IPAM General - Migrate from vRA network profiles to SovLabs IPAM Profiles

Overview

In this article we will cover at a high level what you need to do to move away from using vRA network profiles as your IPAM solution and onto a SovLabs-supported IPAM Solution.  

For a list of supported IPAM implementations please click HERE

Considerations

• Have licensed the SovLabs IPAM Module you wish to use
• Have the appropriate service accounts for access to your IPAM Solution

Procedure

Step 1 Import your Hosts into your IPAM Solution

This step will ensure you have all your managed vRA machines in your IPAM Solution before moving away from your vRA-managed IPAM.

1. Import your active hosts into your IPAM solution so that you have all the machines and IP Addresses registered in IPAM

Step 2 Configure your IPAM and test on a cloned blueprint

These steps will allow you to deploy a VM using the SovLabs IPAM Module and will allow you to confirm functionality before making larger changes

1. Configure you IPAM Endpoint and profile
   Please follow our documentation on configuring your IPAM Solution HERE
   
   
2. Clone your blueprint and remove the networking component
3. Add your IPAM Profile so you can run a test deploy
   
   

Step 3 Deploy a test machine on your old blueprint for testing the update properties

1. Deploy a test machine that will still be using your vRA IPAM (Original blueprint)
2. Register your test machine into your IPAM solution
3. Capture your IPAM Profile information by going to Administration (1) → Property Dictionary (2) → Property Groups (3) and then clicking on your SovLabs-IPAMProfile-<tenant>_<ProfileName> (4)
   
   
   
4. The information you need to write down are the SovLabs_IPAMProfile_nicN (Where N is the NIC number, usually this will be 0) and the value
   
   
   
5. Use the Manage VM Properties - SovLabs Module in your catalog and add the property you captured from Step 4
   
   For assistance on how to use the Manage VM Properties click HERE
   
   
6. Once done, you should now have a machine that has the SovLabs IPAM property allocated and you have registered it in your IPAM Solution
7. Now destroy that deployment and validate that it is removed from your IPAM Solution and also see that it will have released the IP Address from your Network Profile

Step 4 Bulk update your VM's using the Manage VM Properties - SovLabs Modules catalog item

This step allows you to bulk update UPTO 100 VMs at a time with the property you want to add.  This may be a good time to do a hand full of VMs and validate that the bulk update worked as you expected it too.

1. You can now bulk update your VMs using the Manage VM Properties - SovLabs Modules catalog item.  You may have to go through this a few times to cover all your VMs as the module is limited to 100 VMs per update.  So please use the documentation and apply filters as required to get through the VMs

Step 5 Update your blueprint or unpublish the old blueprint

There are a couple of ways you can approach updating a blueprint to use your newly configured IPAM profiles

1. Remove the networking component on your existing blueprint and add the SovLabs IPAM Profile
2. Use a clone of your original blueprint, make changes to the clone and unpublish your original blueprint (Not delete)

Depending on your organization it may be preferable to keep the original blueprint intact but in an unpublished, unusable state and allow your users to use the new blueprint.  This gives you an opportunity to republish the blueprint if you absolutely have to.

Step 6 Update your reservation policies to clear the Network Profile associated with your Network Adapter

This step does the clean up of your reservation policies network setup.  This should be done once you are confident you will not need the network you just cut across.  Perform this action for all networks you will now be using with the SovLabs IPAM Module.

You can leave the Network Profile intact as it will clean up over time as you destroy and rebuild machines.  Eventually you would hope to see that there are no more machines registered in your network profile.

Additional information

Supported IPAM Solutions : http://docs.sovlabs.com/latest/vmware-vra7x-plugin/modules/#endpoint-integrations
Property Toolkit manage properties : http://docs.sovlabs.com/latest/vmware-vra7x-plugin/modules/vra-toolkits/property-toolkit/usage/#manage-properties-for-multiple-vms