VCenter 6.5 without embedded PSC deployment and configuration

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vCenter 6.5 without embedded PSC deployment and configuration

Note that directly deploying from ova wont work. The setup wizard is buggy and even when "vCenter without embedded PSC" is chosen, the setup assumes Embedded PSC and does not gives option of joining PSC domain. Thus, for vCenter without embedded PSC setup using ui installer is must.

1. Go to appropriate OS vCenter installer (eg vcsa-ui-installer/lin64) inside the vcenter iso file (eg VMware-VCSA-all-6.5.0-7312210.iso)
2. Click Install
3. Click next
4. Accept license agreement and click next
5. Select "vCenter Server (Requires External Platform Services Controller)"
6. On Appliance deployment target give ESXi host (and not vcenter) details such as

   ESXi host name

   host3.rnd.com

   HTTPS port

   443

   User name

   root

   Password

   redacted

   and click next

7. On certificate warning click 'Yes'
8. On Setup appliance VM use

   VM name

   vcenter.rnd.com

   Root password

   redacted (Complex)

9. On select deployment size use:

   Deployment size

   "Tiny vCenter Server" (Assuming less than 10 hosts and less than 100 VMs)

10. Select datastore and enable thin mode, if required. 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.
11. On configure network settings page, use:

    Network

    appropriate vSwitch network

    IP version

    IPv4

    IP assignment

    static

    System name

    vcenter.rnd.com

    IP address, Prefix, Gateway and DNS

    Appropriate values

12. Start the setup
13. After stage1 proceed to stage2. At stage 2 on appliance configuration give appropriate NTP server, enable SSH and continue
14. In SSO configuration enter appropriate values

    Platform Services Controller

    psc.rnd.com

    HTTPS port

    443

    Single Sign-On domain name

    vsphere.local

    Single Sign-On password

    redacted

    and click next

15. Review values and click next to start stage2 of vCenter.
16. After deployment is complete login to vcenter appliance management interface at https://<vcenter-ip-or-fqdn>:5480
17. 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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