«

»

VMware vSphere vCenter Server 6.5 Appliance Installation & Configuration

Basic documentation about my lab environment VMware vCenter Server 6.5 installation and configuration. I decided to run the UI based installation form my Windows 8 based VDI. However, there is a cli option available for the deployment and a blog post about that can be found here.

Hang on for a lot of print screens:)

Deployment/Installation

Follow the below procedure to successfully install vCenter Server Appliance version 6.5.

    1. Mount the downloaded ISO and double click the installer.exe which can be found under Mountpoint:\vcsa-ui-installer\win32
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-17-12-51
    2. Since this was a completely fresh installation i selected the Install option.
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-17-16-26
    3. Click next on the Introduction section.
    4. Click the check box “I accept the terms of the license agreement” in the End User Lices Agreement section and click Next
    5. I selected “vCenter Server with Embedded Platform Service Controller” as my Deplyment type since this will be a small deployment with only one vCenter Server and a maximum of 5 ESXi hosts.
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-17-18-32
    6. I used my only existing ESXi server as the Appliance Deplyment Target.
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-17-21-12
    7. Accept (click Yes) the certificate warning which i get since i’m using the ESXi self generated certificate.
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-17-21-34
    8. Provide the VM name and root password in the “Set up Appliance VM section”The following password requirements exists.screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-12-30
  1. The following Deployment size configuration is available:
    1. Deployment Size = Tiny
    2. Storage Size = Default
      See blog post VMware vCenter Server Appliance resource requirements for more information about deployment sizes and resource requirements.
      screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-12-30
  2. Select the Datastore when you want to place the VM. There is also an option to select thin provisioning.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-12-43
  3. Configure your Network details. You’ll get a warning if the FQDN is not resolvable to the IP address you provide.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-14-06
  4. Verify all looks good & click Finish on the “Ready to complete stage 1” section to start the deployment.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-22-35
  5. Sit back and watch the installation or grab a coffey:)
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-40-57
  6. Click Continue on the “Install – Stage 1: Deploy vCenter Server with Embedded Platform Service Controller” page to start stage 2.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-18-46-57

Configuration

The configuration section is as easy as the deployment/installation part so follow the below procedure to successfully configure the vCenter Server Appliance version 6.5.

  1. Nothing to verify at the introduction page, just click next
  2. screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-37-19
  3. The Appliance Configuration page lets you configure:
      1. NTP – Always a good thing to configure, even for a lab environment.
      2. SSH – which i enabled for my lab environment. Disabled is the default option

    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-37-45

  4. SSO configuration page need the following:
    1. SSO domain name
    2. Sao user name
    3. SSO Password
    4. Site Name

    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-38-54

  5. CEIP is the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program. Just decide if you want to participate or not. My customers usually do not enable this for their production environments.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-39-39
  6. Verify all looks good & click Finish on the Ready to complete page.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-39-50
  7. Good to know.
    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-19-40-00
  8. Configuration continues ……….
    screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-11-32-19
  9. And now it’s finished
    screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-11-39-43

The links included at the Complete page takes you to:

Now let’s access the system via the three main interfaces not including the physical machine console where the director console interface (DCUI) is shown.

  • SSH where you can login with the root or administrator@vsphere.local accounts
    screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-16-16-53
  • https:/7vc01.vcdx56.local:5480 which is the new admin interface.
    screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-16-13-10
    screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-16-14-11
  • https://vc01.vcdx56.local which gives you the option to start various interfaces e.g. flash mode based vSphere Web Client and the new HTML5 based client

screen-shot-2016-11-21-at-07-49-56

  • https://vc01.vcdx56.local/vsphere-clinet which takes you to the Flash based vSphere Web client
    screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-16-18-19
  • https://vc01.vcdx56.local/ui which takes you to the HTML5 based client
    screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-16-18-07