Installing Zerto Tenant UI Plugin Manager

Hi Gordon,

There isn’t any public documentation.  But, this is the information I got after a recent support call:

vCD Tenant UI Integration

Description
vCD Tenant UI Integration is a set of actions, the result of which is having an ability for the VCD Tenant to seamlessly login to, and view, his ZSSPs from the VCD Tenant UI web-portal. It was implemented by leveraging a VCD Plugin extension feature. A custom Zerto VCD Plugin was developed. Once the plugin is added to VCD, it communicates with all the connected ZVMs and generates an appropriate ZSSP link when requested.
The feature will be available by default after upgrade to or fresh install of Zerto 8.5.

Motivation
After MSP installs Zerto product on top of his infrastructure, he needs to configure Zerto organization and assign VCD resources according to created Tenants. Then MSP gives ZSSP login information to his tenant so that they can login and manage the backup by themselves. With this feature, MSPs can provide even higher level of independence for their tenants. Instead of spending time on providing access and instructions to their customers on Zerto’s ZSSP, they will be able to just configure the plugin and their customers will always be able to use ZSSP via Tenant UI.

How does it work

Mandatory prerequisite knowledge
To fully comprehend this feature, the reader needs to have a good understanding of the VCD related definitions and flows. Please make sure you understand all the abbreviations below. Some explanations contain the links which you can use to find more information.

ZCM – Zerto Cloud Manager (ZCM) is a Windows service that enables managing all VMware sites offering disaster recovery either as a service (DRaaS) or completely within the cloud environment, protecting one site and recovering to a second site (ICDR). ZertoCloudManagerAdministrationGuide.pdf

ZSSP – Zerto Self-service Portal (ZSSP) is the out-of-the-box DR portal solution with a fully functioning browser-based service portal to enable Managed Service Providers to quickly introduce disaster recovery as a part of their portal offering. ZertoCloudManagerAdministrationGuide.pdf

RabbitMQ – is a message-queueing software also known as a message broker or queue manager. RabbitMQ is used as an Exchange server for communication between VCD and ZVM. Configuring the VCD Exchange server is part of the ZVM installation on VCD. vCD 1st time usage.docx

VCD – VMware vCloud Director (vCD) is deployment, automation, and management software for virtual infrastructure resources in multi-tenant cloud environments.

MSP – Managed Service Provider is a company that manages and providers IT infrastructure for their customers. MSP has a VCD installed on top of their VC labs, which they use to provide infrastructure services (VMs, Storage and so on). With the help of Zerto they can additionally deliver backup and restore services for the provided infrastructure.

VCD Organization (a.k.a. Tenant) – a unit of administration for a collection of users, groups, and computing resources. VCD administrators create and provision organizations, while organization administrators manage organization users, groups, and catalogs.

VCD Tenant UI – a web UI available for the tenants, which they can use to track and manage organization-specific resources. (ZSSP in Zerto has a similar idea).

VCD Tenant UI Plugin – a feature of VCD that gives you an ability to extend Tenant UI view with custom pages and additional functionality to even better integrate your product with VCD infrastructure.

Comment: Environment prerequisites
-ZVMs are installed on VCs
-ZCM is installed.
-ZVM sites are added.
-VCD is installed.
-VCD Organizations are created.

ZVM Plugin installation and configuration (MSP actions)
Installing Zerto VCD Plugin
The dedicated tool ZertoVcdPluginManager needs to be used to automatically install the custom Zerto plugin on the VCD site. The tool can be downloaded from MyZerto portal. Steps that user needs to perform while running the tool are:

1. Login to ZCM
2. Update the ZVM site names as they should be displayed on the Tenant UI view
3. Input the VCD IP and credentials
4. Click the ‘Install Plugin’ button

ZVM VCD Plugin installation will happen
If the customer wishes to add the organization or reassign the resources, he will need to Republish the plugin after he makes the changes, which means Running the tool and performing the aforementioned steps again. If the customer forgets to do this, the ZVM Tenant view won’t show the last changes.
The tool logs are available under the ‘\logs’ folder

Configuring Zerto VCD Plugin
1. Login to VCD as Administrator
2. Go to Customize Portal view
3. Select Zerto Tenant Plugin and click Publish
4. Uncheck Service profile and check Tenants for which you want the Plugin to be turned on
5. Click Save

Zerto VCD Plugin Tenant view
1. Login as Tenant or just go to Tenant view
2. Click the Dropdown Menu and select Zerto
A view is opened with the ZSSP links to the sites which contain resources that were assigned to the current Tenant. Most of the time it is will be a single link.
3. Click the link
4. A new browser tab is opened, logging in to ZSSP automatically on behalf of a ZSSP user. The session might expire if idle for some time, so to refresh it, just refresh the Zerto Plugin Tenant view, and click the link again.

The session might expire if idle for some time, so to refresh it, just refresh the Zerto Plugin Tenant view, and click the link again.

Limitations
If the customer has upgraded his environmental Orgs, VCenter, ZVMs – he should reinstall the new plugin. The reinstall actions are similar to the first time install. This is a known limitation for the feature in its current state.”

The article does not specify any special ports that need to be open. From my investigation, I believe the default ports need to be open (ZSSP, VCD, ZVMs).

It is from one of their internal documents.  I hope it helps.  I have asked that they add information to their public documents.

If you have any issues with it or need further information then you will need to raise a support incident with them I think.  One thing which still isn’t clear to me is whether you need additional ports open from the vCD to the ZCM, but I’m sure I will find that out when I test it.

Thanks, Andrew.