Integrating Cloud Director 10.6 with Telco Cloud Platform (TCP) 5.x
- Kashif Hindusthan
- Mar 21
- 4 min read
VMware by Broadcom Cloud Director aka vCD
vCloud Director (vCD) is a platform with multi-tenant support for managing software-defined data centers (SDDC) and providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to customers.
NOTE: To install vCD appliance and configure ensure that you have DNS records updated and NFS share configured
1- Make A record and reverse record for your vCloud Director.
2- NFS folder with full access permissions for the transfer file location.
For details on how to install vCD appliance refer the following document:
Preparing Cloud Director for TCP
Pre-requisites:
Ensure that the Cloud Director Extensibility with AMQP Broker is established
AMQP Event monitoring refers to a setup where observed entity emits messages to an AMQP broker from where another entity can consume them. Event monitoring is an improvement over periodical polling for changes through observerd entity’s API for performance reasons.
{vcd-host} supports AMQP event monitoring but has it disabled by default. There are two configuration scopes to take care of in order to make event monitoring work for {vcd-provider-full}:
To install Rabbitmq we can use Windows or Linux VM and prepare the VCD to AMQP connection and exchanges.
For details on how to install and configure RabbitMQ on MS-Windows VM refer the following official page:
https://www.rabbitmq.com/docs/install-windows
Rabbitmq configuration steps:
A. Login to Rabbitmq using the ip or name of the windows VM which has the Rabbitmq service running Example: 10.10.x.x:15672
B. Prepare RabbitMQ Queue for the Organization
{vcd-host} is sending messages (events, notifications) to AMQP exchange named systemExchange. Multiple queues can be subscribed to systemExchange exchange, each of them will receive replica of all messages.
Steps below describe how to create a new AMQP queue and subscribe it to systemExchange exchange in a way that only messages for specific organization are delievered to it. {product-title} then consumes messages from the queue to perform event-based actions.
Note :Steps below demonstrate AMQP queue configuration via Web GUI, but all the configuration can also be done via CLI.
Create Queue with Predefined Name
Follow steps below to create a queue with predefined name so that {product-title} will be able to connect and consume messages.
- Login into RabbitMQ broker Web GUI with administrative user and navigate to Queues tab to add a new queue. Assign it to the same virtual host as where systemExchange exchange exists. Name it queue-<ORG_UUID> and leave all other parameters on default.
System Exchanges Configuration:
C. Subscribe Queue to systemExchange Exchange:
Follow steps below to subscribe newly created queue to systemExchange exchange so that queue will start receiving messages from the exchange.
Navigate to Exchanges tab and open up systemExchange exchange details.
In the Bindings subsection add a new binding for your queue and assign it following routing key (replace <ORG_UUID> with organization UUID):
Bind: Your queue will now receive all messages (events, notifications) regarding specified organization.
D. Prepare RabbitMQ User for the Organization
Having a working queue with predefined name configured, we only need to provide authentication for it yet so that {product-title} will be able to connect. For this reason we create a new RabbitMQ user and assign it just enough permissions to access the one queue it needs. Eventually we’ll pass this credentials to {product-title} in order to grant access required for eventing.
E. Create RabbitMQ User
Navigate to Admin tab and add a new user without any tags. Omitting all tags restricts user from connecting to any queue.
Note: User without any tags won’t be able to even access RabbitMQ Web UI.
Important
Make sure you click Set permission button after you’ve input queue name or else configuration won’t be stored and user won’t be able to consume messages.
Note: Configure regexp and Write regexp permissions are required due to a bug in underlying {product-title}'s library that fails to connects to the queue unless full permission is granted.
Share Credentials with {vcd-provider} Administrator
Following above instructions you now have the RabbitMQ broker configured in a way that it’s safe to provide respective {vcd} organization administrator with:
RabbitMQ broker IP/hostname address.
Credentials of the newly created user.
Using credentials provided, she will only be able to connect to the queue prepared for her organization and therefore only consume messages related to her organization.
Connect AMQP Broker with Cloud Director
Connect to Cloud Directoru PVDC UI .Example: https://ip:provider
System > Administration > Extensibility > AMQP Broker and click Edit and fill the AMQP details
Once you save the configuration click on test and enter the AMQP broker password:
Ensure the test is successful
Configuring Telco Cloud Automation-Control Plane (TCA-CP) with Cloud Director (CD) end point
Connect to TCA-CP UI with port 9443. Example: HTTPS://tcacpip:9443
use credentials as tca and password
Follow the onscreen instructions as mentioned below:
Select your location and system name in the next screen.
Then you will be prompted for endpoint type at this stage select VMware Cloud Director
Provide hostname and credentials of Cloud Director system
Accept the SSL Cert
Click Finish
NOTE: Wait for 30 to 40 seconds and then at the TCA-CP Dashboard the status for vCD should show Green as mentioned below:
Congratulations you have now configured your Cloud director with TCP 5.X platform enjoy onboarding VNFs to your Cloud Director :)