This blog post is part 2 in continuation of vSphere Installation series for 6.5. In previous part ESXi 6.5 installation, we covered step by step walkthrough of ESXi host installation.
Other articles in this series can be found below.
In vSphere 6.5. vCenter server installation process is bit changed with some new additions as compared to its predecessors. Though it will be OVF based deployment, but to make it more friendly process, VMware has added new installer package to the whole process.
vCenter Server 6.5 appliance deployment process is 2 staged process. In stage one, appliance is deployed and in stage two, appliance configuration is done.
Follow the step by step walkthrough of embedded vCenter 6.5 deployment along with screenshots as below.
- Download vCenter Server appliance deployment ISO from VMware Portal.
- Once ISO is downloaded, you can mount it from your desktop which can be windows, MAC OS or Linux operating system as this ISO includes installer support for all these operating systems as you can see in image below.
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| Image: VMware |
- Navigate to directory as per your desktop OS.
- Double click installer.exe under win32 directory as in my case I am using windows desktop for deployment.
- We now have 4 options to choose from on installer launch screen as described.
- Install – for deployment of vCenter server appliance or PSC.
- Upgrade – To upgrade from previous version of vCenter appliance
- Migrate – To Migrate from windows based vCenter server to vCenter appliance 6.5
- Restore – To restore the backups taken with native backup feature introduced in vCenter Server 6.5
- We will click Install as this will be greenfield deployment.
- Clicking Install link will launch the stage one. Click next to begin the deployment process.
- Accept the EULA license agreement and click next.
- Select the embedded mode of installation by selecting embedded PSC and click next.
- Enter the ESXi Server details on which you will host vCenter server appliance and click next.
- ESXi host has self signed certificate currently hence we will get certificate warning. Accept the certificate warning by clicking Yes.
- Provide vCenter Appliance details like appliance VM name in inventory, Root password and click next.
- Select the expected size of inventory in your environment and click next.
- Select the datastore for storing vCenter appliance VM files and click next. You can also use thin provisioning if required.
- Provide network details as per your environment design for vCenter Server appliance and click next.
- Click finish to complete stage one deployment.
- Once clicked finish, installer will start deploying appliance. This will take few minutes (15-20 mins) to complete.
- Once deployment is completed, click continue to launch stage two of the installation.
- On stage two screen, click next to continue.
- Configure NTP settings and SSH access mode as per your requirement and click next. In this setup I have configured both as in screenshot below.
- Enter the SSO details such as SSO domain, SSO admin password and Site name and click next.
- You can click next keeping CEIP joining checked in case you want join VMware CEIP or else you can uncheck and click next if you do not wish to join VMware CEIP.
- Review the configuration and click finish.
- Once clicked Finish, it will show warning message saying that once install started, cannot be stopped. Click OK to continue.
- This will continue the setup which will take few minutes (15-20 mins) to complete.
- Wait for setup to get completed.
- Once completed, you can access web client, vSphere client to confirm the successful deployment.
- Also you can connect to VAMI page at :5480 ( Whoaaaa It’s back again with new style in vSphere 6.5) which has new funky look to check appliance health.
This completes the embedded deployment of vCenter Server Appliance 6.5. Hope this helps.
See you in another post on distributed deployment of vCenter Server 6.5.
Cheers!!!!!!