How To Run vCloud Connector 2.0 Hosted With NAT

As I have been building out this crazy vCloud Director Hybrid setup in a few of the public clouds I am using from Virtacore, Stratogen, and the VMware Evaluation Cloud, I decided to try hosting all the vCloud Connector components in the various clouds.  One thing I remember from the vCloud Connector 1.0 days was the Server component was not happy behind a NAT.  That’s because the online web interface for vCloud.vmware.com tried to connect to the local IP address and it really just did now work behind NAT.  Now for me I am trying to use ALL online access to all these things so this is what I setup so far:

vCloud Connector Nodes Installed in:

  • Virtacore’s IAD Cloud
  • Virtacore’s LAX Cloud
  • VMware IAD Eval Cloud
  • Stratogen Cloud

Each of these nodes is on a “Public” network with external IP Addresses and firewall rules for the following ports:

  • 443
  • 5480 (Management)

vCloud Connector Server Installed in:

  • VMware IAD Eval Cloud
  • Same vApp as the Node

vCC vApp

Now the firewall rules for the server are a little different and I did get an error on vCloud.vmware.com that it does need an additional port open but it does work 100% from the online vcloud.vmware.com portal

Firewall Rules for the Connector Server:

  • 443
  • 5480 (Management)
  • 80 for vCloud.vmware.com

NOTE:  These are not deployed from OVF with the VMXNET3 interface so for giggles be sure to remove the current interface and add a new one that is using VMXNET3 specifically by checking the “Show Network Adapter Type” box.

Configuring the vCloud Connector Server

Now something I was messing with was getting the vCloud Connector Server connected to the local vCloud Connector Node.  Due to the Edge Gateway I could not use the external IP on in the vCloud Connector Server config as you can see below.  I needed to use the local IP for the Node that’s in the same vCloud Director Cloud and in the same vApp as shown above.  I think there was some routing issue but it does not really matter since the Node and the Server are in the same network you can use the local IP address or local DNS for the connection.  The other nodes you can see are true external entries.

vcloud connector server

Once I did that the server is now connector to all 4 clouds through the online portal vcloud.vmware.com

vcloud vmware

 

Migrating Templates

Now I was ready to move my Windows template from one cloud to Stratogen so I can continue to work on this expanded vCloud Director Hybrid Cloud setups.  As I continue with this experiment I will add more blog posts so people can really understand the power of how to use all this technology

About Chris Colotti

Chris is active on the VMUG and event speaking circuit and is available for many events if you want to reach out and ask. Previously to this he spent close to a decade working for VMware as a Principal Architect. Previous to his nine plus years at VMware, Chris was a System Administrator that evolved his career into a data center architect. Chris spends a lot of time mentoring co-workers and friends on the benefits of personal growth and professional development. Chris is also amongst the first VMware Certified Design Experts (VCDX#37), and author of multiple white papers. In his spare time he helps his wife Julie run her promotional products as the accountant, book keeper, and IT Support. Chris also believes in both a healthy body and healthy mind, and has become heavily involved with fitness as a Diamond Team Beachbody Coach using P90X and other Beachbody Programs. Although Technology is his day job, Chris is passionate about fitness after losing 60 pounds himself in the last few years.

4 comments

  1. Etc/hosts entry would fix your local node connection problem, Now you will also need to mark the node as non public so the transfers are in the pull mode (external nodes cannot originate the connection to it).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *