About Getting Started with vFabric Suite .................................................................................................. 1
Intended Audience ......................................................................................................................... 1
2. Quick Start Guide .............................................................................................................................. 3
3. Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2 ............................................................................................................... 7
vFabric Suite Editions and Components ............................................................................................... 7
vFabric Administration Server for Easier Component Management ............................................................. 17
Simplified VM-Based Licensing Model .............................................................................................. 17
vFabric Suite Product Integration and vSphere Integration ........................................................................ 17
Engineered for Spring-Built Applications ............................................................................................ 18
VMware Support for Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server, and RabbitMQ .................................................. 18
4. vFabric Licensing ............................................................................................................................. 21
How vFabric Licensing Works ......................................................................................................... 21
Check the Validity of an Existing License Key ..................................................................................... 21
5. Installing vFabric Suite ...................................................................................................................... 23
Install vFabric License Server on Your vCenter Server ............................................................................ 23
Activate vFabric Suite Licenses ....................................................................................................... 27
RHEL: Example Walkthrough of Installing Component From the VMware RPM Repository ............................... 29
Windows/Linux: Example Walkthrough of Installing Component from Download Page ..................................... 31
RHEL: Optionally Configure VM to Track Open-Source Software Component Usage ....................................... 32
Upgrade vFabric License Server ....................................................................................................... 33
Uninstall vFabric License Server from vCenter Server ............................................................................ 34
6. Monitoring vFabric License Usage ......................................................................................................... 35
Monitor License Usage with Command-Line Tools ................................................................................ 35
License Monitoring: Command Reference ........................................................................................... 36
Monitor License Usage with the vFabric License Server Reporting UI ......................................................... 41
Display the Component Events File in Readable Format: Procedure ............................................................ 43
vCenter License Reporting Manager .................................................................................................. 45
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About Getting Started with vFabric
Suite
1. About Getting Started with vFabric Suite
Revised October 16, 2012.
Getting Started with vFabric Suite describes product concepts and initial setup tasks for VMware® vFabric Suite™ products.
Read this documentation for an overview of vFabric Suite components; to familiarize yourself with the licensing infrastructure;
and to see walkthrough procedures for installing vFabric Suite components.
Intended Audience
Getting Started with vFabric Suite is intended for experienced Windows and Linux developers and system administrators who
want to learn about vFabric Suite and its included components; install the vFabric License Server on an existing VMware®
vCenter™ Server; and understand how vFabric licensing works.
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2 vFabric Suite
About Getting Started with vFabric
2
Suite
Quick Start Guide 3
2. Quick Start Guide
This section guides you through the end-to-end process of installing vFabric Suite, or more specifically, installing one vFabric
component on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) virtual machine in the context of vFabric Suite. In particular, the procedure
describes how to perform the following tasks:
• Create an ODBC data source on the Windows computer running vCenter Server that connects to either the database system
used by vCenter Server or to a separate database system. You will later specify this data source when you install vFabric
License Server. If you use the vCenter database system, VMware recommends that you create a separate database instance
for vFabric use so as to keep the data of the two products separate. This ODBC data source should be used only by vFabric
License Server.
In this Quick Start Guide, it is assumed you are using a SQL Server database system, although you can also use other database
system such as Oracle.
• Install vFabric License Server on the same computer as your vCenter Server.
• Activate a vFabric license.
• Install the VMware repository RPM on the RHEL virtual machine (VM), which makes it easy for you to browse the available
vFabric RPMs.
• Install one vFabric component (vFabric tc Server) on the RHEL VM from the VMware RPM repository.
The procedure shows you how to complete the entire installation process as quickly as possible, with minimal explanation of
what each step means. For more details, see Installing vFabric Suite.
Prerequisites
• Install and configure vCenter Server and vSphere Client on a Windows computer.
See vSphere Installation and Setup.
• Create the database instance that will contain vFabric license data. See Guidelines for Creating the vFabric License Server
Database Instance.
• Create a virtual machine (VM) and install Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the guest operating system.
See vSphere Virtual Machine Administration.
• Install VMware Tools on the VM.
See Installing and Configuring VMware Tools.
• Ensure that the Windows computer on which vCenter Server is running has the SQL Server Native Client ODBC
driver installed on it; if not, download and install the driver from the Microsoft SQL Server Web site.
Procedure
1. Create an ODBC data source that connects to the vFabric database instance on either the vCenter database system,
or an external database.
a. On the Windows computer on which you are running vCenter Server, invoke the ODBC Data Source Administrator
window using Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Data Source (ODBC).
b. Click the System DSN tab.
c. Click the Add... button.
d. Select the SQL Server Native Client driver, then click Finish.
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e. Enter a name and description of the data source, then select the SQL Server and database instance you want this data
source to connect to from the drop-down list. The SQL Server database system can be either the one used by the
vCenter Server or a separate one, whichever works best for your environment. Click Next.
f. Specify that you want SQL server to verify the authenticity using a login ID and password entered by the user, then
enter the Login ID and password of the SQL Server user. This database user must have privileges to load the schema.
VMware recommends that you not specify integrated Windows authentication.
g. Continue clicking Next, and then Finish, taking all default values, until you see a summary of the data source
configuration. Test the data source to ensure you have configured it correctly, then click OK.
2. From the Windows computer on which you are running vCenter Server, download the vFabric License Server installer from
the VMware Download Center page and save it to your computer.
The installer program is called vFabric_License_Server-version.exe.
3. Install the vFabric License Server on the same computer as your vCenter Server.
a. Double-click on the installer from Windows Explorer to start the installation. After preparing the installation, the
vFabric Welcome Screen appears.
b. Continue clicking Next to accept the license agreement and view where the installer will install the vFabric License
Server.
c. Enter the credentials of the vCenter user who has the appropriate privileges to register the vFabric License Server as an
extension. At a minimum, the user must have the following vCenter privileges:
• Extension.Register
• Extension.Update
Click Next to continue.
d. Enter the login ID and password of the database user, and select the ODBC data source (DSN) that you created in a
preceding step.
e. Click Install to proceed with the installation.
The installer program completes successfully when you see the message InstallShield Wizard Completed. Click Finish
to complete the installation.
f. Restart your vCenter Server to enable the vFabric License Server changes.
4. Make a note of the license key that you purchased for vFabric Suite. VMware license keys consist of groups of characters
separated by dashes, such as 123AA-123BB-123CC-123DD-123EE.
5. Activate the vFabric license keys in vCenter Server.
a. Start vSphere Client and log in to the vCenter Server in which you installed vFabric License Server.
Note: This procedure shows how to use version 5.0 of vSphere Client.
b. Select Home>Administration>Licensing to invoke the vCenter Licensing page, then click the Manage vSphere
Licenses link in the top-right corner.
c. Enter one or more license keys in the text window to the right, one license key per line. Enter an optional label.
d. Click the Add License Keys button. The license keys shows up in the review window.
4 Quick Start Guide
Quick Start Guide 5
e. Follow the prompts until you get to the Confirm Changes window, verify changes, and click Finish.
The license keys are displayed in the main vCenter Licensing window under the name VMware vFabric Suite
Standard|Advanced, depending on the vFabric Suite package you purchased.
6. Install the VMware repository RPM on the RHEL VM.
a. Log in to the RHEL VM as the root user (or user with sudo privileges) and start a terminal.
b. Run the following wget command, passing it the appropriate URL. The URL differs depending on the version of
RHEL you are using.
Important: You must run the entire wget command on a single line. Be sure you include the | sh at the end, or the
RPM installation will not work.
For RHEL 5:
prompt# wget -q -O - http://repo.vmware.com/pub/rhel5/vfabric/5.2/vfabric-5.2-suite-installer | sh
For RHEL 6:
prompt# wget -q -O - http://repo.vmware.com/pub/rhel6/vfabric/5.2/vfabric-5.2-suite-installer | sh
If necessary, use sudo to run the preceding commands if you are not logged in as the root user.
7. Install vFabric tc Server on the RHEL VM.
a. Log in to the VM as the root user (or user with sudo privileges) and start a terminal.
b. Execute the following yum install command to install vFabric tc Server:
prompt# yum install vfabric-tc-server-standard
If necessary, use sudo to run the preceding commands if you are not logged in as the root user.
The yum command displays information about the contents of the installation.
c. Enter y at the prompt to begin the installation.
If the installation is successful, you will see a Complete! message at the end.
The yum command installed tc Server in the /opt/vmware/vfabric-tc-server-standard directory.
What to do next
• Install additional vFabric components on the RHEL VM, such as vFabric Hyperic or vFabric RabbitMQ. See Installing vFabric
Suite.
• If your vFabric license includes open-source software (OSS) support and you have OSS components (such as Tomcat Apache)
running on the VM, configure the VM to track their usage.
• Monitor the vFabric Suite license usage by querying the vFabric License Server. See Monitoring vFabric License Usage.
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6 Quick Start Guide
Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2 7
3. Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2
Cloud computing and IT as a service continue to transform application infrastructure and development. VMware® vFabric
Suite™ embraces this change by integrating the familiar Spring Developer Frameworks with a proven set of services that span
the lifecycle of modern application development, deployment, and management.
Engineered for Spring Framework, VMware vSphere® virtualization, and cloud environments, vFabric Suite brings significant
benefits to stake holders throughout the enterprise:
• Application developers and architects get tools that let them build data-intensive, Web-oriented applications quickly and
reliably. A per-VM licensing model gives them more latitude to amend application architecture with fewer licensing
constraints.
• IT gets an agile platform that makes applications easy to deploy, instantly scalable, and portable across clouds.
• End users get applications that are data rich, quick to access, and always available.
Subtopics
vFabric Suite Editions and Components
Simplified VM-Based Licensing Model
vFabric Administration Server for Easier Component Management
vFabric Suite Integration with vSphere and other VMware Products
Engineered for Spring-Built Applications
VMware Support for Apache Tomcat, Apache HTTP Server, and RabbitMQ
vFabric Suite Editions and Components
vFabric Suite is available in two editions, vFabric Suite Standard and vFabric Suite Advanced, as indicated in the table. The
sections that follow describe how each component is optimized to meet the demands of modern applications in virtual and cloud
environments.
Table 3.1. vFabric Suite 5.2 Components and Packages
Component and Version Description
vFabric tc Server 2.8 (Spring
Edition)
Lightweight application server,
fully compatible with Apache
Tomcat 7, that can be instantly
provisioned and elastically scaled.
Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J
1.2 ) is embedded with vFabric
tc Server (Spring Edition), and
Spring Insight Operations 1.8 is
available as a separate download.
vFabric Suite Standard
Component
Yes. Yes.
vFabric Suite Advanced
Component
Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J
1.2)
Memory management technology
that enables you to run more Java
applications on your ESXi servers
than previously possible. EM4J
helps maintain Java application
performance and reliability while
freeing memory that allows you to
run more VMs per host. An EM4J
plug-in is now available for the
vSphere Web Client.
Yes. Yes.
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Component and Version Description
Spring Insight Operations 1.8 Performance monitoring with real-
time, multi-layered visibility into
applications running on tc Server.
vFabric Hyperic 4.6 Proactive performance
management with complete and
constant visibility into applications
and infrastructure.
vFabric GemFire 6.6 Data management platform that
provides real-time, consistent
access to data across widely
distributed cloud architectures.
GemFire Application Cache Node
is the vFabric Suite offering for
vFabric GemFire.
vFabric Web Server 5.2 Precompiled and pretuned Web
server and load-balancing service
that dynamically routes requests
to an application server for
processing. vFabric Web Server
is fully compatible with Apache
Web Server.
vFabric RabbitMQ 2.8 De facto standard for cloud
messaging and leading
implementer of AMQP. Delivers
highly available, scalable,
and portable messaging with
predictable, consistent throughput
and latency.
vFabric Suite Standard
Component
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
No. Yes.
vFabric Suite Advanced
Component
vFabric SQLFire 1.0 Memory-optimized, distributed
vFabric Application Director 1.0 Cloud-enabled application
vFabric Postgres 9.1 (Standard
Edition)
vFabric Administration Server 1.1 Platform-independent, RESTful
vFabric Application Performance
Manager, with vFabric AppInsight
1.1 and vFabric Hyperic 4.6
database management system
that provides extremely high
throughput; predictable latency;
dynamic and linear scalability;
and continuous availability of
data.
provisioning solution that
simplifies how to create
and standardize application
deployment topologies across
cloud services.
ACID-compliant, ANSI-SQLcompliant transactional and
relational database designed
for the virtual environment and
optimized for vSphere.
API Web Service that simplifies
provisioning and management of
vFabric software components on
any number of computers on your
network.
Performance managing and
monitoring product designed
specifically for application owners
who deploy applications on hybrid
No. Yes.
No. Yes.
No. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Yes. Yes.
8 Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2
Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2 9
Component and Version Description
clouds and in dynamic virtual
environments.
vFabric Suite Standard
Component
vFabric Suite Advanced
Component
vFabric tc Server 2.8 (Spring Edition)
VMware® vFabric™ tc Server is 100-percent compatible with Apache Tomcat 7. It has all the runtime advantages of Tomcat,
plus operational management, advanced diagnostics, mission-critical support, and unmatched visibility into Spring-powered
applications — none of which are available in the open source product. vFabric tc Server Spring Edition includes all of the
components and features of tc Standard Edition, plus Spring Insight Operations, Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J), and Spring
commercial support.
tc Server harnesses the power of traditional JEE architectures while eliminating their complexity and performance drawbacks,
making it easier, faster, and more cost-effective to build and run cloud-ready applications. With its lean architecture and small,
10MB memory footprint, tc Server requires significantly fewer resources than conventional servers, which allows for greater
server density in virtual and cloud environments. tc Server supports integration with VMware tools and vFabric Hyperic, and
provides templates for vFabric GemFire session replication.
Main features of vFabric tc Server (Spring Edition):
• Compatible with existing Apache Tomcat applications, thus eliminating migration costs and cycles.
• Parallel deployment. Deploy multiple revisions of the same application at the same time so you can roll out a new revision of
an application without affecting users.
• Automatic instance upgrades. A new script lets you easily upgrade earlier instances to function with tc Server 2.8.
• Automated deployment of applications to multiple instances of tc Server and standardized templates for rapid provisioning of
new instances.
• Commercial support for vFabric tc Server and Spring Framework.
• Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J). Included with tc Server Spring Edition, EM4J allows Java workloads to cooperate more fully
with ESXi advanced memory-sharing technologies. EM4J helps maintain Java application performance and reliability while
freeing memory so you can run more VMs per host, improving your consolidation ratio.
• Spring Insight Operations, a Web application that gives you real-time, detailed visibility into application behavior and
performance. Insight Operations is optimized for monitoring and tuning Spring-built applications in production.
For new feature information, see vFabric tc Server Release Notes.
EM4J 1.2 for Improved Memory Management of Java Workloads
Elastic Memory for Java (EM4J) revolutionizes the virtualization of Java applications.
With EM4J and tc Server, you can run more Java applications on your ESXi servers than previously possible, and Java
applications can leverage ESXi's industry-leading memory sharing technology.
Previously if you ran Java on VMware ESXi, you had to reserve 100% of the configured memory for a VM running Java
applications or risk serious performance problems. To determine the optimum size of the Java heap, you determined the
application's peak requirement. Allocating less could mean unacceptable performance, errors, or crashes; allocating more than
was necessary wasted memory.
EM4J changes all that. It is a balloon that sits directly in the Java heap and works with a new memory-sharing interface
introduced in ESXi 5.0. EM4J allows ESXi to share available memory in the Java heap among VMs as needed, while preserving
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application performance and reliability. You can size the Java heap to accommodate the peak workload, without wasting or
running out of memory. Any excess memory is ballooned away and redistributed where it is needed.
This capability lets you create more VMs and pack more tc Server instances onto a single vSphere host. It also reduces the
likelihood of out-of-memory errors that can cripple applications.
A new EM4J plug-in is available for the vSphere Web Client. The plug-in enables you to monitor EM4J configuration and
memory performance for EM4J-enabled Java workloads in the vSphere Web Client. A Workloads tab displays statistics for
Java workloads on the virtual machine selected in the vSphere Web Client inventory tree. You can quickly verify that the virtual
machine and JVM are configured correctly for EM4J and see detailed information about the JVM process and memory usage.
Alerts warn of EM4J configuration problems and suggest best practices.
For new feature information, see vFabric EM4J Release Notes.
Spring Insight Operations 1.8 Engineered for vSphere, Spring, and Production Environments
Spring Insight Operations gives you real-time, granular visibility into application behavior and performance in production
environments. It is a Web application that runs with tc Server Spring Edition and is a separate download.
Insight Operations graphs the health of an application over time for the entire cluster and for each server in the cluster.
Administrators see application and server problems as they occur, with detailed information about contributing events, presented
in one unified dashboard. You can quickly identify under performing servers, server errors, and trace details for specific events
and exceptions.
VMware partners with Google to integrate Spring Insight data into SpeedTracer, a Google Chrome extension that analyzes
how your application is performing inside the browser and that ties browser performance to backend performance. If your Web
application uses Ajax and other rich open Web technologies, try SpeedTracer with Spring Insight.
Main features of Spring Insight Operations:
• Automatic instrumentation of Spring applications running on tc Server expose application performance from both general and
fine-grained perspectives.
• Isolation of performance problems by application, endpoint, application server, and method.
• Tracking of performance over time, to understand whether problems are chronic or spurious.
• Response-time histograms that reveal whether performance problems affect many users, or a small subset.
• Highly performant instrumentation with sub-microsecond impact to application response time, designed for applications in
production.
• Integration with vFabric Hyperic that enables operations and development teams to view a single set of both server-oriented
and application-oriented performance, and collaborate more effectively to fix performance problems faster. Spring Insight
metrics give Hyperic a broader range of data for triggering alerts and for control actions that implement automatic problem
remediation.
vFabric Hyperic 4.6
VMware® vFabric™ Hyperic® provides more than 50,000 performance metrics on more than 75 technologies at every layer of
the application infrastructure. It consolidates complete discovery, monitoring, analysis and control of all application, system, and
network assets -- including other vFabric Suite components -- both inside and outside of virtual machines powered by VMware.
Hyperic provides proactive performance management through transparent visibility into dynamic applications deployed across
physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
At startup, Hyperic automatically discovers and adds new servers and VMs to inventory; configures monitoring parameters; and
collects performance metrics and events. This level of automation lets you deploy fully monitored VMs with minimal effort and
scale out monitoring across your virtual infrastructure.
10 Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2
Overview of vFabric Suite 5.2 11
As part of Application Performance Manager, vFabric Hyperic is integrated with vFabric AppInsight. Together they provide
an application operations dashboard that automatically models transactions across all application tiers, providing a critical realtime perspective on the true performance of dynamically scaling applications. When performance problems occur, powerful
visualizations and drill-down details -- such as correlated metrics on resource performance from vFabric Hyperic and byte code
instrumentation -- make it easy to identify and fix problems quickly at the code level, all from a single management console.
Main features of vFabric Hyperic:
• Simplifies management of virtualized applications by maintaining a continually updated inventory of vSphere ESXi and ESX
hosts, their virtual machines, and guest operating systems.
• Single unified dashboard for managing and monitoring performance across all application tiers.
• tc Server plug-in for easier, remote management and monitoring of multiple tc Server instances and applications. See tc Server
Plug-In for Easier Management and Monitoring.
• Spring Insight plug-In for in-depth application monitoring. The plug-in makes it easier to discover whether a problem is
infrastructure or application-related. See Spring Insight Plug-In for In-Depth Application Metrics.
• Centralized plug-in manager that synchronizes Hyperic plug-ins between Hyperic Server and all Hyperic Agents in the
environment, enabling system administrators to easily configure and upgrade agents distributed across hundreds of servers.
• iPad and iPhone support.
• Deeper integration with LDAP that enables the automatic import of existing LDAP user groups to preassign roles to users.
• Auto-discovery across all operating systems that run on vSphere and in disparate run-time environments, from Java to .NET.
• Bridges the gap between virtual and physical: compares guest and host metrics (CPU, memory, disk utilization); relates
physical and virtual performance to individual applications.
• Advanced alerting: role-based, time-based (for geographically dispersed teams), server group-based, and so on. Automated
alert responses and alert escalation processes.
• Ability to resolve a broad range of issues without human intervention, often before end users notice, with automated
remediation that reduces mean time-to-resolution and ensures service level agreement (SLA) compliance.
• Plug-in framework that extends management and monitoring to any environment. Through the framework, Hyperic can
discover, monitor, and control any application or device using a straightforward Java/XML API.
• Scales dependably from the ground up — to more than 1,000 servers and one million metrics per minute with a single Hyperic
Server.
For new feature information, see vFabric Hyperic Release Notes.
tc Server Plug-In for Easier Management and Monitoring
The Hyperic tc Server plug-in enables you to remotely manage vFabric tc Server instances and applications on multiple
computers. Hyperic provides a single console with powerful dashboards through which you can:
• Manage the lifecycle of tc Runtime instances by starting, stopping, and restarting a local or remote instance.
• Manage the lifecycle of a group of tc Runtime instances that are distributed over a network of computers.
• Configure a single instance of tc Runtime. Configuration options include the various port numbers to which the tc Runtime
instance listens, JVM options such as heap size and enabling debugging, default server values for JSPs and static content,
JDBC datasources, various tc Runtime connectors, and so on.
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