Remote Setup and Deployment

Create a New Remote 

Perform the following steps to create a new Remote on your Automation tenant:

Note: In some cases, the default subnets may sometimes collide with your existing network. In such a scenario, you may need to override the default values with whatever subnet you have available. However, any changes you make to the default subnets are permanent and cannot be reversed without installing a new appliance.

1. Choose Automation > Advanced in the navigation menu.

2. Click the Remotes tab, and click the New remote button on the right.

3. Enter a meaningful Display Name and optional Description.

4. In the Remote Details section, click the DHCP or Static IP radio button to set your DNS type.

   If you are using a Static IP, provide the following information:

   • IP address in CIDR notation (for example: 192.168.1.100/24)
   • List of DNS servers (for example: 192.168.1.1,192.168.1.2)
   • Default gateway (for example: 192.168.1.1)

5. If a proxy is required for the Remote to access the internet, click the Requires Proxy toggle and enter the Proxy Address (only SOCKS5 proxies are supported).

6. If you want to override the default subnets and provide private subnets to start the Remote, click the Show advanced options toggle and enter the Remote Cluster Subnet and Remote Service Subnet that you want to use instead of the defaults.

7. Click Save.

   The new Remote will be displayed in the list with a status of Not Connected.

Download the Configuration File

Configuration information is unique to each Remote. After you create a Remote in Automation, generate and download its configuration file.

1. On the Remotes page, hover the mouse over the new Remote you just created and click the ellipsis (…) in the Actions column to open the drop-down menu.

2. Choose Connect from the Actions drop-down menu.

3. In the Connect Remote dialog box, click Generate Package.

A remotePackage.zip file with the Remote configuration will be downloaded to your system. Unzip this file; its remoteconfig.txt will be used later (in Step 11 below).

Configure and Deploy the Virtual Appliance

After you create a Remote in Automation and download its configuration file, you'll download the virtual appliance OVA and use VMware vSphere to deploy it and apply the configuration.

1. For OVA files, please send an email to workflows-activation@cisco.com.

2. In your VMware vSphere client, right click on the folder you want to deploy the Remote in, and select Deploy OVF Template.

3. Click the Local file radio button, and click Choose Files. Navigate to the Remote OVA you downloaded, and select it.
4. Click Next.
5. Give the virtual appliance a unique name, confirm the location for the virtual machine, and click Next.
6. Click the compute resource where the virtual appliance will be deployed, and click Next.
7. Review the details of the deployment, and click Next.
8. In the list of datastores, choose the datastore you want to use for the virtual appliance, and click Next.

9. For each Source Network, click the Destination Network drop-down, choose the network where you want to deploy the virtual appliance, and click Next.
10. On the Customize Template or Customize vApp properties screen, provide the following information:

• Unique ID and hostname for the virtual appliance.

• (Optional) SSH public key for SSH access to the appliance (see Generate an SSH Key Pair below).

• Set Encoded user-data to the contents of remoteconfig.txt (from the remotePackage.zip configuration file above).

• Set a Default user’s password for access to the virtual appliance console (username: ubuntu).

  To avoid a setup failure, your password must be at least 14 characters long and...

  Contain at least:

  Not contain:

  • 1 uppercase letter

  • 1 lowercase letter

  • 1 number

  • 1 special character

  • More than 3 identical characters in a row (i.e., 'aaa')

  • More than 3 sequential characters (i.e., '123', 'abc')

  • Your username

  • Common dictionary words

11. Click Next.
12. Review all of the virtual appliance details, and click Finish.
13. After the virtual appliance deployment completes, click Power On to start the appliance.
    When the appliance is online, the Status of the Remote should change from Not Connected to Connected on the Remotes page.
    Note: A newly deployed Remote may take up to 10 minutes to show as connected.

Define NTP Servers (Optional)

After deploying your Automation Remote, you can configure the virtual appliance to use custom NTP servers using these steps:

1. Sign in to your virtual appliance using one of the following methods:

   • Open a console to the VM in vSphere and sign in with your password.
   • SSH to the VM using the key pair you created during setup.

2. Open the /etc/chrony/chrony.conf file and change the NTP servers to your preferred servers.

3. Save and close the file.

4. Run the following command to restart the NTP service and verify that the time is correct:

   systemctl restart chronyd ; watch chronyc tracking

Generate an SSH Key Pair

If you want to use SSH to access your Remote virtual appliance, you must generate a key pair for authentication. You can use any key pair that is valid for a standard Ubuntu authorized_hosts file (for example, RSA or ED25519).

Use the following examples to generate a default RSA key pair.

Configure Target to Use the Remote

Configure your on-premises targets to use the Automation Remote virtual appliance.

1. Choose Automation > Targets in the navigation menu.

2. Select the target you want to add a remote to (or create a new target).

3. Under the Remotes section, click the Remote Keys drop-down list, and choose the Remote you want to use with this target.

4. Click Submit.