Migrate Aria Config from LCM Based Deployment
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Migrate Aria Config from LCM Based Deployment

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Article ID: 375126

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Updated On:

Products

VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite) SaltStack entitlement to VMware VMware SaltStack VMware Tanzu Platform Services - SALT

Issue/Introduction

Support for Life Cycle Managed based deployments of Aria Config were recently deprecated and customers need guidance on how to migrate their existing data from the appliance.

Environment

Aria Automation Config 8.x (LCM based deployments only)

Cause

Photon OS 3 is now End of Life.

Salt 3005.x that ships with Photon OS 3 is also now end of life

Resolution

This solution assumes that you are managing less than 1,000 minions and intend to migrate to a single managed VM based on RHEL, or a compatible RHEL derivative such as Oracle Linux. However, this same basic process also works for a multi-node deployment. You should download the same version of the installer as your current running version of RaaS on the LCM-based appliance if possible. If this version is not available, then please contact support to see if a copy is available. This helps ensure that the migration goes as smoothly as possible.

  1. Backup data from the appliance including configurations:
    • Instructions to backup your database
    • Be sure to also back up a copy of the /etc/raas/pki/.raas.key file.
      • This file is essential for being able to decrypt certain items in the database.
  2. Stand up a new VM with RHEL-based OS for Aria Config installer compatibility.
  3. Download the Aria Config installer that best matches your target OS:
    1. Click My Downloads.
    2. Search for Salt or Automation depending on your entitlement.
    3. Depending on the search term, click on VMware Salt or VMware Aria Automation and then ... Config.
    4. Be sure to download the Automated Installer, not the OVA or virtual appliance.
  4. Extract the installer tarball on the new managed VM.
  5. Find the DB packages under sse-installer/salt/sse/eapI_database/files and install the RPMs in a single command like rpm -Uvh ./*.rpm.
    • If the service started, stop the postgresql service for now.
  6. Copy the DB configuration from the LCM-based appliance over to the DB server:
    • The default configuration is normally under /var/lib/postgresql/data, or /var/lib/postgresql/<VERSION>/data.
    • Copy the postgresql.conf and the pg_hba.conf files over to the new host.
  7. Start the DB service with a command like systemctl start postgresql-<VERSION>.
  8. Restore the DB backup on the new server. (See the linked instructions above).
  9. Install Redis on the new managed VM from the installer provided packages:
    • The installer provided package can be found under sse-installer/sse/salt/eapi_cache/files/.
    • Run a command like rpm -Uvh ./*.rpm to install the service.
    • Ensure that the Redis service is stopped with a command like systemctl stop redis.
    • Copy over the Redis configuration from the appliance. This file is normally stored under /etc/redis.conf or /etc/redis/redis.conf.
    • You can also tarball the entire directory and copy it over to the new managed VM.
  10. Start the Redis service with a command like systemctl start redis.
  11. Install RaaS from the installer provided packages:
    • The installer provided packages can be found under sse-installer/salt/sse/eapi_service/files.
    • Install the files with a series of commands like the following: 
      rpm -Uvh ./openssl*.rpm
rpm -Uvh ./lib*.rpm
rpm -Uvh ./xml*.rpm
rpm -Uvh ./ssc-trans*.rpm
rpm -Uvh ./singleton*.rpm
      • If the singleton command hangs, you can use Ctrl-c to quit the package installation.
      • Confirm that the package is installed successfully with rpm -qa | grep -i singleton.
      • This package requires Java to also be installed.
    • rpm -Uvh ./raas*.rpm
    • Ensure that the RaaS service is stopped with a command like systemctl stop raas.
    • Copy over the previously created tarball containing the RaaS configuration and unpack the tarball on the new managed VM.
    • Confirm that you see the /etc/raas/pki/.raas.key file in the expected location.
  12. Start the RaaS service with a command like systemctl start raas.
  13. Check the RaaS service status with a command like systemctl status raas. The service may take a minute to come up.
  14. Resolve any errors that may arise. Refer to the Additional Information section.

If your Aria Config instance is integrated with Aria Automation (formerly vRA), then follow these additional steps:

  1. Snapshot LCM, Aria Automation, and Aria Config.
  2. In LCM, open the Aria Automation environment and remove the Aria Config product from the environment:
    • This does not delete the LCM-deployed Config appliance.
    • This attempts to remove the Aria Config integration from Aria Automation.
    • If existing deployments in Automation depend on the integration, this step fails.
    • If this step fails, it is safe to retry the operation and skip it in the LCM request.
  3. In the newly deployed Aria Config, connect to the postgres database with the command: su - postgres -c psql.
  4. In the PostgreSQL prompt, delete the vra_params table content: delete from vra_params;.
    • Once this is run, only local account access is enabled for Aria Config. vIDM-based authentication provided by Aria Automation no longer works. If you do not want to use local accounts, you can configure LDAP integration directly on Config.
    • Configuring directory services using the LDAP protocol
  5. Update any DNS / IP configurations for Aria Config. If the integration in step 2 was skipped, the new Aria Config appliance MUST use the same FQDN as the previous Config appliance in DNS.
  6. If the integration in step 2 succeeded, the Aria Config appliance can use any desired FQDN when the integration is recreated.
  7. If you are deploying Windows machines using the Aria Automation integration, ensure you have also completed the following:
    • Ensure that salt-cloud is installed along with salt-master.
    • Unpack the desired minion version bundle into /etc/salt/cloud.deploy.d.
    • Install the dependencies outlined in the Salt Project Windows documentation using salt-pip install <package_name>.

Please contact support if you have any questions regarding this process.

Additional Information

The Aria Automation Config(RAAS) installation fails with error while loading shared libraries: libz.so.1

If "/var/log/raas/raas" logs reports below error:

] [CRITICAL:216 ] [MainProcess: 2710817] Failed to connect to the storage backend. Trying again in a bit.
] [DEBUG :216 ] [MainProcess: 2710817] Failed to connect to database: (psycopg2. OperationalError) connection to server at "localhost" (127.0.0.1),

Confirm the below configuration in "/var/lib/pgsql/13/data/postgresql.conf"

sql:
  dialect: postgresql
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  driver: psycopg2
  ssl: False

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