Basic Install of VMware VCSA 6.0

Installing VMware VCSA 6.0

In this post I will be detailing the basic steps required to setup a basic install VMware's vCenter Appliance 6.0. As I am just deploying this in to my test lab I have not considered much on the design of new offering from VMware around the setup of  Platform Services Controller (PSC) offering.

If you would like to know more about PSC a good starting place would be VMware KB2113115 and VMware Blog.

Pre-Requisites :

- Follow my other post on installing Client Integration Plugin http://blog.myvmx.com/2015/11/install-client-intergration-plugin.html

- Have VMware vSphere 6 appliance ISO

- Have an ESXi host built and connected to storage to host the appliance to be installed

- Have access to a Windows machine which you can mount the VMware vSphere 6 appliance ISO

- Have ESXi host username and password

- Have a read of the following KB from VMware on the supported method of installing SSO

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2108548

- Have a name and IP address you will assign to this appliance

- Have subnet, gateway and DNS settings
- Have a password to set for VCSA Appliance 6
- Have a password to set for SSO

Steps

 1) You should of already installed "Client Integration Plugin" already before moving on. If not then follow my other post on installing it. Installing Client Integration Plugin

2) Mount the VMware vSphere 6 appliance ISO and browse to the CD content and locate "vcsa-setup.html" on the root of the CD. (Try to use Internet Explorer 11 which I was using at the time as with other browsers there seems to be issues with the plugin working depending on the version of the browsers that you have)

 

3) You may receive this prompt and you can just click "Yes"

 

4) Within the browser window you will see the following message and it should disappear within 30 seconds if it detects the plugin has been installed correctly

 

5)  The vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 installation option screen should appear so click "Install"

 

6)  Select "I accept the terms of the license agreement" and click "Next"

  

  

7) Enter the ESXi host IP or FQDN to connect to so that we can deploy our VMware vCenter appliance to and click "Next"

 

8) If you receive a certificate warning just check if it is correct for your organisation i.e. the VM host  and then click "Yes"

 9) Give the appliance a name as this will be the "Display Name" for the appliance and set a password for this appliance then click "Next". The password rules are as following:

• At least 8 characters
• No more than 20 characters
• At least 1 uppercase character
• At least 1 lowercase character
• At least 1 number
• At least 1 special character (e.g @, !)
• Only visible lower-ASCII characters (Spaces are not allowed)

 10) Select which option you would prefer for installing SSO (Platform Services Controller) or have a read of VMware KB article KB 2108548 before proceeding at this point. I selected Embedded as this is only a lab test

11) Select "Create a new SSO domain" as this is the first PSC (Platform Services Controller) that we will be deploying. The password rules are as following:

• At least 8 characters
• No more than 20 characters
• At least 1 uppercase character
• At least 1 lowercase character
• At least 1 number
• At least 1 special character (e.g @, !)
• Only visible lower-ASCII characters (Spaces are not allowed)

 Give a SSO domain name that does not exists in your environment and a site name for this PSC to be associated with then click "Next"

Domain Name rules:

• Each character in a label must me alphanumeric or a dish (-)
• The first character in each label must be a letter and the last character must be alphanumeric
• Each label must not exceed 63 characters and the entire name must not exceed 253 characters in textual representation
• Must contain at least one dot (.)
• Example vsphere.local

Site Name rules:

• Should include alphanumeric characters or the symbol dash (-)
• Should not include high-ASCII/non-ASCII characters
• Should not exceed 63 characters 

  

 12) Select appliance size based on the number of host and VMs this appliance will need to support. The description section will tell you what size the VM will be configured. Click "Next"

 

 13) Select which datastore you wish to deploy this appliance to and also select if you would like to use thin provisioning. If you do then select "Enable Thin Disk Mode" and click "Next".

  

14)  Decided if you wish to use the embedded DB (vPostgres) or Oracle. For this case we will select "Use an embedded database (vPostgres)" and click "Next".

15) Configure all the network settings for this appliance and enable SSH if you want. Use the scroll bar to navigate down and then click "Next". Do make sure you that there is time synchronisation between the ESXi host and NTP server otherwise the deployment will fail.

16) Check all the settings are correct. If there are any that are not correct then press the "Back" button to go back to the relevant pages to edit. Once all OK click "Finish" to deploy the appliance.

17) You should see the screen below once the appliance has been deployed successfully and click "Close" to finish.

 

18) Use which ever method you prefer to view the console of the appliance to make sure it has started up correctly

 To access the appliance browse to the FQDN of the appliance followed by vsphere-client. Example would be https://ServerName.myvmx.local/vsphere-client.