In this series, we are going to cover the deployment process of vRNI.
vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) is a product by VMware that truly bridges the gap between the Virtual and Physical world by providing real-time insights and operational views of our entire stack from one single interface.
vRNI aids admins with security planning, plan migrations, and day 2 operations for software-defined networking topology. It collects feeds from several endpoints ( AWS, Azure, NSX-T/V, GCP, Bare metal etc ) providing operational views to manage our environment and enhancing security and compliance with accelerating micro-segmentation rules.
Architecture of vRNI
Two components form the vRealize Network Insight – Platform and Collector component and they are available as OVA’s and should be individually downloaded and installed.
The Platform act as a UI Plane and the collector is responsible for collecting data from endpoints such as VMware, AWS etc and feeding it back to the platform VM.
Prerequisites
It’s always a good idea to do your research before installing or upgrading vRNI Along with reading the release notes, verifying the VMware compatibility Matrix of ESX, vDS, vCenter, NSX-V/T and other collectors are essential.
Here are the relevant web links
- NSX and ESXi Compatibility Matrix (Transport Node)
- NSX and vCenter Server Compatibility Matrix ( Compute Manager )
- vRNI Support Matrix
Summary of vRNI Deployment
The following are the high-level steps required for our NSX-V deployment.
- Distributed Switch is a mandatory requirement for vRNI deployment
- Deploy vRNI platform
- Deploy vRNI Collector
- Add datapoints
Network Topology of Lab
Our network topology is set up as below
Management VM Sizing Requirements
Since we have deployed it in our lab, we have deployed vRNI with bare minimum settings.
| Version | Type | vCPU | Memory GB | Storage | Quantity | Size |
| 6.5 | Provider | 4 | 12 | 200GB | 1 | Medium |
| 6.5 | Collector | 4 | 12 | 200GB | 1 | Medium |
Licensing vRNI
vRNI needs to be licensed before we can use it. There are two offerings of vRNI
- vRNI – On prem
- Offered as entreprise plus or advanced license
- Enterprise plus license is required for monitoring Public Cloud workloads
- Network Insight – a pay as you go SAAS offering hosted and managed by VMware
Downloading VMware vRealize Network Insight
Download the collector bundle and the platform bundle.
vRNI Platform Manager VM Install
The first step in vRNI deployment is to install the platform VM. vRNI manager comes packaged as an ova file, login to the vCenter and browse to the OVA file downloaded from VMware.com
In Next screen, provide the VM a name
Choose the cluster to deploy the VM to
Review the details page and click next to proceed
Accept EULA
Choose deployment size as a medium for the lab. For production workloads, stick to Large
Select the virtual disk format as thin disk and choose datastore location and click Next.
Select the management portgroup from the destination network dropdown and click Next
Click Next to Continue
Review the settings and click finish to start the deployment.
Rest of the configuration such as IP etc should be done in the Virtual Machine console
The ova should start to deploy and once done, power on the VM.
Once it is successfully deployed, open up the console and start the configuration.
Default username: consoleuser and default Password: ark1nc0ns013 or console
Type setup to start the configuration
Enter passwords for both the SSH user and CLI privilege mode.
Then Start the Network Configuration
Provide below details:
- Hostname
- Network 1 IPv4 Address
- Default IPv4 Gateway
- Network 1 Netmask
- NTP server list
- DNS Servers
- Domain Search Lists
At the next step Provide the NTP server details
If you have a proxy server provide the details accordingly.
Launch a web browser and connect to the vRNI management address via https://VRI_mgrIP. Choose Ind
The user name is admin and the password is the one we set at deployment.
Provide an admin password and activate it.
Generate the shared key file and copy it . We will need this for our Collector VM
vRNI Collector/vRealize Proxy VM Install
While that is deploying, I will add the vRNI Collector VM as well. Installation is just an OVA similar to the above deployment
Add the shared key we generated from our vRNI platform
Review the settings and click finish to start the deployment.
Rest of the configuration such as IP etc should be done in the Virtual Machine console.
The ova should start to deploy and once done, power on the VM.
We will have to follow the same configuration options as we did in the Platform Appliance and provide the IP configuration. It will take some time and will be paired with the Platform Appliance
Once you see the collector is detected in the Platform GUI, click Finish to complete the configuration
Login in our vRNI provider IP address – Default username is: admin@local
Skip Customer Experience Improvement Program
Click OK to continue
Click on Switch To Full Product Evaluationoption at the bottom of the page
Integrate with Amazon Web Services option will be available after that
Connect The vCenter Server to vRealize Network Insight
Under Accounts And Data Sources choose our vCenter – Choose the Collector we are planning to use to collect the feeds from our list.
Once it is validated, select the Enable The NetFLow (IPFIX) On This VCenter option and select the switches which you want to enable the NetFlow Settings. Provide a “Nick Name” to the vCenter Server and Notes if required and then submit the changes to complete the configuration.
Click Finish to complete the vRealize Network Insight Deployment
We’ve now deployed our vRNI
As the environment grows large, we will add more new collectors in such an AWS stack will have a single collector likewise a secondary datacenter will have another one locally that can collect data and feed it back our vRNI provider.
In the next blog, we will run some queries to get some info out of our NSX-T environment.