Integrated vCenter 6.5 and PSC 6.5 deployment

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Integrated vCenter 6.5 and PSC 6.5 deployment

Ideally PSC should be external as that helps in some DC/DR failover, cross-vcenter or linked-mode, etc. configuration. However, for some test POC setups integrated PSC can also be used. To deploy vCenter with integrated PSC choose:

1. Login to ESXi host ( https://<fqdn-or-ip-esxi>/ )
2. Go to Virtual machines
3. Select create / Register VM
4. In the new window, Select "Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file". Click Next
5. Enter VM name. Browse and select vcenter appliance image. Click Next. The vcenter appliance image is part of iso such as VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7312210.iso. In iso go to vcsa folder and select ova such as VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.5.0.13000-7312210_OVF10.ova.
6. Select storage and Click Next. In case of local NFS storage from VMs the setup might fail due to space full error even when space is there. In such cases setting up PSC first on local datastore and then later doing storage vMotion to NFS might be better
7. Accept the license agreement. Click Next
8. Select required network where PSC should be deployment. Change deployment size from tiny only if more than 10 hosts or 100 VMs might get managed. Use thin/thick provisioning based on requirement. Leave power on automatically selected. Click Next
9. In Additional settings page use:
   • Networking configuration

     Host Network IP Address Family

     ipv4

     Host Network Mode

     static

     Host Network IP Address

     172.17.1.102

     Host Network Prefix

     24

     Host Network Default Gateway

     172.17.1.1

     Host Network DNS Servers

     172.17.1.87

     Host Network Identity

     vcenter.rnd.com

     If DNS entry is not present we can enter IP address in place of FQDN also in 'Host Network Identity'

   • SSO Configuration

     Directory Password

     redacted

     Directory Password confirm

     redacted

   • System Configuration

     Root Password

     redacted

     Root Password confirm

     redacted

   • Networking properties

     Domain Name

     rnd.com

     Domain Search Path

     rnd.com

     and click next

10. Review values and click Finish
11. After this we should wait for 10-15min before we access setup interface at port 5480. Before accessing setup interface the console should show us option of connecting on port 5480 using IP.

Integrated PSC 6.5 and vcenter 6.5 configuration

1. Login to web console of vcenter ( https://<ip-or-fqdn-of-vcenter>:5480 )
2. Click on setup vCenter Server Appliance.
3. Provide root password specified during appliance deployment in previous steps
4. Click next to go to stage2 of setup
5. Provide details like IP address, system-name (IP is acceptable) and ntp server. Enable SSH access. Click next
   • SSO configuration

     SSO domain name

     vsphere.local

     Change this only if necessary, this can be different from AD domains

     SSO username

     administrator

     SSO password

     redacted

     Site name

     gbbrnd

   Click next

6. Do not join VMware's Customer Experience Program (CEIP). Click next
7. Review values and click Finish. Click 'Ok' on the warning. It will take long time for setup to finish. Do not close browser and do not refresh else setup will fail and you would have to delete appliance and again create a new appliance.
8. Login to vcenter appliance management interface at https://<vcenter-ip-or-fqdn>:5480
9. Login to vcenter dashboard at https://<Vcenter-IP>/vsphere-client

   Note that https://<Vcenter-IP>/ui has a new HTML5 interface, but that interface is seriously limited. Deploying vSphere replication with static IP using HTML5 wont work. Site Recovery plugin does not shows up on HTML5 interface at all. Hence for all practical purposes we need to use Flash interface only.

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