Install VCenter Server Appliance 6.7 | IMrouji Net

What is VMWare vCenter?

VMware vCenter Server pools ESXi host resources to provide a feature set delivering high availability and fault tolerance to virtual machines. The vCenter Server is a single centralized management console and can be deployed as a virtual appliance or Windows machine. It should be noted that vCenter 6.7 is the final release where Windows Modules will be available. All future releases will only be available as vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) which is the preferred deployment method of vCenter Server. This post gives a walk through on a clean installation of VCSA 6.7.

Downloading the VCSA ISO image

You can download an ISO image of VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 from VMware’s official site. You will need to create a free account with VMware to enjoy free trials on some products.

Installation Steps

After downloading the VCSA 6.7 ISO file to a Windows 10 workstation or a Windows Server 2012 or above, right-click on the file and select ‘Mount’

Note: Windows versions prior to Windows Server 2012, or Windows 10 do not have built-in ISO mounting features. Therefore, the use of a third party tool like Daemon tools is required.

Browse to the folder vcsa-ui-installer

Run the ‘installer‘ as administrator. This installer can be found under Win32 folder

Click ‘Install‘ option in the deployment wizard

The wizard will walk you through step-by-step installation. The installation is composed of two stages: Deployment and setup. Click ‘Next’ to continue

In this tutorial, I will be installing the vCenter as a virtual appliace on top of one of the ESXi hosts, I will go with the first option

Enter the details of the ESXi host where this vCenter will be installed as a virtual machine

Click ‘Yes‘ on the SSL certificate warning. The reason why this warning pops-up, is that the ESXi certificate is self-signed (Not issued by a Global certificate authority like Verisign).

Choose a name for your virtual appliance and set root (administrator) password.

Select the deployment type that suits your needs. I am going with the least resource consuming: Tiny deployment.

Even with a Tiny deployment option, I needed to provision my ESXi host with 14Gb of RAM and 400Gb of Hard Disk space. The vCenter alone requires 10Gb of RAM and 300Gb of Hard Disk.

Select the target datastore where the virtual appliance will be installed

Note: I enabled ‘Thin provisioning option’ so the disk space gets filled only when new data is stored. Otherwise, the system will reserve 300Gb right-away for vCenter appilance.

Enter network details. If you are using a FQDN, make sure to add an entry in your DNS to resolve the vCenter’s DNS name to its IP address

Review your settings and click ‘Finish‘

The stage 1 (Deployment phase) will start

Now, that the first stage completed successfully, click continue to move on next step: appliance setup

In this step, you will have the option to select ‘NTP time settings’ and SSH access to manage the vCenter appliance with command line

It’s time to choose the SSO domain. This domain must be different from your AD domain not to cause confusion and issues later when trying to integrate your vCenter with Active Directory. This is a local signle sign-on domain to allow you manage all your ESXi hosts from one signle place.

It’s optional to join VMware’s customer experience program

Review your setting and click ‘Finish‘

Click ‘OK’ to proceed with the setup

The installation takes several minutes to complete

Setup is now complete

Now, all you need to do is to open the vCenter web management console. The link is https://FQDN-of-your-vCenter, and login with your local SSO administrator’s account (The account we’ve setup few steps earlier, it’s usually ‘[email protected]’ or the same domain you’ve setup earlier if you chose different one)

The main page of the vCenter looks like this

We have successfully installed our first VMware vCenter Server Appliance. Congratulations!

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